Why Are Crisp Bags So Full of Air? The Snack-Sized Deception Explained

There’s a moment most days—somewhere between the last gulp of coffee and the grim slide toward dinner—where the craving hits. A little crunch, a savoury fix. Something nostalgic. Something reassuring. A crisp.

You reach into the cupboard, filled with the eager joy of a child at a pick ‘n’ mix counter. The packaging crackles with promise. It’s puffed up, perfectly sealed, and strangely warm despite being nowhere near a radiator. You hold it in your hand and think, “Yes. This. This will solve everything.”

And then you open it.

Pffffft.

That’s not just air escaping. That’s your expectations being deflated in real time.

The Empty Bag Illusion

Inside is not a bounty, but a betrayal. Perhaps ten crisps, thinly scattered across the bottom of a foil cavern. They lie there like survivors of an explosion, huddled for warmth, whispering among themselves about the factory floor.

The bag, meanwhile, was the size of a loaf of bread. You could use it as emergency shelter. It rustles like it’s full of life, but peering in reveals little more than a light dusting of flavouring and some existential regret.

And yes, we’ve all heard the line: “It’s not air—it’s nitrogen.” Oh good. Industrial-grade disappointment, then.

We’re told it’s for “crisp protection,” as if each bag contains hand-blown glass baubles rather than sliced root vegetables with a salt addiction. This isn’t packaging—it’s theatre. It’s drama. It’s the illusion of generosity, maintained by a puff of inert gas and some very careful branding.

Crisp Maths: A Crunchy Disgrace

Let’s talk numbers. Your average packet of crisps? Around 25 to 30 grams. If you’re lucky. That’s fewer than fifteen crisps, depending on the size, thickness, and whether they’re of the hand-cooked persuasion or the ones that look like they were stamped out of regret and cardboard.

You know the brand. It’s the one you grew up with. Big red bag. Made by a company that’s quietly cornered the market since school lunchboxes were cool. Their multipack bags—those shrivelled little foil jokes—are particularly harrowing. Open one of those and you might get three crisps and a fourth one broken into powder, like seasoning for the disappointment you’re now eating.

By volume, what you’re actually buying is about two-thirds air, one-third food, and that’s before you get into the maths of per-gram pricing, which is an exercise in pain.

The Multipack Swindle

Multipacks deserve a special place in snack purgatory.

They’re advertised as great value. Good for portion control. Ideal for packed lunches. What they actually are is a tax on hope.

You reach in, pull out a pouch no bigger than a mobile phone, and open it to find a handful of desiccated slices that taste faintly of what flavour used to be. There’s always one that’s folded over, like it’s trying to protect itself. Another is broken. The last one is there out of pity.

It’s a snack, technically. In the same way that listening to hold music is a conversation.

The Audacity of Rebranding

Of course, the crisp industry knows what it’s doing. It’s one of the only sectors that could reduce portion sizes year after year, yet keep customers coming back, smiling like fools.

Some packets now boast “new look, same great taste!”
Translation: “Smaller portion, same salt.”

Others go the health route: “Now with 50% less fat!”
Yes. Because there’s 50% less crisp.

There’s also the rise of “artisan” crisps, hand-cooked in sunflower oil, apparently blessed by monks, packaged like something you’d find in a boutique gift shop. But when you open the bag? Still air. Still despair. Just in a more rustic font.

The Denial Is Delicious

And yet—we keep buying them.

Why? Because occasionally, by some glorious factory error, you get a good bag. A bag that’s properly full. It practically bulges. You open it and feel joy. Real joy. The crisps are thick, curled, perfectly golden, and dusted with seasoning like they actually meant it this time.

You eat that bag and wonder if maybe things aren’t so bad. If perhaps life is still worth living. And that’s the hook. That’s how they get you. Every packet might be the good one.

It usually isn’t.

A Quiet Crisp Crisis

Look, I understand supply chains. I understand inflation, crop failures, and the fact that 2020 took a baseball bat to normality and we’re all still trying to recover. But what I don’t understand—what I refuse to accept—is why no one has thought to make the bags match the contents.

Smaller bags. Honest bags. A packet that says, “Here’s your 14 crisps. Nothing more, nothing less. Enjoy them. But don’t expect a miracle.” That, I could respect.

Instead, we have this glossy, puffed-up performance. Snack as illusion. Packaging as artifice.

And deep down, I think we all know the truth. There is one manufacturer (again, nameless, but let’s just say they rhyme with “stalkers”) who leads this crispy con. The rest just followed suit. Because we, the snack-hungry masses, allowed it.

We saw the shrinking bags, the vanishing portions, the empty multipacks—and we did nothing. Worse: we bought more.

Crunch, Gasp, Repeat…

In a world where we’re overwhelmed by subscription models, digital surveillance, and customer service chatbots that never escalate you to an actual human being, we at least deserve our crisps to be what they claim to be.

Not air. Not performance. Just crisps. In a bag. That contains crisps. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, yes.

So we’ll keep reaching for the packet. Keep pretending not to notice the weightlessness. Keep telling ourselves this one will be full. We’ll rip it open, listen to the hiss of nitrogen, and peer inside like archaeologists hoping for treasure.

And maybe—if we’re lucky—there’ll be a fourth crisp this time.