I had the Tangy Tomato Ranch flavored set. You would think this might mean they were "vegetable chips" with tomato being one of the key vegetables. Really, though, they are considering potato a vegetable. Heck, we could then call ALL potato chips "vegetable chips". Not only that, but the primary ingredient is rice flour. So these vegetable chips are primarily rice :) Next comes potato flakes, coin oil, modified corn starch, whole oat flour, pumpkin, tomato paste. Wait! We hit a non-potato vegetable!! Hurrah! Even if it is paste. After that comes ... sugar!! So that is about it for "substantial ingredients".
For nutrition, you get 130 calories for every 1oz serving (12 chips). That gives you 5g of fat - of which 1g is saturated, 2.5g is polyunsaturated and 1.5g is monounsaturated. There is 210mg of sodium. I found these QUITE salty and drank a ton of liquids while testing them out. You get 2g of protein.
For carbs it is 19g total, minus 2g of fiber for a net of 17g of carbs. That's more than a gram PER CHIP. When I scanned other regular potato chips on the shelves it is pretty much exactly the same as other normal potato chip offerings.
The only real benefit you get here is some slight nutrition advantage. You get 20% of your daily vitamin A, and 10% of your vitamin C. So on one hand it is a snack that gets you some nutrition - but many snacks get you far more nutrition than this, without the salt and carbs and calories.
How does it taste? I liked the tomato flavor, and they were crisp enough, but they were VERY fragile. I tend to eat chips with a dip and they would snap pretty much immediately when I put them into the dip. It actually got frustrating after only a short while. So you'd pretty much have to eat these on their own.
I do agree that sometimes you want chips for whatever reason - to make nachos with cheese, to have with dip or hummis, or whatever. Certainly, eating these rather than straight potato chips is a step in the right direction. However, there are "real" vegetable chips that are NOT primarily potato, which I find to be far better. I would go with one of those if you can.
As a final note, this is made by Frito-Lay, apparently they spun off this line to be their healthy food line. They are baked, have no trans fat and no preservatives. So I do think it's a step in the right direction for them.
NOTE: I just want to say again how ANNOYING they are that they keep breaking off when you try to eat dip with them :) It's like every time you use them you lose most of the chip ...
Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books
