America's #1 Snack Food Under Assault By The Food Police

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Public health attorneys in California have potato chip makers in their sights for not listing a cancer-causing chemical present in many brands.That chemical is acrylamide. It is an industrial chemical used in plastics, pesticides and sewage treatment that also can occur when starchy foods, such as chips, are processed at high temperatures. The World Health Organization has said acrylamide may be responsible for up to one-third of all cancers caused by diet, as demonstrated by laboratory animal studies. Acrylamide is already on California's list of chemicals known to cause cancer, but some chipmakers haven't listed it on their product packaging as required by Proposition 65 statute.The attorneys have filed Proposition 65 notices with the manufacturers of Lays, Pringles, Kettle Chips and Cape Cod chips. Research has shown those brands have unsafe levels of acrylamide in some of their chip varieties. The study looked at one ounce servings, which ranged from 11 to 20 chips depending on the brand, and determined the acrylamide content was substantially more than the 0.2 micrograms per day amount which prompts the Proposition 65 warning. The brands tested and cited for high levels of acrylamide are: Lays Baked!, Lays Stax BBQ, Lays KC Masterpiece. Lays Natural Country Barbecue, Lays Light KC Barbecue Masterpiece, Pringles Snack Stacks (Pizzalicious Flavor), Pringles Sweet Mesquite BBQ, Kettle Chips Lightly Salted, Kettle Chips Honey Dijon, Cape Cod Robust Russet and Cape Cod Classic Chips.Processed food manufacturers have reportedly asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for a exemption to Proposition 65 labeling for foods with carcinogens caused by heat processing. The governor's office is expected to announce its decision by August.

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I don't know how it is in your little niche on our planet, but around the greater-Hanover, PA metro area (LOL) them are fightin' words! Hanover, PA is home to Utz Potato Chip Company, as East Coast icon in a nation of snack food junkies! Actually, Adams, York, and Lancaster Counties might possibly be considered "the cradle of the chip industry". Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, beats a brown paper bag full of still-hot potato chips from any of the vendors selling them at local farm markets. I have very fond memories of my Grandma Rosensteel, and her cousin (an Utz), making homemade kettle chips on their back porches when I was a kid (50 years ago) growing up in Gettysburg (not far from Hanover). I seriously doubt if Grandma used acrylamine as an ingedient when she made them.