Analysis Of A Bag Of Potato Chips

As of September 2016, over 260 million Americans have consumed at least 1 bag of potato chips. This means that at least 24375 tons of chips have been eaten in the past year. However, that calculation would only be true if each bag contained at minimum its labeled amount. When opening a bag of chips, it is easy to assume that the labeled amount is false due to the amount of empty space inside. Thus, the goal of this paper is to explore this idea and document the experimentation that follows in order to find out whether or not a bag of snack food contains its labeled amount.
To begin with, the air inside packaged snack bags is important for preserving the product. The air inside the bag acts as a cushion, so that the product inside is not …show more content…
After a digital scale and empty containers were acquired and labeled, the samples were gathered. In order to collect a large random sample size, there were several steps taken. The first, was that there were two different stores that the chips were bought from. The stores were Walmart and Target, both part of the top eleven retail stores in the U.S. This was done to create an opportunity for the bags of chips to be from different batches. If they came from the same batch, then it would not show that there is a persistent problem with the packaging process. This premise was the same base for spreading the collection over a time period of five weeks. Each week, one of each of the four varieties of chips were bought on Wednesday. All to present more chances for the samples to be from different …show more content…
Overall, the difference in the labeled weight and the recorded weight was not significant. Instead, the largest difference, which was Cheetos Puffs at 1.7g, is only slightly heavier than half of a new U.S. penny, which is 1.25g. For this reason and the data in the tables, it is safe to conclude that a bag of chips does not contain its labeled amount, yet there is not a significant difference to assume a quality