Are vegetable chips really healthier than regular ones?
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: Vegetable chips, a good alternative to a regular chip?
A handful of parsnip, a few bites of beet, and some tasty slices of carrot, that sounds like a healthy snack. Vegetable chips are wafer-thin slices of these vegetables, fried and in a bag. Is that a healthy alternative to regular chips?
Regular chips are made from potatoes, fried and with a bit of salt. Nothing complicated, and so addictively tasty. And unfortunately, a hefty bowl of calories per serving: the Nutrition Center estimates 216 kcal for a bowl of 40 grams. What you book off when you crunch through that whole bag, we dare not calculate. Can it be different?
Netflix and chips
Maybe vegetable chips are a good alternative. Eating tasty beets while watching Netflix, nibbling on parsnip in the car, or a bowl of carrot chips at the drinks. Good idea? It contains fewer calories than regular chips, according to the Nutrition Center, but you can't really call it dieting: the difference for a bowl is... 1 kcal. One.
Almost a kilo of chips
You also shouldn't do it for the vitamins. An expert calculated that to consume enough vitamin C, you need to eat 800 grams of vegetable chips. Not feasible. Also, you shouldn't start for the fibers, and the vegetable chips that a tasting panel tested for the newspaper were all quite salty. And the price: almost twice as expensive as regular chips, and the bags are even smaller. AD Bananas? Wrong!.
Thinking you're being healthy by snacking on a bowl of banana chips, you're completely off. 210 kcal for 40 grams, which is about two handfuls. The alternative lentil chips from EkoPlaza are not a bad option: 160 kcal. And the so-called light oven-baked chips? 176 kcal for a serving, but we all know that bag can also be emptied in one sitting.
Tasting panel.
Still craving vegetable chips? Those from Hema and Kettle came out best in the tasting panel test. 'Crispy, nicely light-baked, and they taste fresh,' was the verdict on the Kettle chips. Are you going for regular chips?
The editorial team of FavorFlav tasted those a few months ago, with Lidl as the favorite private label chip. Make the most of it. Vegetable chips in a colorful bowl, A handful of parsnip, a few bites of beet, and some tasty slices of carrot, that sounds like a healthy snack. Vegetable chips are wafer-thin slices of these vegetables, fried and in a bag.
