A WISEcode label story

Is this a potato chip?

Look closer… science has a different name for it.

75

crisps in this can

750

calories · five servings

Each serving contains about 15 crisps.
150 calories/serving.

750 calories if you gobble up the whole can.

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What it is

It’s not a potato chip

A potato chip is a slice of a potato.

This is a dough. Dried potato, refined starches and oils, pressed into a saddle and fried. The label knows the difference. Legally it can’t be called a chip, so it isn’t. It says crisps.

Dehydrated potato flakes in a glass dish — Dried flakes

A pale dough sheet with oval cutouts — A dough, cut to ovals

A dough oval draped over a saddle-curved form — Pressed to a saddle

A finished golden saddle-shaped crisp — Fried crisp

Test it Yourself

Dunk them in water!
Real potato chip versus Pringles crisp

A potato chip stays whole in a glass of water while a crisp dissolves into cloudy paste

Same glass, same water, both at once. The potato chip just floats there, doing nothing.

The crisp gives up. It slumps, clouds the water and dissolves, because its starch is already broken down. Closer to pre-digested than to anything your body has to work at.

Spot the tell

Which ingredient can you find in your kitchen?

Dried potatoes
Vegetable oil
Maltodextrin
Cornstarch
Rice flour
Mono- & diglycerides
Degerminated corn flour
Salt
Wheat starch

Most of this you could buy yourself. Dried potato, oils, refined flours and starches, all on the grocery shelf.

Two of them you couldn’t. Maltodextrin and mono- & diglycerides never show up in a kitchen, and that’s the tell.

WISEcode UPF Score

How processed is it?

The old way lumps almost every packaged food into one bin and calls it ultra-processed. WISEcode UPF scores provide more transparency and nuance than that.

WISEcode weighs every processed ingredient and any added sugar, then grades each food across five levels.

Minimal whole foods, a simple ingredient or two

Light a handful of ingredients, maybe a little sugar

Moderate this can: ~10 ingredients, a couple of additives

Ultra artificial colours, flavours, preservatives

Super-ultra built on industrial additives

The verdict

Moderately Processed

Tally the recipe the WISEcode way: a few refined starches and oils, an emulsifier, no added sugar, nothing on the ingredients-of-concern list. It adds up to a Moderately Processed score, but at a UPF score of 10, it is almost ultra-processed.

✓Zero sugar. None present, none added, so it carries no sugar penalty at all.

✓No ingredient of concern. No banned dyes, nitrites or other red-flag additives, so it would even qualify for WISEcode’s Non-UPF verification.

!Still a snack: the can is ~5 servings, about 750 calories and ~37% of a day’s sodium if it empties.

The score reads how a food is made, not how it tastes or how healthy it is on its own. One moderate can isn’t a verdict, but now you can see exactly what it is.

The receipt

It’s all on the label

Nutrition Facts

About 5 servings per container

Serving size(1 oz/28g) (About 15 Crisps)

Amount per serving

Calories150

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 9g12%

Saturated Fat 2.5g13%

Trans Fat 0g

Cholesterol 0mg0%

Sodium 150mg7%

Total Carbohydrate 16g6%

Dietary Fiber <1g3%

Total Sugars 0g

Includes 0g Added Sugars0%

Protein 1g

Vitamin D 0mcg0%

Calcium 0mg0%

Iron 0.1mg0%

Potassium 110mg2%

* The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

The panel never tells you how processed it is.
WISEcode can help bring transparency to your food.