It’s easy to finish half a bag of chips, or more, while being spread out on a couch, watching TV, the remote near and handy. So robotic can such chip consumption be that it’s easy, too, not to glance at the chip parade traveling resolutely from bag to mouth.  But glance we must, for had it not been for the work of a research team, those healthy potato chips for most of us today would be out of reach and pricey, crunched into a crisp footnote in potato history.

The research team, which rescued the potato chip industry from major losses, is the “Zebra Chip Research Team.” It has just won the Integrated Pest Management Team Award...