Potato chips are a popular snack that many Americans enjoy daily. We all know they aren’t very healthy, but none the less, we continue to enjoy them. Often though, people never take the time to stop and think about how potato chips are manufactured. What goes into a potato chip? Where do the ingredients come from? Are potato chips hurting the environment?
To understand the issues surrounding the manufacture and processing of potato chips, one must first have a basic understand of how they are made. Potato chips start out as most people would imagine, as potatoes. The raw potatoes are grown on farms, and shipped by truck or by rail to the processing facility. Once they arrive at the facility, the potatoes are sent to the peeler—“a long cylinder with rollers that revolve around and around stripping the potato of its skin” (How Potato Chips Are Made). The potatoes then exit the peeler where they are run past human inspectors that will look for bad potatoes and remove them. The potatoes then continue into a slicer where they pass one by one through the machine being sliced into wafers 1/20th of an inch thick (How Potato Chips Are Made). The thin slices then continue along to the fryer. The fryer is a shallow trough filled with oil flowing from one side to the other; it is the current that pushes the frying slices to the other side. As the chips exit the fryer they are salted and inspected again. The chips are then poured into bags, sealed, and shipped to consumers across the country (How Potato Chips Are Made).
From this rudimentary description of the production of potato chips, one can see that the main ingredients include potatoes, oil, and some salt. However, what may not be so apparent are the “non-ingredient” inp...
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...-scale potato chip manufacturing operations are designed to make to be economical, to make money, not benefit their consumers or protect the environment. Only when a regulation is imposed (such as those from the EPA or FDA) are processes and procedures adjusted. Perhaps in the future with advances in technology, large potato chip manufacturers will integrate better ways to dispose of their by-products and create healthier chips at the same time.
Works Cited
"How Potato Chips are Made." State of Michigan. Michigan Department of Agriculture, 10 May 2007. Web. 12 Feb. 2010. .
Meizys, Dennis. "More Reasons to Avoid Potato Chips." Web log post. HealthForwardOnline. Web. 11 Feb. 2010. .
In recent years, it is not even necessary to turn on the news to hear about the bad reputation farming has been getting in recent years. With the media focusing on things like drugs in animals and Pink Slime, or Lean Finely Textured Beef, it is a wonder that people are eating “non-organic” foods. However, many pro-farming organizations have been trying to fight back against these slanders. Still, the battle is not without heavy competition, and a good portion of it comes from Chipotle, a fast food Mexican restaurant that claims to only use completely organic ingredients in their food. Chipotle is constantly introducing advertisements claiming to have the natural ingredients, while slandering the names of farmers everywhere.
“For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.” Why do people consciously consume unhealthy, processed foods which big corporations in America distribute? These foods can lead to potentially harmful affects on the human body. So why are these risky products sold and consumed? The main reasons are because processed foods taste great and companies make large profits from these unwholesome products. General Mills is the 6th largest food company in the world, and uses genetically modified ingredients, preservatives, and artificial flavors in their products. The product that will be analyzed will be the tasty, mouthwatering breakfast favorite, Reese’s Puffs.
Schlosser sets off chapter 5: “Why the Fries Taste Good,” in Aberdeen, Idaho at the J. R. Simplot Plant where he introduces John Richard Simplot, “America’s great potato baron,” (Schlosser 111). Simplot dropped out of school at 15, left home, and found work on a potato farm in Declo, Idaho making 30 cents an hour. Simplot bought and turned profit on some interest-bearing scrip from some school teachers and used the money to at 600 hogs at $1 a head. He feed the hogs horse meat from wild horses he shot himself, later selling them for $12.50 a head. At age 16 Simplot leased 160 acres to begin growing Russet Burbank Potatoes. In the 1920s the potato industry was just picking up as Idaho was discovered to have the ideal soil and conditions for successfully growing potatoes (Schlosser 112). Soon Simplot was the “largest shipper of potatoes in the West, operating 33 warehouses in Oregon and Idaho,” (Schlosser 113). During World War II Simplot sold dehydrated potatoes and onions to the U.S. Army. By the time he was 36 he “was growing his own potatoes, fe...
The potato has recently been the subject of genetic modification by the agriculture industry giant Monsanto.
Food is an important factor in the everyday human life. Humans need food to be able to live. But how did the food people eat today come about, no one really knows the in depth explanation. What about more common foods that are a part of everyone’s everyday lives, like potato chips. They are a simple, easy snack food that is commonly in every American household. But does anyone know how they came about, who invented them. Well, let me explain a little about who that person was.
potato chips left in a sugar solution for a period of 1 hour. I will
The third potato chip will be placed in a hundred percent solution. I believe that this will make the potato chips shrivel and become flexible and stringy. This is because there is a higher concentration outside the cells and the water is being taken out to even the concentrations. This is what happens when a plant dies. The water leaves it in osmosis and the plant wilts and dies.
