Claudia: From calorie count to portion sizes,
we wanted to find out all the differences
between Pringles in Italy and the US.
This is "Food Wars."
Here are all the exclusive flavors
that you will find in Italy that you won't get in the US.
Here are all the US Pringles
you're not going to find in Italy.
Starting from paprika.
I've got to say paprika is something that's
very popular in Spain.
Yeah, it's quite nice, actually.
For those who may not know what paprika is,
it's actually dried, crushed red pepper.
Very fruity and fresh, in a way.
I know you guys in the US have a barbecue flavor.
We actually have Texas barbecue.
I don't know, is there maybe any difference,
or maybe this is just marketing to appeal to the Italians
because when you say "Texas barbecue" it
feels cooler and we already know what it is?
I don't know. It's barbecue sauce again.
Is barbecue sauce in Texas supposed to taste different?
The US actually has dozens of regional barbecue styles,
including Texas, which has at least four.
So it depends on who you ask,
and I don't know where barbecue started.
Yeah, we also have just barbecue.
How do I describe the flavor? Tangy?
Good, though. I love barbecue.
And then on to the exclusive train, we've got ketchup.
Hm. I think it's a bit too strong.
I prefer the other ones.
The queen of them all, the pizza flavored.
As I should be, I'm a little bit worried about those
because as an Italian I'm very vocal about what pizza is.
I have pretty low expectations for these,
just because everything pizza flavor to me,
it's, like, a bit of a gimmick.
No.
They just taste like oregano.
I don't know why you guys have this idea
that Italians love oregano so much.
Like, I have so many spices and herbs in my kitchen,
and guess what's missing.
Oregano.
Weirdly, and maybe I'm going to be canceled for this,
but the ketchup ones taste more like pizza,
because they taste more like tomatoes.
Then we've got smoky bacon.
They taste more like the oil you cook the bacon in.
Not a fan.
You may also be able to find Emmental Pringles,
but we were not able to track them down.
So, Emmental is a Swiss cheese
made in the German part of Switzerland.
Oh, cheddar cheese. Let's go!
Bursting with flavor.
Get that on screen.
Good.
Ooh, I've never had this one before, hot honey.
Nope.
Ah, cheddar and sour cream. Dude, these are always good.
Mm! The chive!
Salt and vinegar.
Got ranch.
Not the best ranch-flavored chip out there, but not bad.
I think Claudia should try these.
Yo, Claudia, catch!
Gah!
Thanks, Joe.
I've actually never had ranch sauce or, like, dressing.
I can already see people sort of walking away from me
the moment I start talking to them
because of the onion.
It's very potent.
No.
I'm seeing flames on both of these. I'm seeing a grill.
So assumption is these are spicy.
Enchilada adobada.
And the las meras meras habaneras.
Not a lot of heat to them, but pretty good.
I don't know if that tastes like an enchilada, but.
Mm!
These are good. They're not like Takis,
but they're in the Taki space. They're spicy.
They have a Flamin' Hot Cheeto kind of vibe to it.
Minecraft suspicious stew.
Limited time only. Thank God.
Look, he's got a little gamer headset on there.
Shameless, Julius Pringle. Shameless, going after the kids.
I'm surprised. For something that's clearly
marketed as kids,
this does not have a very strong flavor to it.
Tastes like a weak sour cream and onion.
Philly cheesesteak.
Check out the best cheesesteak in Philadelphia
"Food Tours" episode, staring myself and Harry.
And this is that sandwich in chip form.
I can't imagine one human being wanting this.
Avoid this.
Oh, smells terrible.
There's also a French fries and ketchup
and everything bagel flavor
we were not able to get for this shoot.
Let's get scorched.
We also have a line of scorchin',
I-N-apostrophe, Pringles.
You can see the steam coming out of Julius' ears.
This one, he's crying.
He's crying on the Buffalo one.
He's not crying on the other ones. OK.
Something to look forward to.
Start down here with the barbecue.
Come on!
Get hot!
Nope, not scorchin'.
Let's try the cheddar.
I mean, they even have the temperature thing in the logo.
The thermometer going up.
Not only are they not scorchin',
but also I'm not really getting any flavor. Cheddar?
Sour cream and onion.
I mean, I love sour cream and onion chips. [coughs]
Mm.
They taste like sour cream and onion chips, but,
I mean, I'm getting a little, like, low-level spice.
This one, as you can see, Julius Pringle is crying.
Look at this. The chip, the pepper,
and the bottle of hot sauce are all on fire.
