Lay's drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes | Fortune
Lay's drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes | Fortune
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37214791
The article seems much closer to a PepsiCo marketing piece than proper journalism.
Probably because it's based on this marketing piece: https://www.pepsico.com/our-stories/story/from-potato-to-chip-the-next-chapter-of-lays
How can people be that dumb. It is literally in the name: Potato Chips.
My guess is that when you see a stamp that says "Made with real potatoes" you just assume that they were waved at a potato at some point during manufacturing. :)
Every employee is legally obligated to have a potato in his pocket at all times.
Made in proximity of real potatoes.
I just always assume they're lying to me because they're allowed to. That's what happens when regulations go out the window, trust does too.
Can they read ?
Reminds me about the fact that a roughly equal proportion of the population does not know that peanuts, just like potatoes, grow underground.
I just had raw peanuts for the first time this week and the taste was intriguing. It really brings home how they are "legumes" when they taste more like peas than peanut butter.
That's a little more understandable. Peas grow on vines, so you'd expect peanuts to be somehow similar to peas. I guess they get their name because they're in pods like peas but without being told, how would someone guess they grow underground?
And cashews do grow on trees (they're technically a fruit) and are similar to peanuts. Would anyone guess that cashews are fruits?
They're legumes that grow underground and trigger nut allergies. They are the platypus of the plant world.
I don't know why I remember this, but there was also a Spongebob episode that showed a potted peanut plant with peanuts growing on it like peas do.
I guess they get their name because they're in pods like peas but without being told
Presumably the opposite; they get their name because they're in shells like nuts
(The 'pea' part is because they're a legume; it could have just as easily ended up 'bean-nut', except that would over time become 'beanut', which would probably re-become peanut)
Yes, okay, guessing the origin from the name can be somewhat misleading. But the striking thing for me is that people do not know and do not bother to ask themselves where a product that they consume every day or every week comes from. That's ignorance.
TIL I thought they were like beans hanging in the air.
TBH, until just now I hadn't given much thought to how peanuts are grown. 🤔
and the potatoe isnt a vegatable, its a tuber, the real parts of the plants are berries, and leaves. which are poisonous.
The potato plant is a nightshade, closely related to the tomato. All nightshades contain poisonous alkaloids, including small amounts in tomato fruits and green potato skins.
The potato is still a vegetable though... Vegetable is a culinary term and can apply to any part of a plant, including roots and tubers.
Tubers are vegetables.
This has to be an actual joke right?
This reminds me of ppl when they think chocolate milk comes from brown cows
This reminds me of ppl when they think chocolate milk comes from brown cows
Yeah that's just crazy.
Everyone knows chocolate milk comes from any cows that are fed large amounts of chocolate.
da fuq did people think they are?! 🤨
Guessing the question wasn't clear, since Lays is both the name of the original product (potato chips) and the brand (which without looking it up I would guess includes other types of chips such as corn). But results from a well-formulated survey would have less clickbait value, so the shock results get reported.
Given how many yanks can't identify their own damned state on a map, and vote for republicans when they are guaranteeing that their lives will be made worse, I find this utterly unsurprising
I just don't understand how it is that chips and things like Doritos can possibly cost so much. It must be due to more and more consolidation and price-fixing.
It's due to people still buying them after every price increase.
So like with EVERYTHING else that is crazy expensive. Basic supply and demand... Yet people are baffled
Just when I think we've scrapped the bottom of human stupidity...
Well the title isn’t exactly accurate. It references a 2021 study to get the title but Pepsi said nothing about it
The changes come as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushes companies to ditch artificial ingredients.
This is likely the bigger factor.
I also have my issues with the cited "study."
I'm not saying Americans aren't dumb, but I take this kind of data with a sack of salt. How was the study phrased? What does the company stand to gain by expressing the results of the study in this way? Why not tell us exactly how the study was performed and what questions were on it?
There's a big difference between "Hey, what are Lay's chips made of?" and "Do you know what exact ingredients are in your bag of chips?"
My gut tells me this is all fairly performative framing so they can just cozy up to a political administration for favor and head-pets while also trying a new marketing campaign that should be universally acceptable to consumers, one that reframes their products as "healthy" in some way.
Whoopee. Pepsi gets keeled by a fucking political scion with worms for brains.
Is it just me or does it not literally say “potato chips” right on the bag? Been a long while since I had any Lay’s brand chips.
E: yes it does, on the bigger bags it’s on the front. Not sure about the smaller bags.
now I see why Americans need to specify when they're talking about "eye glasses", but don't Americans call them "potato chips" anyway?
Potato chips is like using the full name. A lot of the time it's just "chips"
Even the maize chips?
Yes
Lines up with the mouth breathing Trump voter stats.
