Sensible Portions Garden Veggie Chips Sea Salt

We already tried Sensible Portions Garden Veggie Straws and liked them quite a lot. So I thought we should try the chips as well.

How small they are! And to my surprise not crinkle cut crisps (chips) at all but an extruded potato flour crispy snack. I suppose you can't very easily add beetroot or spinach colour to a potato crisp, but you can add it to the potato flour and starch paste. I guess it's a similar recipe to what they use for the straws but made into a crinkle cut chip shape.

Quite nice but not terribly exciting. That's what I said to History Graduate taste tester as we paused by the bowl of chips, and he agreed with me.

It's a shame that the beetroot, tomato, and spinach don't seem to add anything to the taste. You might expect chips with different colours to taste differently. But I don't think they do. And I think the flavour should be Lightly Salted rather than Sea Salt. Oh wait, the packet says these chips are delicately seasoned.

The combination of garden grown potatoes, ripe vegetables and 30% less fat then the leading potato chip provides a better-for-you snack says the packet. And These airy, light and crunchy chips allow for 38 chips per serving! 

No GMO, 0g trans fat, no artificial colours, flavourings or preservatives, 0g cholesterol, vegan, certified kosher and you can recycle the bag!

Not half bad for a healthier style of crispy snack but I do wish the different colours had a different taste. A missed opportunity I think.

Sensible Portions Garden Veggie Straws Sea Salt

This packet of Garden Veggie Straws caught my eye as I was walking to work this morning. It was in the window of the interesting kosher deli run by the Indian family which I had never been in. So in I went and bought them.

Because if you were an internationally renowned crisp writer how could you resist this packet? And I couldn't either.

These crispy crunchy snacks are made with potato flour, potato starch and corn starch. The colours come from spinach and beetroot powder which makes them look good (although sadly less exciting than on the packet - this photograph shows more colour than you really get) but doesn't seem to affect the taste much. There is some tomato paste involved too, but again I'm not sure you can taste it because they all seem to taste the same.

However, these crispy stix (I feel sure that must be the technical term) have a lovely light salty taste and a pleasant crunch.  Despite our disappointment over the colours and the lack of veggie tastes, we liked these a lot. The Dutch taste tester said she would buy them again, and even the extremely dubious tester said they were "inoffensive" which is something of an accolade.

We thought these would work really well at a party.

This 28g packet claims to contain 30% less fat than the leading potato chips. There are no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives, no transfats, no GMOs and no cholesterol. Certified kosher and suitable for vegans. So not very much to complain about.

And Sensible Portions reckon this packet is a sensible portion. So you can Snack Smart. Resist Less. And Snack More, Guilt Less. If you need to contact the Sensible Portion consumer department for any reason, their address is 4600 Sleepytime Drive in Boulder, Colorado. What a great name for a road.

Sensible Portions brand is owned by the Hain Celestial Group which has a portfolio of amazingly healthy sounding food and personal care companies. Which all sounds very fine. But this crisp bag is all on the skew. Which bothers me more than I like.