Red 40 Lake.

It's been almost a month since I've been started thinking about Pringles. Obviously during this time I went ahead eating it continuously. I love it, as everyone in this planet. Yes, in this planet, in fact if you take a look at the Pringles official web site you'll read that the Pringles empire goes from Denmark to Australia through Latin America and Russia. I hope they're not gonna change the site's graphic because it impressed me so much: you see mr. mustache and behind a red globe with all the countries in which the empire is present. I mean...nothing against empires, but looked to me a little bit weird.
I recently read that in United Kingdom Pringles' producers -Prokter & Gamble- are not supposed to pay the value-added tax, just because only producers of potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato or from potato flour or from potato starch meet the definition required to be taxed. So, they don't produce that kind of stuff? No, because in a Pringle there's less than 42% of potatoes. British laws let them save millions of dollars. But that's ok, if it's under the law, but I wonder, what's inside the other 58%?
Three or four nights ago I was eating my delicious Pringles "Bacon-Ranch", amazing brown box. I noticed that to read the black sign "Artificially Flavored" on the brown back I had to look at the thing a couple of minutes, I don't want to tell you about the ingredients, impossible... but this this is not the matter, the box are different colored, what impressed me was that at the bottom the product was classified as "Potato crisps". That's not the true dear mr. Mustache, if you admit that you don't produce potato crisps to avoid to pay too much taxes in England, you're supposed to inform consumers in United States that you produce a kind of technological-chemical product, that looks like a potato crisp, but globalization goes only one way right? Against consumers.
I had a second box in my kitchen, a shiny white Pringles-Pizza box, so i took it to look for any strange chemical thing composing the 42%-potatoes-the-rest-who-cares I was eating. I noticed right away a very interesting and mysterious name: Red 40 Lake. I confess you that for the second time in less than 5 minutes mr. Mustache disappointed me.
The real, official, chemical name of this compost is Red 40 Aluminum Lake not just Red 40 Lake. They forgot a word. I admit that my chemistry consist in a couple of hours per week for a couple of years in the first part of high school, so my knowledge is ZERO, but I don't need a master degree in chemistry to understand that I don't intend to eat any aluminum, I don't like it. I mean, I like it to wrap my food, and not in my stomach, I don't want a silvered liver. Red no.40 Aluminum Lake is prepared by reacting an aluminum salt solution with alkali, it occurs as an orange red fine powder, it is odorless. I guess everyone of you reading this article right away understood what kind of powder is that, if you just look at some different specific Pringles (like the Pizza one) and you can clearly see it. There's not so much in the web about this 40 Lake, or better, there's not so much I could honestly understand, but i repeat, I don't want to eat aluminum, I don't like the idea of millions of children in the world eating it. Koreans think the same way. The "Korean Food Additive Code" site inform that over there it's forbidden the use of this shit for a list of 42 food items that represent 100% of what a "Korean" can eat: meat, seafood, pepper, fats and oil, butter, dairy products and so so so on. I couldn't find the word of any European or American authority on the matter. Bah.
I think I'm gonna quit Pringles, thank you for your time and attention.

- Nytimes.com - Pringles.com - Kfda.go.kr - Wikipedia.org -