Column: Snack satisfies with a crunch

With any meal, there’s nothing like getting all that grub and a bag of chips.

I can’t think of a snack as crunchy and crumbly that comes in so many varieties, satiates a craving and manages to add an extra spark of flavor. 

Our culture satisfies that snack craving with everything from a ridged, baked, sweet-barbecue or salt-and-vinegar potato chip.

It has become a global fad to feast on chips of every kind. While I was abroad, the spectrum of flavors from spicy to sweet shocked me.

My friends and I would enter each convenience store, competing to find the most unique chip flavor.

Where did this munchie madness begin?

The Snack Food Association states that the french fry came first and the potato chip soon followed in August 1853.

In Saratoga, New York, a man complained his fried potatoes were too thick.

Out of spite, cook George Crum served the customer a batch of potatoes sliced paper thin, fried them to a crisp and with a few extra pinches of salt. 

The crispy creation was a whole new concept for a generation that had never used their hands at the dinner table. 

Just like today, once people started eating them, they couldn’t stop. The chips became a savory specialty and were first packaged, sold and shipped around the New
England area.

Potato chips stayed plain, spiced with nothing but salt until the 1950s.

It’s hard to imagine that sour cream and onion wasn’t an option until the owner of an Irish chip company decided to add more robust flavor.

The first potato chip varieties were cheese and onion or salt and vinegar.

Flavor varieties are now found around the globe.

You can get your fruit fix with kiwi and lychee-flavored chips in Tokyo or grab a bag of the teriyaki-mayonnaise flavor.

One can dine on chicken-tikka-masala-flavored chips in India, bruschetta-flavored chips in Italy and a hot-chili-squid variety in Thailand. 

Other Asian countries munch on seaweed-flavored spuds. 

I even heard that Australia has meat-pie-and-tomato-sauce chips, as well as a Vegemite variety.

If anyone wants to send me, I am willing to fly over for a taste test. I will be sure to bring back a bag.

­— espitzer@indiana.edu