last updated January 25, 2026Comments? Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net
Episode #1035: Auto Parts
First Broadcast: 10/20/25
Repeated: 1/26/26
This week, we're preoccupied with a statistic that first caught our eye via Fortune, in a headline that read thusly:
Lay's drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn't know their chips were made out of potatoes
After recovering from the initial shock at the thought of nearly half the people out there not knowing that potato chips contain POTATOES, despite "potato" being in the name--indeed, the FIRST WORD in the name--we, of course, wanted to know more about how Lay's arrived at this number. Fortune's article mentioned that this result came from "a 2021 survey", but contained no link to said survey, nor any other information about it. A press release from Pepsico (the corporate parent of Lay's) contained the assertion, "42% of people who enjoy Lay's don't realize they're made with real, farm-grown potatoes," which seems to be a narrower part of population than the "42% of consumers" from the Fortune piece. This raises more questions about just who was surveyed to get this number, but again there were no links, or any other information about this survey, to be found in the release. A Wall Street Journal article about the 42% number quotes "chief executive of PepsiCo's U.S. food business" Rachel Ferdinando as saying "That really was the wake-up call," but, again, doesn't provide any other links to the survey where this number came from. The Today show was apparently the only media outlet that took a greater interest in finding out more about the source of this result, but even they weren't able to uncover the secret of its origins:
Wait ... what?
Lay's doesn't reveal in the release how many people were surveyed or what exactly they were asked. It also begs the question: What do those folks think Lay's chips are made of?
There is a lot of online chatter on this specific detail of the announcement, particularly on Reddit.
"there's literally a potato on the package," one Reddit user noted.
"I really want to know the details of this study, because there's a lot of stupid people but I frankly don't believe that that many people don't know potato chips are made out of potatoes," another user wrote.
"The official announcement doesn't even cite a study," added one more.
Lay's did not immediately respond to TODAY.com's request for comment on the survey.
So, we're still left with a lot of obvious questions, such as: Who gave this survey? Where was it given? Was this online or in person? Who took this survey? What questions were asked? Was it multiple choice or open-ended? What did these people think potato chips were made of? Did they perhaps think that potato chips were all like Pringles "crisps", which are made from a combination of potatoes, corn flour, cornstarch, and rice flour, among other ingredients? I'm sure there are even more follow-ups that we could ask, but those are the basics, and we're no closer to answering them now than we were when we first started looking into this, so we're at a dead end. Do you know anything more about this? Were you part of this survey? Do you have access to any part of it, or have any information about its methodology? Tell us! Enquiring minds want to know!
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last updated January 25, 2026
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Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net