Upmarket snacks making a packet

The cost of the humble crisp is spiralling, with consumers being charged up to 4p a bite.

Food experts say soaring "crisp inflation" is being led by growing demand for ever more glamorous - and expensive - varieties and flavours.

However, as the cost of a packet has risen, the number of crisps it contains has fallen dramatically - often giving the impression that it is filled with more air than fried potato.

Every major crisp maker - as well as most coffee chains - now has its own premium-quality potato crisps. They range in price from the 1p-a-crisp Walkers " Sensations" range to Kettle Chips, the best-selling premium brand, with a 2.5p price tag a crisp.

But the new aristocrats of the crisp world are the fried vegetables that are elbowing the traditional potato version to one side in the most up-market delis.

The dearest snack in Britain - identified by an Evening

Standard survey - was a packet of Tyrrells parsnip crisps. The packet cost £1.25 and was found to contain only 30 crisps, pricing each individual crisp at just over 4p.

The second most expensive packet was Pret a

Manger ' s beetroot, parsnip and sweet potato offering just 17 crisps, the lowest of any 50-gram portion. At 60p a pack, the crisps worked out at 3.5p each. So-called premium crisps are a relative newcomer to the British snack scene - but have become staple nibbles in recent years.

The market was effectively created by the Phileas Fogg range in the Eighties, followed by the arrival of US company Kettle Chips in the early Nineties. Big bags can now cost up to to £2, a far cry from the 4p price tag of a packet of Golden Wonder in 1975.

Bob Foot of Snackma - the trade body for Britain's £2.2-billion-a-year snack, crisp and nut industry - said: "The premium packs tend to be batch-fried, so you do not get the same economies of scale as in a continuous operation. The raw materials also command a higher price, and the packaging is more elaborate."

Tyrrells crisps are made at a farm in Herefordshire. A spokeswoman for the company said parsnips were more expensive to use, as they "have to be treated with more care than potatoes". But she added Tyrells crisps were bigger and thicker than mass-market brands.