Chip Review: Santitas

This is a popular chip in my diet, mainly due to its prudent pricing (usually $1.99) & its far-reaching availability. As far as brands of Tortilla Chips carried by corner stores & bad supermarkets go, it is not too salty (like Tostitos), or expensive. A simple, thin, yellow or white chip, they are rarely all broken by the time you reach the bottom. I assume their integrity is wholely natural.

It had always been one of the lesser ambitions of Pierre, to sport a flowing beard, which he deemed the most noble corporal badge of the man, not to speak of the illustrious author.

-Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities, Book 17

As frequent readers of my 'blog will surely know, I eat the tortilla chip plain, straight up, no salsa. I have nothing against dips, especially not ones made with chickpeas, but I find they slow down one’s chip-per-minute average. Last night, I put back a bag of Santitas while drinking a twelve-pack of Saranac’s Adirondack Lager & learning to play Dance Dance Revolution Extreme with ex-Miss February, Melinda Windsor. (She consistently scored higher than me, although I had a bit of an edge on the more "hip-hopping" songs.)

There is great truth in Alphonse Karr’s remark that modern men are ugly because they do not wear their beards.

-George Augustus Henry Sala

The ingredients in Santitas are refreshingly simple: Corn, oil, & salt. Compare that to something like Doritos - which, by the way, two varieties - the “Extreme Zesty Sour Cream & Cheddar” & the “Salsa Verde” - are not vegetarian. However, Jane Goodall, in her great new book Harvest for Hope, warns those conscious of boycotting genetically modified foods to avoid anything not labeled ‘organic’ which contains corn, soy, canola, or cotton. More than 75% of each of those crops in America has been messed with, a “self-perpetuating pollution” (says Prince Charles) with known & unknown consequences to the health of the Earth & the human body. There are many delicious organic tortilla chips on the market, Garden of Eatin’ heading the pack, but they generally run at about twice the price.

When they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed:

& the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown, & then return.

-II Samuel 10:5

The marketing of Santitas is seemingly straight-forward: low-brow & Mexican. “Auténtico estilo Mexicano” encircles a buxomly Mexican babe holding a basket of corn. However, of course, this is an American product produced by Frito Lay out of Plano, Texas. Why is everything is this country either all-American but made in Sri Lanka or an imitation import? There is also a subtle innuendo with the aforementioned buxomly Mexican babe - her elbow is conspicuously over the huge “T-I-T” in Santitas. Do corn chips have a largely male market? Do men tend to prefer salty snacks over sweet?

Lord, I could not endure a husband with[out] a beard on his face!

-Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, II.i

There is nothing to be gained by a well-shaven face, save a short-lived political career & a wife with a chest like a cricket bat.

-Charles A. Beard