According to a recent edition of Women’s Health magazine, cinnamon makes everything taste better. This is a lie.

It became clear in a college course a friend teaches called “The Politics of Food.” In one class, his students were required to taste and critically evaluate junk foods. Not just any junk foods, either, but faddish new mash-ups. They included Oreo Cakesters (which replace the classic chocolate cookies with cakes), Doritos Collisions (which simply mix together two Doritos flavors like Chipotle Ranch and Zesty Taco), and the new Cinnamon SunChips.

The last, the makers of SunChips would be disheartened to hear, did not receive a favorable response. The criticism? One expected a Cinnamon SunChip to be sweet or salty, and it ended up being neither.

“Is it a chip? Is it dessert?” one student asked. “It really doesn’t know what it wants to be.” The other students agreed, a grim commentary on the Cinnamon SunChip’s prospects: When even college freshmen can call something out as having an identity crisis, it can’t be long for this world. So when did something as pure and simple as the chip go wrong?

Cinnamon SunChips are a variation on a chip line that’s been around since 1991. SunChips owe their success to the beguiling fact that they’re “multigrain” and have less fat than “regular” potato chips, and that they’re not just cheddar flavored, but harvest cheddar flavored, and that others are not just salsa flavored, but garden salsa flavored. Harvested or garden-grown, a single serving still represents about 10 percent of a normal daily fat intake. But who’s counting? They’re salty, and they’re fried, and this makes them good.

Chips themselves go back another 150 years, to 1853. The story goes that at a Saratoga Springs resort, a customer kept returning French fries to the kitchen, complaining that they were too thick. The chef — the serendipitously-named George Crum — grew so annoyed that he fried slices of potato that were too thin and crispy to be eaten with a fork. But instead of being the slight they were meant to be, the fried potatoes were a hit, and the potato chip was born (even if it was, for a while, known as the Saratoga Chip).

We like to imagine the past as a simpler time, and it must have been because, for a century, people were content with the taste of potato and salt. It wasn’t until the 1950s that an Irish chip maker introduced a cheese-and-onion variety. The rest, as a walk down any 7-11 aisle makes clear, is history. Cheese and onion begat other flavors that seem almost quaint today: sour cream and onion, barbecue, salt and vinegar. From these came new chip-like varieties (tortilla chips, corn chips, Pringles), and even more dramatic flavor variations.

Take, for example, Kettle Foods — a maker of “natural” (though like SunChips not necessarily healthy) potato chips. Kettle has just introduced an Island Jerk chip, and until recently had Royal Indian Curry and Aztec Chocolate featuring Daboba Organic Chocolate chips. Voting is currently open in the Kettle Foods “Fire and Spice” competition, in which consumers can choose their favorite among potential flavors including Wicked Hot Sauce, Mango Chili, Jalepeño Salsa Fresca, Orange Ginger Wasabi, and the foreboding Death Valley Chipotle.

Alas, dramatic flavor alone is no longer enough in the world of chips. Kettle Foods, which produces its chips using solar power in a LEED-certified plant, has teamed with the National Wildlife Federation to encourage consumers to create NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat backyards (special price: $15). The environmental plea is printed on bags of Kettle Brand Backyard Barbeque chips. Kettle Foods will make a $1 donation to NWF for every yard certified by the summer of 2008; those consumers who do will receive both a free NWF membership (normal price: $15), and a coupon for a free bag of Kettle chips.

And lest one think only a tree-hugging company like Kettle Foods would attempt to impact both the palette and the world, SunChips’ joined the game, too. Along with the Cinnamon SunChip, it’s introduced the Live Brightly Project. In a video on the SunChips Web site, a woman runs joyfully along the beach while Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” plays in the background. She tells us that, in addition to eating healthy SunChips, we can live more brightly by making time for friends, volunteering, wearing sunscreen, surprising someone by buying them a cup of coffee, or taking a scenic detour...“just because!”

Back in my friend’s class, students argued over what makes something a chip. “What’s the chipness of the Cinnamon SunChip?” one asked. “You have to be able to eat a chip with a sandwich,” another one said, before a third interrupted: “I think we’re all being really narrow-minded in our definition of a chip.”

At this point, though, the question of what makes a chip a chip is moot. Once it’s adopted the flavor of Indian cuisine, or incorporated organic chocolate, or encouraged us to lather up with SPF 15, or suggested that we listen to Sixpence None the Richer, what started back in Saratoga is pretty much a memory. Indeed, traditional potato chips look almost bizarre on store shelves today — familiar but dowdy, omnipresent but glossed over, feeling as if they were grandfathered into corporate buying plans. Who chooses what’s “regular” when there’s “extreme” and “exotic” and “wicked hot” and “cinnamon” at the ready?

“People lead pretty boring lives,” one student in that class said, and shrugged. “This is a chance for people to say, ‘I’m not just a SunChips person, I’m a Cinnamon SunChips person.’” • 2 January 2008