(Roughly) Daily

The AP reports that our friends at Frito-Lay have gotten the message about consumer choice:

The next Lay’s potato chip will taste like chicken and waffles. Or cheesy garlic bread. Or Sriracha, a hot sauce often used in Thai dishes.

Lay’s is letting potato chip lovers decide which one of the three will be its newest flavor. All of them will be sold at retailers nationwide starting next week. After trying them, fans have until May to vote for their favorites. The flavor with the most votes will stay on store shelves…

Lay’s adds about one new potato chip flavor every year. Last year it launched the Lay’s Classic BLT, made to taste like the sandwich. This is the first time in Lay’s 75-year history that it has let U.S. consumers choose the company’s next flavor.

For context, readers might review the New York Times Magazine’s informative piece on “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food“– the pull quote from which (from a Harvard professor of Public Health) is “I feel so sorry for the public.”

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As we reach for the baby carrots, we might spare a thought for Neil Arnott; he died on this date in 1874.  A Scottish physician and inventor, he created the Arnott stove (with a self-regulating fire) and the Arnott ventilator.  But he is surely best remembered as the inventor of the waterbed– “Dr Arnott’s Hydrostatic Bed” (1832).

 source