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