All I know is that I'm not paying $5 a bag for their stale chips.
Pepsico basically said on an investor call they will keep jacking up the price so long as people keep buying .
So here we are I guess.
Must be a US thing, in the UK they are easily one of if not the most popular brand of crisps (chips) they are called walkers here but the logo is the same. We have stricter regulations on what is classed as food in this country though.
This is off the top of my head so correct me if I'm wrong but this is basically what veggie straws got sued over in reverse.
Like yeah, potatoes are vegetables. You thought because some where green and orange that we were using shit like carrots and celery? Lmao, no. Read the ingredients homie. That's red dye and green dye on weird shaped potatoes chips 🤠
I don't think I've heard of a lawsuit over it, but the veggie snacks really are made of vegetable starch. Of course that doesn't make them healthy, but they're not just potato chips.
Corn chips are obviously not made of slices of corn. I would imagine some people could be uncertain about potato chips being sliced potatoes, rather than some sort of potato-based product. Or just not particularly concerned about what any specific chip variety is made from.
Also, who the fuck would know what a potato crate looks like? Did potatoes ever come in crates? They’ve come in plastic bags my entire life, and I’m only vaguely aware they came in burlap sacks prior to plastic being invented.
I would imagine some people could be uncertain about potato chips being sliced potatoes, rather than some sort of potato-based product.
Ah, like Pringles.
Yeah the chips I ate most recently were Doritos. Hard to believe there is any remnant of vegetable in there at all, even though corn is the first ingredient listed.
Doritos are nearly 100% corn.
I have 100% transitioned to store brand chips. Some are even better than the one they are ripping off, plus they don't cost 8 bucks a bag.
Wait, which study was this? The page says it was from 2021. What was the question? What was the context? Who were polled and how? I am dubious.
I mean, unless the question was, "What are Lays potato chips made of," which answers itself so it wouldn't be used. But if the question was "What are Lays chips made of," I could see how someone might not answer potatoes. And who even asks that question in poll anyway? I feel like there's a universe of context collapse here.
didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes
What in the actual fuck??
I thought they were literally made out of money these days, considering the prices last few years.
I don't eat a ton of chips, but with the prices, I haven't bought any name brand chips in over two years.
I haven't bought store brand because I haven't found good ones, but I've bought Euro brands over lays or cheetos. Best price to quality ratio is actually local brands, they even beat out other European brands.
No way, I don't believe it. They are absolutely at least 60% cardboard.
They, you mean the consumers, right?
and 20 percent air
you do need those fibers. and meat is made from gym mats and couch stuffing.
The changes come as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushes companies to ditch artificial ingredients.
"Emphasize the potato part."
That reminds me of an ice cream ad.
kagis
I think this is it. If not, same timeframe and tone. February 1927:
https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTYwMFgxMTYx/z/BHYAAOSwQDViMSNc/$_57.JPG?set_id=8800005007
A Pure Dairy Product
The ice cream you buy so conveniently today contains only pure dairy products and the same wholesome ingredients you would use yourself.
The more of it you give your boys and girls, the more real nourishment you are giving them, for ice cream is milk and cream, made into a delicious food that everyone likes. Milk's minerals, milk's carbohydrates and proteins, milk's vitamins so essential to life and healrh and growth --- they are all in ice cream. Today ice cream is made in modern plants under official health regulations. The utmost cleanliness and purity is assured.
Look for this emblem! Through it, the Research Council of the Ice Cream Industry and its associate members assure you of pure and wholesome ice cream.
Ice Cream for Health
Friendly reminder for canucks that Miss Vickie's is Lays.
Ought to be in Not the Onion.
real potatoes
I imagine that this tactic implies that there is something else that they might be made from that's undesirable.
I remember a modem ad once from the 1990s for a modem -- probably 33.6kbps or so --- that proudly stated, with an exclamation mark, that it also supported
<list of slower speeds>
. Of course, so did all the competing modems...I wonder, how many of those consumers are Americans 🤔
To be fair, Lay’s garbage chips don’t have the flavor or texture of chips made from actual potatoes. They seem to be reconstituted from a paste that at one point contained potatoes.
You might be thinking of Pringles, which are definitely like that.
Pringles are so damn good though
They do make some products out of corn...
I would be more inclined to blame stupid consumers on this one.
The rebrand isn't because of stupidity it's because money. Like always.
So it's not that the consumer is stupid, it's that marketing is desperate to find another way to explain that no one can afford $8 for a bag of shitty chips?
1 out of 8 people in the US have or are using a GLP drug.
the percentage of people who were eating a large amount of snack foods like this are fairly likely to be those 1:8 people who were prescribed a GLP drug.. its more than just rising costs, these drugs are changing the way people relate to processed snack food in a profound way and the manufacturers arw well aware.