POTATO FLAKES

Tonight I’m eating a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.* Not my favourite, but all I had left to bring to the park.

For most of my life I’ve hated what salt and vinegar crisps do to your lips. It feels like you’re scoffing tasty, crunchy, razor-blades. You try to slide one in length ways and crunch it with your teeth, but of course, the saltiness makes you lick your lips regardless and the acid returns. Plus you look like you’ve forgotten how to eat and have been taking lessons from Frankenstein’s Monster. Chompy chompy. I haven’t brought a drink either. Error.

Meanwhile, the list of potential allergic reactions on the back of the packet has caught my attention. These crisps were ‘made in a factory that also handles: Wheat, Gluten, Soya, Celery, Mustard.’

... presumably in order of how prevalent those allergies are (I can’t think what other order that could be)... which means that there are some people out there who can’t eat trace amounts of celery, or mustard. I can’t work out which of those things I’d rather be allergic to.

It also seems that all the other ingredients have been given capital letters too, for some reason, including Sugar, Malt Vinegar Seasoning, and oddly, Potato Flakes.

Why not just potatoes, sorry, Potatoes? Why take up valuable ink and space by describing them as ‘Potato Flakes’? Hmm.

By the way, I reckon you could fit half a million Skittles into an average garden shed. I know, but I couldn’t sleep and it was roasting. I have no idea how you’d get them out again.

There’s also a troubling amount of salt and sugar in these things, despite them being ‘50% less fat’ and ‘the perfect snack between meals’. I don’t think I can imagine an inter-prendial snack that reaches the dizzy heights of perfection, but I’d wager that if I could, it probably wouldn’t be these razor-sharp, salt-soaked, vinegar-drizzled, low fat Potato Flakes.

I should have brought a banana.

*Chips, Americans, potato chips. Let’s not get into this again.