Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam. Here, chances are you probably haven't given
Speaker 1: much thought to any given can of Pringles other than
Speaker 1: wondering how do I get the last few potato chips
Speaker 1: out of the tube. As it turns out, this salty
Speaker 1: snack has quite a story. It once was in the
Speaker 1: middle of a massive controversy that questioned the ingredients and
Speaker 1: whether the chips were actually potato chips at all. From
Speaker 1: two thousand seven to two thousand nine, the makers of
Speaker 1: the Once You Pop, you Can't stop chips stood in
Speaker 1: front of three different levels of the British judiciary trying
Speaker 1: to defend the decision that Pringles chips were not by definition,
Speaker 1: potato chips, or, in British parlance, potato crisps. Here's how
Speaker 1: this comically complicated problem started. In the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: at tax was borne by way of France and England,
Speaker 1: called the value added tax. This consumption tax started off
Speaker 1: as a ten percent tax on all goods bought from
Speaker 1: a business. More than of the world's tax revenue comes
Speaker 1: from the value added tax, making it a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: In Britain. Most foods are exempt from the value added
Speaker 1: tax except for potato chips or similar products made from
Speaker 1: the potato or from potato flour. This led to a
Speaker 1: long arduous journey to figure out whether or not pringles,
Speaker 1: which by the way, were once touted as the new
Speaker 1: fangled potato chip, were actually potato chips. If they were
Speaker 1: ruled as chips, Pringle's parent company at the time, Proctoring Gamble,
Speaker 1: would be subject to a seventeen point five percent value
Speaker 1: added tax. Proctoring Gamble's initial argument was that no pringles
Speaker 1: were not potato chips because they didn't quote contain enough
Speaker 1: potato to have the quality of potato nous. They also
Speaker 1: argued pringles didn't resemble the shape of a potato chip
Speaker 1: and were therefore instead a savory snack. In two eight
Speaker 1: a Lower British court agreed and ruled the pringles were
Speaker 1: in fact not potato chips, mainly because they contain only
Speaker 1: potato and had a quote shape not found in nature.
Speaker 1: The rest of pringles, by the way, is mostly wheat, starch,
Speaker 1: and flowers of corn rice and again potato. But just
Speaker 1: a year later, in two thousand nine, the Court of
Speaker 1: Appeal re examined and reversed that decision, calling Procter and
Speaker 1: Gamble's argument that the ingredients of a product don't define
Speaker 1: the product quote hogwash. But with that decision, the Behemoth
Speaker 1: Corporation had to pay a hundred and sixty million dollars
Speaker 1: in taxes while begrudgingly calling their new fangled potato chips
Speaker 1: well potato chips. And that is the story of Pringles
Speaker 1: and its brief dance with the intersecting worlds of taxation,
Speaker 1: junk food, and British judges. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Jerby Glass and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on us and lots of other fun don't stop topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and
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