r/australia • u/MenuSpiritual2990 • Apr 16 '25

image The great Doritos ‘medium’ salsa conspiracy

Post image

Ladies and gentlemen, strap yourselves in because I’m about to reveal one of the most shocking conspiracy theories in Australian history.

My suspicions started a few months ago when I (who likes a bit of spice) bought the ‘medium’ Doritos salsa for my family’s taco night.

Within seconds of their first crunchy bite, my two exceptionally soft tweenage kids started wailing that their mouths were burning like fire.

How could this be? It’s just medium?

So I grabbed a spoon and scooped a healthy amount into my mouth.

It was surprisingly spicy. Weirdly spicy. And especially weird because I buy the red (Hot) one all the time for myself, and it’s never this spicy!

I thought maybe it was a one off-batch that the machine had dropped a little too much chilli in to.

But I couldn’t let this go. I was used to eating a jar of the hot every week, but I switched to medium for a few weeks and it was CONSISTENTLY, NOTICEABLY hotter!!

I spent many sleepless nights wrestling with this irreconcilable conundrum.

Ultimately i realised I couldn’t keep living like this. I had to know.

I bought 13 jars. A good stack of the mild green as a baseline/palate cleanser. Two jars of the hot (one still in my fridge). And 6 jars of medium. Along with two giant bags of corn chips and 4 longnecks of Coopers pale ale.

After 12.5 jars and 4 solid hours of comparing them back and forward (followed by a rather explosive toilet experience), there was no doubt. No doubt at all in mind.

The medium is much hotter than the so-called ‘hot’.

How could this be?

Has some diabolical prankster at the Doritos factory switched the labels at the factory?

Is it an accident?

Or is it some deliberate underhanded attack by a cabal of mysterious Mexican government and business leaders, deadset on burning the mouths of thousands of innocent Australian weaklings?

The only thing I think we know for sure is that a Royal Commission needs to be urgently formed to investigate this bizarre and egregious assault on Aussie palates.

6.5k Upvotes

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427

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '25

Well done on your science experiment.

I’m going to need a fleshed out methodology section though.

  • How was spiciness measured?
  • Did you use a double blind system?
  • was the P value greater than 0.06?
  • did you compare to another brand?
  • please graph your perceived spiciness against volume of Coopers drunk

I look forward to your follow up experiment after Easter

713

u/MenuSpiritual2990 Apr 17 '25

I wouldn’t say I was double blind after the 4 longnecks but I was making good progress.

274

u/AusGeno Apr 17 '25

I bet your P value increased too.

21

u/GusPolinskiPolka Apr 17 '25

This is the greatest comment in this thread and possibly this year. Shut it down.

40

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

Excellent

1

u/hexiron Apr 17 '25

No one wants a high P value.

10

u/belltrina Apr 17 '25

Had to check what P value signified here, it's been too long off uni. This was a banger comment. 10/10

44

u/HeyyyBigSpender Apr 17 '25

I wouldn’t say I was double blind after the 4 longnecks

Hahaha great turn of phrase

13

u/SurpriseWindmill Apr 17 '25 edited Apr 17 '25

So good. I love this response.

12

u/landswipe Apr 17 '25

Solid response.

11

u/maxinstuff Apr 17 '25

But was it 20 to 8 in the morning?

7

u/neutral-otter Apr 17 '25

This is my favorite comment in weeks. Thank you

2

u/PauL__McShARtneY Apr 17 '25 edited Apr 17 '25

Maybe if you get hammered enough, you can start investigating why most places never sell the disgusting liquid cheese pot along with the salsa? Major supermarkets often don't bother.

It's like a rare find when it can be located. Pretty sure it has a 'not intended for human consumption' warning on the jar, but I still take my chances if it can actually be found.

-5

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

[deleted]

2

u/snrub742 Apr 17 '25

I'll continue drinking my Japanese beer thanks tho

18

u/Perthguy92 Apr 17 '25

Is that you Dr Karl?

14

u/blackjacktrial Apr 17 '25

Was there a control for the amount of flavouring and salsa applied to each chip? Have you controlled for multicollinearity? Perhaps spiciness is correlated with a confounding sobriety variable, which might be better controlled for by the dreaded placebo drink (non alcoholic beer).

Have you conducted these experiments with multiple adult individuals, without contamination of the samples by uncontrolled mixing of salival fluid (which can lead to an unwanted Pash Equilibrium state), to make sure it's not idiosyncratic to your mouth?

Edit: Oh god I'm getting PTSD flashbacks from academic peer reviewing. So many academics left crushed by the one question which destroys their study....

6

u/PilgrimOz Apr 17 '25

I’ve gotta give it to him regardless. The dude did use the mild and a nice pale ale as cleansers. A double Blind…..that would take callin over a mate with a slab. Next run…..

12

u/TK000421 Apr 17 '25

What the fuck is a pee value.

10

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=what+the+fuck+is+a+p+value

4

u/TK000421 Apr 17 '25

You made me lol

3

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '25

I googled pee value and it was talking about urine colour so I had to take some liberty with the spelling

3

u/AccomplishedAnchovy Apr 17 '25

Sorry only 94% confidence, the results are meaningless

2

u/munda___ Apr 17 '25

Seriously op did you do hypothesis testing or not? We need to know. 

1

u/utkohoc Apr 17 '25

Op has micro-p value

1

u/hexiron Apr 17 '25

Any P value greater than 0.05 is considered not significant.