Little bit of heat. Yeah, there it is!
There it is! OK.
I guess look for the tears if you want spicy Pringles.
Chili and lime.
No.
Instead of scorchin', in Italy,
spicy Pringles are called flame,
and you can find them as a spicy BBQ flavor
and cheese and chili flavor.
I think I'll be able to have a few
without having to go and drink,
but I think it's manageable.
It's a very manageable spice.
Let's try the cheese and chili now.
This one have two chilies on them,
so they're supposed to be the mild-ish ones,
whereas these have three.
Ooh!
You're attacked by this cheese taste, cheese flavoring,
fake-cheese taste.
Not nice.
Also in the US you can get something called
the Pringles harvest blend.
Four varieties to choose from.
According to the ad copy,
"A deliciously complex tasting experience
unlike one you've ever had."
Barf!
They're potato chips.
Let's embark on this taste journey unlike any other.
Hang on.
The taste difference between these two
are hardly noticeable.
They definitely look different.
Homestyle ranch.
Also multigrain.
Amazon. This guy drop-kicked this to my front door.
This is ridiculous!
These are different than their regular ranch,
and I do like these.
Flavor's not as strong, not as insane, which I like.
Sweet potatoes, next are sweet potato,
and this is sea salt.
I like that. I like sweet potatoes,
I like maracas, so.
OK, again, the sweet potato smoky barbecue.
I've definitely experienced this before,
so I want to update that ad copy.
The last exclusives we have is the lighter side range,
where you can get the lightly salted
and the reduced-fat original.
Could not get them for the time of filming,
and honestly, I'm glad.
I'm not interested in less salt or less fat. Forget it.
So, if I were to rank them all, let's see.
OK, worst, pizza.
Didn't like the bacon.
Didn't like this one with the cheese.
Let's put the other spicy one,
just because I'm not so big on spices.
Now I'm going to put the ketchup.
I'm going to put this one here,
and probably the paprika
is the one that I will reach out for.
OK, in no particular order,
my favorites of the day were
the las meras meras habaneras.
Very good. Taking these home.
Cheddar and sour cream.
Always good.
Scorchin' series, a little disappointed
except for the Buffalo. My guy's crying on there,
so you know that they're scorching.
And I did like the harvest blend ones,
the sweet potato ones.
I sign off on them.
Here's what sucked.
Hot honey. Not hot, very little honey.
The Philly cheesesteak thing. Yeah, you can't.
And this Minecraft suspicious stew.
I don't, I'm not eating anything called "suspicious,"
that's just weird.
In Italy, our Pringles come in four sizes.
We've got a 40-gram small size.
You may also be able to find a pop-and-go 70-grams tube,
but we were not able to track it down.
And then you can also get them
in the 175-grams standard tube.
But if you get the flame spicy Pringle range,
you only get for the standard tube 160 grams,
even though the tubes look exactly the same.
Maybe it's done to protect you.
Sometimes Pringles releases a 3-foot tube,
which always breaks the internet when it actually comes out.
Sadly, it was not in stores right now,
but it looks like it's just three tubes
stacked on top of one another.
So visually, this is what you will get.
Here in the US, our Pringles come in five sizes.
Snack stack, then another little one,
the grab-and-go, the original tube,
and the party stack.
That means that the biggest American size is 10% larger
than the biggest Italian one.
We wanted to find out how many Pringles are in a tube,
but we didn't really want to count them one by one.
So we're going to weigh them and do some maths.
We should be getting 87.5 Pringles in each tube.
Well, the 0.5 is maybe some, like, crumbles.
The numbers, as we have crunched here
at the "Food Wars" math lab,
is 149 grams total.
And if one chip is 1.9 grams,
that equals
78.4 chips on average per tube.
In Italy, the original Pringles contain the following.
The original Pringles in the US contain all of this.
There aren't any major differences,
except for actually coloring
that we do add to our Pringles here in Italy.
It's annatto. It's made from plants,
and it's totally natural.
I mean, annatto is very dark.
It's a flashy orangey brown.
So it's still very far from this coloring,
but there is a difference with the US.
The longest ingredient list for Pringles
in the US are these,
the scorchin' sour cream and onion,
with 47 ingredients. Good God!
Eleven of these are main ingredients,
and 36 are subingredients.
Now, many of these are flavoring spices
and different dairy products to create the cream flavor
as well as some colorings
which you may not have heard of before.
Red 40, yellow 5, and yellow 6.
