Appearing on the Table Manners podcast, the professor explained the science behind the ultra-processed crisp that is so easy to overeat
10:46, 26 Feb 2026Updated 12:31, 26 Feb 2026
Professor Hannah Fry spoke out about an ultra-processed popular snack and why people eat too many of them(Image: BBC)
A scientist from the BBC has issued a stark warning about Pringles and the reason why people consume so many of them. Appearing on the Table Manners podcast, Professor Hannah Fry shed light on why the beloved crisp has been deliberately engineered to prevent people from feeling satiated.
The popular salty snack has previously been labelled one of the ‘worst’ ultra-processed foods available. Prof Fry told hosts Jessie and Lennie Ware: ‘You will never get full on them’.
Prof Fry, who holds the position of Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, told the podcast: “Let me tell you this one thing about Pringles, okay? Our bodies are so perfectly tuned to what we’re eating through literally millions of years of evolution, right? When you’re craving something, if you’re like, ‘Oh, I really fancy some chocolate today,’ it’s probably like some tiny little molecule in the chocolate that your body knows that it needs, right? You’re incredibly good at knowing.
“And the thing about the way that we eat is that once it gets to a certain point in our intestinal system, it releases a hormone that tells us that we’re full. And if you eat whole foods from scratch, you will know when you’re full.
“The thing about Pringles is that they are so processed, they’re basically pre-digested. They’re like macerated in a… in a lab and then reconstructed. So once you pop, you can’t stop, quite literally. So what happens is when you eat them, they literally dissolve before they reach the part in your body where your body sends out hormones saying, ‘Thank you very much, I’m full. ‘ You will never get full on them.
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“And like the thing is, is that there’s very clever people, very clever scientists over many, many years who’ve like, had people coming in and testing their products. And the thing that they care most about when you like, go in for a taste test is not like, ‘What’s more delicious? Which did you enjoy more?’ It’s literally, ‘How much did you eat?’ ” It’s kind of like hacking our bodies against us, optimizing for volume.”
Renowned food scientist Tim Spector has previously admitted to having a fondness for Pringles. He confessed: “I could taste the chemicals on them, but at the same time there was something that made me addicted to eating them.”
Having since kicked the habit, he elaborated: “It’s the food industry that’s pushed us into this snack culture.”
He further noted that numerous ultra-processed snack foods are “hyper-palatable,” rendering them particularly easy to consume in excess. The combination of fat, sugar and salt, paired with a texture that practically melts on the tongue, can make these snacks incredibly difficult to resist — not to mention their heavily processed composition, which poses potential risks to your wellbeing.
Spector notes that this rapidly dissolving texture causes snacks such as Pringles or Cheetos to enter the bloodstream far more swiftly, bypassing the body’s natural mechanisms that trigger feelings of fullness.
The BBC Good Food website listed Pringles amongst the most harmful ultraprocessed foods available. It stated: “Reformulated potato snacks, such as Pringles, are made from dehydrated processed potato, refined vegetable oils, rice and wheat flour, emulsifiers, salt and colouring. Depending on their flavour, they may also include monosodium glutamate, hydrolysed protein powders and glucose syrup.
“During manufacture the ‘dough’ is rolled, pressed and cut into stackable shapes; these are then fried in hot oil and coated with flavourings. The high temperature potentially generates a substance called acrylamide, exposure to which may be carcinogenic, although the findings from human studies is inconsistent.”
To listen to the full podcast click here.
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