There is a prevailing belief surrounding the popular Ghanaian street delicacy, plantain chips, suggesting that the crispy texture is achieved by frying them with polythene bags, locally referred to as “olonka rubbers.”
Plantain chips are a snack crafted from fresh, ripe, or unripe plantains, thinly sliced and deep-fried until they achieve a crispy consistency.
This long-standing myth about the use of polythene bags in the frying process continues to circulate, despite being debunked. Plantain chips are commonly sold on the streets of Accra, and interestingly, Ghanaians still relish this snack.
In an effort to dispel this misconception, the Food and Drugs Authority conducted an experiment to demonstrate that the notion of using polythene bags in the frying process is merely a myth, devoid of any practical or scientific truth.
“The myth about frying plantain chips with plastic ‘Olonka’ bags to make the chips crispy and hard seems to have resurfaced on social media.
“#FDAGhana, share with you a practical experiment conducted on this at its Centre for Laboratory Services and Research (Food Laboratory) to demonstrate how that is practically impossible.
Indeed, there is no way plastic will melt into a liquid to mix with the oil to give chips that crispy effect,” the authority said on its Twitter/X platform.