New Food Review

The first time my mother tried a Combo she smiled and said, "Excellent, fresh out of the testube!" Make sense?

Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles

by Jesse Adelman

When I bite down on a thin piece of metal—a paper clip, pen nib, knife blade, or tinfoil scrap—it feels like tiny magnetic ants are burrowing into my jaw through my gums. The sensation is uncomfortable but also appealing and compulsive, like picking scabs, or biting my cuticles, which I like to keep red and angry.

Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles fulfilled my needs in this area while also being extremely salty and, OK, delicious. The actual fat reduction (36 percent, to 7 grams of fat for 16 crisps) is negligible given the wild difference in consistency between these and original Pringles, whose dried-potato-flake composition enables one to experience the pleasure of chewing while meeting little actual resistance—like the elliptical machines at the gym, but for your face. When you bite a Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringle, it will shatter into tiny rigid fragments, all of which must be chewed themselves, ad infinitum. Each brittle trace of Pringle will feel like a tiny magnet ant burrowing into your jaw through your gums.

The new Pringles slogan is "Pleasure. Every Single Pringle." This is true and more. I poured the crumbs of my Reduced Fat Sour Cream and Onion Pringles onto their shallow lid and sucked them down after I ate a Cinnamon Raisin South Beach Diet Bar with a beer. I eat lunch at home.