As part of our topic Healthy Bodies, P4 have been learning about the importance of making healthy drink and food choices.
We know that some foods are needed every day, whilst others like crisps, should only be eaten occasionally.
We went to Tayto Castle in Tandragee, to find out how crisps are made and maybe understand why crisps are an occasional food.
Today, we were welcomed to Tayto Castle by our lovely guides John and Joshua.
Before we went on the factory tour, we all had to wear a mesh hat, a plastic apron and to wash and sanitise our hands. All this was to make sure that we were not bringing any germs into the factory.
John told us some history of the castle and that in 1950’ s, the castle was bought for £5000, by a man who wished to make potato snacks. He showed us an old Tayto Snack box, that had genuine original packets of the cheese crisp snacks. John asked us if we would like to try a crisp. We all said NO, because they were made in 1956. YUCK !!
Just as we were about to go on tour, we were introduced to the one and only Mr Tayto. He was visiting the factory to meet with the 2 people who work in the Top Secret Flavour Room. Mr Tayto greeted us, and we got a group photo with him. What a celebrity he is.
Today Tayto Castle has a huge factory, lots of buildings and sheds. The factory uses a lot of technology (machines, scanners, cameras) and has many people working there.
Dumper trucks are used to move the potatoes from lorries into the cold store. Here the potatoes are stored in 1 ton boxes and the cold store can hold hundreds of these boxes at a time. Fork lift drivers tip the potatoes into the hopper and the process begins.
We got to see the journey of the potato from cold store, through the hopper, washer, peelers, slicers, friers and flavouring drums. As we walked through the factory we saw the machines that are used to carry the flavoured crisps to the bagging area, how the bags are filled and sealed tight.
Workers pack the multipacks into big boxes, then, machines lift and stack these big boxes before wrapping them for storage. The machines that do this last job, used to be in the DeLorean car factory in Belfast. We heard the film Back To The Future used a DeLorean car for the time-travel.
The storage shed is the width of 1 and the length of 2 football pitches. That is a lot of space! That is a lot of crisps.
We got to taste Spirals when they came straight out of the flavour drum They were yummyyyy. We got to taste some Craft crisps that had no flavour, they were popular with the children too.
Finally, we tasted the Transformers snacks, delicious!
At the end of our trip we were given a multipack of Cheese N Onion and said a huge thankyou to Joshua and John.
We learned that Tayto crisps are shipped to 43 countries around the world. That the most popular flavour is Cheese N Onion and that over 1 million packets of crisps are made each day.
Our question: Why are crisps an occasional food?
Our answer: The skinny sliced potatoes are fried in oil to make crisps.
Too much oil is not healthy for our bodies.
So choosing crisps occasionally is a healthy choice.
