The reason why there's always a ton of air in chip packets is actually ridiculous

Thanks to Vaughan Smith's legendary Fact of The Day segment, another one of life's greatest mysteries have been solved. 

In today's FOD, Vaughan revealed why you open a packet of potato chips to find that the bags actually half air.

Why would anyone want to do that to someone? It's really destroyed our trust of potato chips, and we're just not sure how that trust can be regained. 

One of the reasons behind the high air to chip ratio is because psychologically it makes it taste better. 

Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology, conducted an experiment, which found that having a noisy packet and a very crunchy chip actually makes your treat taste better. 

The professor conducted an experiment in which participants ate chips while wearing headphones.

They said the chips tasted more "stale and spongy" when they couldn't hear the crunch.

Professor Spence's theory is that manufacturers use this knowledge to their advantage to make packets as well as the crisps themselves as noisy as possible to make them taste better.

Professor Spence explained: "The sound of the food matters. The sound of the packaging matters and atmospheric sounds matter."

The second reason behind the excess air is much more valid. 

That excess air is actually called 'slack fill', which is needed for when packs are crammed into tight spaces and put on delivery trucks so that there's an air cushion stopping the chippies from being crushed. 

Also, it's not actually just oxygen that comes out of the packets once they're opened. Turns out that they're filled with nitrogen, because oxygen makes the potato chips go soggy.

So there you go, the potato chips companies aren't being cruel, they're just trying to provide you with crisp, unbroken chips.