There's new evidence that red 40
is triggering inflammatory bowel disease
because it is disrupting the way the gut barrier works,
which is harmful and encourages inflammation.
First it scorches your tongue,
and then it scorches your bowels.
UK manufacturers
were made to remove this from their products.
However, it can be legally sold by EU imports
providing it is properly labeled,
"May have an adverse effect on activity
and attention in children."
Yellow No. 5, also called tartrazine,
is a type of sodium salt
that, when eaten, it becomes "sulfanic" acid?
It is this acid that can cause allergic reactions,
especially in asthmatic people, and can produce eczema,
hives, and also hyperactivity in children.
Many Nordic countries have banned its use,
but it is approved in the US and UK.
Heads up, Harry.
Yellow No. 6, also called sunset yellow or E110,
is similar to tartrazine.
And these colors have appeared in a bunch of flavors,
these specifically.
Obviously Pringles is a very well-known brand in Italy,
but I think the idea of chips as a thing,
for us, chips are not really a thing of their own.
They're, like, part of a family of snacks.
In Italy, we tend to have chips
on a snack board with other things,
other items like olives
or tiny pieces of focaccia.
Pringles is not the first brand that I would reach out to.
It's funny because to me all these seem quite a big number.
Having to decide between, like,
three, four, five, six, seven,
seven flavors,
and then you got the original, it's a lot.
We just saw the 500 different flavors they have.
Pringles, they're doing every flavor. Good for them.
But as far as the classics,
the salt and vinegar, the barbecue, the cheddar,
sour cream and onion,
I feel like Pringles is pretty good at
doing most flavors.
But they also had that stupid Minecraft flavor,
so I don't know.
I don't know. They are exclusive to the Italian market,
but they still do seem adapted to the Italian market,
versus created for the Italian market.
If you wanted something very Italian,
you should have put an olive oil one.
You're really missing an opportunity here.
Just put an olive-oil-flavored chip.
We've talked about this on "Food Wars" before.
In America, chips and snacks are all going after each other.
They might be owned by the same company,
and they're just, like, cross-pollinating,
but the chip aisle is just all filled with
these different iterations of the same kind of idea, so,
I see tube snacks all the time.
I've got actually here some of the most popular ones.
We've got Fonzies, which are like,
pretty much like chips.
You know, in a way, this is a very traditional Italian chip.
You also find these.
These are called crostini.
This is like dried bread, you know?
It's a bit like crumbs. As you say, like crouton.
Especially in the south of Italy where I'm from, Bari,
we make these all the time.
They're called taralli.
Shape is always the same,
but you always get them in different flavors.
Actually, my grandma makes them,
and it's, like, the best thing ever.
And they're made with flour, olive oil, and wine.
So this is the absolute OG Italian snack.
The best.
My grandma's are better, but this is good.
In the US, our original regular tube,
the 5.2-ounce, or the 149-gram,
is currently $2 at Walmart.
In Italy, our original Pringles
in the 175-grams tube
will cost you 2 euros 30.
That's about $2.47.
That means that in Italy we get a 23% price increase,
although we do get a few more grams.
We wanted to see how much
our biggest portion of Pringles will cost.
For a 48-snack-stack-cup variety pack,
it costs $29.72.
Divide that by 48, and each snack stack costs
62 cents.
Hey, Claudia, just out of curiosity,
for common Italian snack foods,
how do Pringles compare in price?
Compared to other snacks that you can get in Italy,
for example, the taralli,
they're actually quite expensive.
And you do get only 175 grams.
Things like these, they're usually sold at bakeries
for, like, 2, 3 euros per kilo.
So that's quite a lot of difference.
In the US, 100 grams of original Pringle chips
contain all this.
That's almost half of your recommended
fat intake for the day.
In Italy, a 100-gram portion of original Pringles
contains the following.
Our version actually contains more sugar than the US one,
but slightly less fat and sodium.
Across all Pringles flavors for calories,
they're all pretty much the same.
Now, some have 1 gram extra of carbs,
and the sodium is the only thing
that fluctuates between flavors.
In Italy, the flavor with the most sodium is ketchup.
A 100-gram serving contains
750 milligrams of sodium.
In the US, our saltiest flavor
is the las meras meras habaneras,
with 1,107 milligrams.
That's nearly half of your daily allowance.
Yeah. British people and their crisps, right?
Wah. Won't let me log in to AOL
to watch a TikTok on my laptop.
This poor guy's sorting them.
I bet he's having the worst day of his life.