Better Made Potato Chips Won't Give You Cancer

Better Made Potato Chips are made right here in Detroit. So why do all their chips and fried potato products have a California-mandated Proposition 65 warning on the back?

You’ve no doubt seen it on other products, too: “WARNING: Consuming this product can expose you to chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”

Sounds serious. But the truth is your chips are not going to kill you slowly, at least if eaten in moderation. The real problem is California exporting its terrible policy onto the rest of us.

California’s landmark Proposition 65 law allows private citizens to sue companies with 10 or more employees for failure to provide warnings about chemicals that could cause cancer or reproductive harm.

All it took was one enterprising lawyer named Raphael Metzger of the Metzger Law Group, who sued McDonald’s in 2002 on behalf of a nonprofit called the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT), which said the frying process created a chemical called acrylamide.

Acrylamide occurs naturally when you cook food and it browns from the Maillard reaction—which also creates flavor.

Metzger argued that because researchers had found acrylamide was possibly carcinogenic, fast food places must put a warning on their deep-fried potatoes. And the state’s attorney general agreed, helping Metzger win a massive settlement with McDonald’s and Burger King in 2007.

That settlement meant the King and the Golden Arches would have to tell patrons their medium fries might kill them and also pay civil penalties to CERT and legal fees to Metzger’s office.

Now here’s the catch: CERT is an extension of the Metzger law offices, sharing an address and a phone number. And a member of the shadowy nonprofit’s board had provided expert testimony in court as a way to bolster Metzger’s case against the big corporations.

It’s an example of how niche research is most often cooked by the people who have a stake in the game. It’s a good lesson to be skeptical of so-called scientists and ask for more research instead of kow-towing to the supposed experts.

The millions in civil fines that were supposed to go to CERT have reportedly vanished without a trace. There should be a larger inquisition into Metzger and CERT, but it’s not likely given Metzger was aided by former Democrat Governor Jerry Brown in his fight against the big corporations.

Metzger is not the only bad egg. Proposition 65 is practically a business model for litigious California lawyers. Using the law to sue big companies over failing to warn consumers about chemicals in order to cash in on the legal fees has been called judicial bounty hunting.

In May last year, a federal court said the state can’t enforce dietary acrylamide warnings, signaling the premise of these lawsuits was legally dubious from the very beginning. But the fast food and coffee companies have already paid the lawyer and his junk science cronies.

So while pretty much everything is known to the state of California to cause cancer or some other terrible malady, the real problem is not the very low level acrylamide in your Better Made chips.

It’s the silly warning-label law and bad actors in the Land of Fruit and Nuts.