Imagine everything you ate looked like corn. Your burgers are corn, your cereal is corn, your ice cream is corn, even your steak is corn. This is what America’s food industry is shaping up to be, everything being made from corn. Over 10,000 pounds of corn can make 57,348 cans of soda, 3,894 burgers from meat that is corn fed, 2,301 pounds of bacon, or 6,726 boxes of cereal. Corn has become the ‘King’ of all crops, because of its widespread use in food. There is a major lack of variety nowadays since corn is a major ingredient in everything. Corn is changing the food industry for the worst, and we should cut down our use of corn in everything for more variety and a major decrease in the obesity rate.
The issue written in this article is regarding the banning and lack of approval for blight-resistant potatoes in the european union. Late potato blight, a potato disease caused by the the eukaryotic microorganism phytophthora infestans, is a significant cause for loss of crop and yield by potato farmers. Looking back to the past, the blight was responsible for the catastrophic Irish Great Famine of the 1840s causing eradication of their main food source, potatoes. As a result of the blight, potatoes become rotten and unsafe for human consumption. Late potato blight today is still a serious issue because it has caused the loss of $5.9 billion dollars of potatoes worldwide annually.By engineering blight resistance into potatoes, scientists have hoped to increase the yield and productivity of potato crops affected by this devastating disease. However, the attempts of the scientists are met with strong resistance by anti-GMO activists and lobbying groups, who are intent on food as naturally pure as possible. In consequence of not using genetically modified potatoes, the farmers are forced to use costly pesticides in an attempt to control the blight. With the human population rapidly increasing, it is essential that all measures be taken to increase food/crop yield in order to prevent starvation and hunger caused by the overpopulation. The battle between agricultural researchers like Simplot and the anti-GMO lobbying group GeneWatch is a controversial one that must be addressed by this generation and future generations.
In the book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about the fast food industry. Schlosser tells the story of J.R. Simplot, the man behind McDonald’s source for potatoes. He started his own business right out of the eighth grade, after dropping out. He started out small but eventually became one of the riches men in America. He owned then 160 acres of land to start off this business. He sold his potatoes to companies at first all natural. But he soon discovered that if you dry out the food it will keep for longer, more companies then bought from him. Then in the 1950's he found out about freezing them, and the method of frozen food. McDonald’s started buying and selling Simplot fries. The customers seemed to like it, they didn't mind the change or even realize it. As a result though from freezing the potatoes, they lost a lot of the natural flavors. Companies began cooking their food in a high percentage of animal fat to capture that flavor, but soon they switched. They traded beef fat for more chemicals. The fries flavor all depends on the chemicals, it is all fake, and there is even more saturated fat from their fries than in their burgers.
Experiment to Find the Reaction of Potato Chips in a Salt Solution. Aim: to find a reaction of potato chips in a salt solution. Hypothesis: I predict that the potato will change in mass. The difference will occur in accordance to the difference of concentration of the salt solution each potato chip is submerged in.
While watching this documentary, I have learned that the food industry does not want you to know the actuality about all the food they sell; because of course no one would really eat it. The way that the groceries we buy in the store are manipulated by food science shows the evolution of today’s food. Some examples from the film include, ripening of tomatoes with ethylene gas and the reengineering of produce to create a longer shelf life. With the large over production of corn, grocery stores are now stocked with corn-based, high-calorie processed food. Although these...
The Effect of Salt Solution Concentration On The Mass Of Potatoes Introduction = == == == ==
Food has been a common source of necessity in our everyday lives as humans. It helps gives us nutrition and energy to live throughout our life. Over several decades, the development of making foods has evolved. They have changed from natural to processed foods in recent years. Nowadays natural ingredients are barely used in the making of foods like bread, cheese, or yogurt. The food industry today has replaced natural food making with inorganic ingredients. The cause of this switch is due to processed foods being easier, cheaper and faster to make. Artificial nutrition and processed foods have been proven to last longer in market shelves then natural foods. Also, due to artificial additives in processed foods they help satisfy consumers taste more than natural ingredients. The method of producing processed foods is common in today's food industry and helps make money faster and efficiently for companies. Examples of this can be found in all markets that distribute food. Even though processed foods may be easier and faster to make, they are nowhere near as healthy for consumers compared to natural foods. Natural foods are healthier, wholesome, and beneficial to the human body and planet then processed foods.
...esity is becoming an epidemic, nanotechnology could be used to create foods which are low in fat, salt and sugar but are still nutritionally dense and taste great. Food is naturally nanostructured material – simply boiling an egg causes many changes; the proteins in the egg white change shape and tangle together to form a solid. We now have the opportunity to study what exactly happens in these nanoscale changes. Nanotechnology gives us many ways to ensure our food is safe and waste is cut down. However, there are many concerns that this form of processing is another way to put more power into the hands of large food companies- yet food has never been safer than it is today largely due to the strict hygiene and sanitation practices these companies follow. As the population continues to grow – so too will the importance of new food technologies like nanotechnology.