Fat Free-for-all
Ruffles Light chips have "half the calories of regular potato chips." But saving 70 or 80 calories per serving isn't reason enough to buy them.
All of Frito-Lay's Lights (Ruffles, Lays, Doritos and Tostitos) are made with Olean (olestra), a fake fat that passes right through your digestive system, taking " fat-soluble vitamins" with it. (That's why Frito-Lay adds vitamins A, D, E and K to its Light chips.)
Worse, olestra-laden chips can cause severe cramps, bloating and a kind of leakage that we're not about to explain in greater detail.
Why run the risk when most chip makers now offer reduced-fat or baked chips? True, you won't save half the calories, like you do with the lights. Instead of the usual 160 calories per ounce, reduced fats and bakeds clock in at around 120 to 140. But at least you won't need to make sure you're within sprinting distance of a bathroom.
If you want baked chips, try Kettle Bakes (actual slices of potato) or Baked Lay's or Ruffles (Pringles-like "crisps" made of dried potatoes pressed into a chip shape).
Just don't assume that baked chips are the equivalent of baby carrots and cl?mentines. White potatoes aren't the healthiest vegetable, no matter how you slice them.
Spy What's New?
Soy is gaining traction in the snack aisle. And even though the evidence that soy prevents heart disease or cancer is shrinking, soy still adds protein to salty snacks, which are otherwise a nutritional wasteland.
That makes snacks like Quaker Soy Crisps worth a look. A one-ounce, 120-calorie serving (18 crisps) has?six to?seven grams of protein. But like most soy snacks, they're high in sodium (270 mg for the White Cheddar; 400 mg for the Barbeque).
Genisoy Soy Crisps are in the same ballpark, while Michael Season's Original Soy Protein Chips deliver 12 grams of protein and 220 mg of sodium.
Salt Surprises
There's no shortage of lightly salted and unsalted chips in the snack aisle. And any drop in salt is welcome, what's with our national high blood pressure epidemic.
But the not-so-dirty little secret about potato chips is that they taste saltier than they are.
If you stick with regular chips, you can get away with about 200 milligrams of sodium. Just be careful if you're a fan of flavors like Salt 'n Vinegar, Sea Salt, or Barbecue, which can hit 300-plus mg.
Of course, we're talking one ounce-just 15 regular-size chips or so. As the number of handfuls rise, so does the mercury in the blood pressure meter.
If you can't seem to stop at an ounce, there's no harm in switching to lightly salted chips, which hover around 100 mg of sodium. You probably won't taste the difference.
In contrast, most taste buds will be a bit disappointed with unsalted chips. But if you're counting every milligram of sodium, try Terra Unsalted Lemon Pepper or Michael Season's Unsalted Reduced Fat. If not, look for the lowest-sodium regular or lightly salted chips you can find and save your serious salt-cutting efforts for pretzels.
Pretzel Picks
If you're worried about sodium in salty snacks, worry about pretzels. Rold Gold Classic Style Thins, for example, have 560 milligrams of sodium per ounce (about?nine pretzels). The company's Hard Sourdoughs have 500 mg each.
What's more, while most pretzels are largely fat-free, they're nothing more than refined flour. Some brands tout their whole grains, but don't offer much. Snyder's Multigrain Pretzel Twists may have "eight or?nine whole grains per serving." But a serving is 30 grams, so whole grains make up only about 25 percent of each pretzel. The rest is white flour.
Our advice: forget multigrain. Shop around for the lowest-sodium pretzel that tastes good to you. If unsalted pretzels don't seem worth eating, try something like Snyder's Olde Tyme Pretzels, which have a low-for-pretzels 120 mg of sodium in a one-ounce serving.
Or scrape off the easy-to-get-to surface salt crystals on Newman's Own Organics delightfully crunchy five Grams of Protein Pretzels. They're mostly white flour, but contain enough yellow pea flour and gluten to give every ounce (22 pretzels)?five grams of protein (plus?four grams of fiber). Scraping could bring Paul's sodium down to Honorable Mention territory.
Unfortunately, you can't scrape off the saturated fat from the few brands that have some. An ounce of most Snyder's Pretzel Pieces or Sandwiches, for example, delivers?three to?four grams of saturated fat, thanks largely to the cheese fillings and or the palm oil in their flavor coatings.
Chip Slot
Honorable Mention chips?have sweet potato as the first ingredient. They also contain no more than?one gram of saturated fat (none have trans fat) and 150 mg of sodium in a one-ounce serving. (No white potato, tortilla or corn chips or pretzels had enough nutrients for an Honorable Mention.) Check the package's nutrition facts label to see how much is in one ounce. If it doesn't say, assume roughly 15 potato chips, 12 tortilla chips,?one large hard pretzel or 20 mini pretzels.