How Greasy Are your potato chips

How Greasy Are Your Potato Chips?

Dr. Camille Passalacqua

January 31, 2014

Potato Chips 1
Introduction

When people eat a bag of potato chips they do not usually look to see how many calories are in each bag. Potato chips come in a variety of flavors, including: barbecue, sour cream and onion, and salt and vinegar. According to Harvard University analysis the average person eats about 6 lbs of potato chips a year. The purpose of this experiment was to inform readers that were not already aware of how much grease are in the potato chips of their choice. There is a difference between reading the label, and physically seeing how much grease are in these chips. When a person sees the grease physically it might make them put the chips back on the shelf vs them reading the label. The hypothesis stated in this experiment was that the bag of Lays classic potato chips were going to contain the most grease. After eating lays potato chips according to some of the subjects, they seemed to have a grease residue left on their hands after eating the chips.

Methods & Materials

The materials that were used throughout this experiment consisted of different brands of potato chips, graph paper, a rolling pin and sunlight. The first step was to find the serving size listed on the back of the bag of chips, write down the serving size on a notepad. Next find the total fat per serving for each brand of chips in the grams. Count out a number of chips equal to the serving size for that brand of chips. Next place the chips on a sheet of graph paper. Roll over the chips several times with a rolling pin. Remove the graph paper and tape the graph paper to a window.

Potato Chips 2
Finally, Count the number of squares that are translucent from the grease. This set of methods were conducted a numerous amount of times to see if the outcome would be the same.
Results
Conducting this experiment it was proven that the Lays classic potato chips contained the most grease. The experiment was performed repeatedly, each time the results were the same. The barbecue chips which had the same amount in grams of fat per serving (90g) as the lays chips, only had 15 squares that were covered from the grease. The Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos had the lowest amount of fat per serving at 70 grams, meaning they had the lowest number of squares at 25. Lays Classic potato chips had the most number of squares at 151.

Discussion and Conclusion
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This experiment is not time consuming, it is very quick and easy for anybody to participate in. There were errors that were made in this experiment: Some of the chips were bigger than others, miscount of squares, and they paper was homemade graph paper not the one bought in stores. The chips were picked at random some of the chips were bigger than others, depending on how big or small the chips are depends on how much grease the graph paper is going to contain. Even though the experiment was repeated various times there is always a chance of a miscount, some of the squares were hard to tell if it was at least one half filled. Graphing paper that is supplied in the stores were not used in this experiment, it was made. This can have a huge effect on the experiment because the size of the squares may differ, if regular graph paper was used there is a good possibility the number of squares would have been different.