M&S Eat Well Thai Red Curry Air Popped Corn

This is another of the new season Eat Well range from Marks & Spencer. Eat Well seems to be a selection of deliciously healthy food. Best enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle and a balanced varied diet.

Weirdly this popcorn smells very strongly of coconut. Well, to me it does. And I say weirdly because there isn't any coconut in the list of ingredients. It's most odd how some crispy snacks smell quite different to how they taste, and this is a particularly strong example.

And the popcorn (pretty good popcorn) has a surprisingly buttery taste. With a nice gentle curry flavour on the top.

In a strange way it reminds me of the curries we used to have at school. Plain white rice was dull so we stuck in a large lump of butter before adding the curry. And somehow this is a little bit like that.

The Dutch taste tester wasn't mad keen but History Graduate quite liked this popcorn.

And the packet is the reddest red packet you could possibly imagine.

M&S Eat Well Pea Snaps Piri Piri

Once again, ever hopeful, the reluctant taste testers and I tried a Pea Snap flavour from the Marks & Spencer Eat Well crispy snack range. A third flavour: Piri Piri.

Ever since I first heard of Piri Piri sauce I thought it might not really be for me. And I still think I was right. But I must confess that Piri Piri works better with the Pea Snaps than either of the other two flavours we have tried.

None of the taste testers made a comment except History Graduate who admitted to quite liking these Pea Snaps. But I don't think he can have eaten the whole (very small - only 21g) packet himself. So someone else, possibly several someones, was eating them, and it wasn't me.

Oh, Extremely Sceptical taste tester did comment. She asked if this was another grasshopper crispy snack. Well, yes, it is the same range as those she took for grasshoppers. But no. This crispy snack is made from marrow fat peas and not insect protein.

And she also pointed out that the very soft bite is similar to the crunch and texture of crispy snacks made for very small children. There are extremely sceptical nieces and nephews so our taste tester knows what she is talking about.

The Piri Piri flavour dust gives these Pea Snaps a handsome orangey brown colour, so really they do look a lot less grasshoppery than the Green Chilli Lime & Coriander flavour Snaps.

This product is supposed to be healthier for you than the average crispy snack. So I'm pleased to be able to report that this flavour is a lot more palatable than the first two we tried.

Always remember that I am extremely picky when it comes to food. So even if I don't like something; you might.

Eat Real Lentil Chips Chilli & Lemon Flavour

Yum! The senior taste tester brought this 113g bag into the office for the reluctant taste testers and me to try. 113g sounds a lot. But I think it's just that lentil chips are heavier than some other products.For example, the Eat Real Quinoa Chips (not yet reviewed) in the exact same size bag weigh 80g.

Gluten free (endorsed by Coeliac UK), vegetarian, vegan and 40% less fat than regular potato chips. A crispy snack that's supposed to be healthier for you and they taste great. What could be better than that?

I really like the combination of chilli and lemon; it works really well for me. True, the crunch is a little heavy, but I am willing to overlook that. And I think the reluctant taste testers agree. A bowlful put out in the late morning was finished by lunchtime.

M&S Eat Well Bacon, Tomato & Worcester Sauce Potato Snacks

Ever hopeful, the reluctant taste testers and I tried another Eat Well flavour from Marks & Spencer. And this time (what a relief) it's made with potatoes.

So what gives this snack its Eat Well healthiness factor? It's low in saturated fats. But the recipe still contains (probably plenty of) sugar and salt. And it's a complicated recipe. The Worcester sauce flavour is cobbled together with tamarind paste, cloves, ginger and garlic; the tomato seems to be tomato, and the bacon? That's vegetarian, indeed vegan, bacon.

Not a bad flavour and we quite liked it. I thought the flavour was mainly Worcester sauce... with a little added bacon. Not sure that we would try them again though.

Interesting choice of mauve for the packaging. Very unusual.

M&S Eat Well Smoked Salt & Mixed Pepper Pea Snaps

Ever hopeful I thought we might try this flavour of Pea Snaps.

The Green Chilli Lime & Coriander flavour the reluctant taste testers and I tried the other day was not nice. But M&S have brought out two other flavours so they must believe someone will like these allegedly healthy Pea Snap crispy snacks.

I am not convinced. The reluctant taste testers are not convinced. The Chef is not convinced. Oh dear. Will anyone be convinced?

I read salt and pepper on the packet as I queued at the checkout the other day. But salt and pepper is not what I got.

I mean, we have cayenne pepper, white pepper, black pepper, pink peppercorns and capsicum extract. That's a lot of pepper. On top of that there's ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fennel and star anise. That's a whole lot of flavour. And then we have the smoked salt.

And yet you can still taste the peas.

The initial crunch seems light but not bad, only the crispy snack immediately becomes a mushy snack and melds itself to your teeth. And the flavour is downright weird. And the aftertaste is sort of fatty. Greasy. I don't know what.

Are marrowfat peas super healthy? If so I think we are all going to need a lot of educating to get us to like them.

M&S Eat Well Green Chilli Lime & Coriander Pea Snaps

The Extremely Skeptical taste tester looked into the little green packet (only 21g) and asked "Are these made of grasshoppers?".

Well, no. However avant garde you may consider the recent adventures of the M&S crisp development department, I don't think they would go so far as to try to tempt the residents of North London with insecty snacks. Or not without some massive advertising campaign to tell us all we will be missing out on the latest trend if we don't get our act together.

So, not made of grasshoppers. But made of marrowfat peas. Which is a different sort of pea from your petit pois or garden pea. Marrowfat peas are not picked young like garden peas but left (I gather) to mature and dry on the plant. And then traditionally they are cooked for ages to make mushy peas to eat with fish & chips or with pies. I come from the wrong part of the UK to appreciate mushy peas so I've not tried them. And probably won't.

In any case, these marrowfat peas have suffered some sinister change in the manufacturing process and here they are  mysteriously extruded into pea pod shapes. Green pea pods. And actually the crunch is pretty good. Light, but good.

But the taste! Oh dear.

Seriously, what were they thinking? I mean, I would have been prepared to give these a go if they tasted of salt & vinegar or something, but I guess that wouldn't be healthy enough. Instead we have green chilli, lime and coriander. And I'm not sure that's the taste combination for me.

When you open the packet the aroma of lime and coriander is overpowering. I've always found coriander a little tough to appreciate, and these crispy Pea Snaps aren't helping the cause. Really, it's a very odd taste.

I'm left wondering what it is about these snaps that qualifies them for the Eat Well range? Is it the peas? Because if so, can we have them with a better flavour please. Is it the flavour? Because if so, why can't we just have a potato snap? Is it that they taste so weird we don't eat so many? Because if that's the case I'm afraid we'll just go out and eat something unhealthy instead.

Honestly, I'd be delighted to give a good review to a healthy crispy snack. But somehow almost all of them are a bit too weird.

These little Pea Snaps are a bit greener than the photograph shows. It's been so very dark here recently that unless I rush into photographer mode as soon as the sun comes out (not always possible) I have to make do with artificial light. I don't think the sun came out at all today, in fact it was nearly dark by tea time. And we aren't even into December!

M&S Apple Crisps

This is another of Marks & Spencers' eat well range; 1 of your 5 a day. Sweet and delicious dried apple slices. As I have recently tried beetroot and kale and plantain crisps (with sweet potato pending) I thought I would try apple as well. Why not?

These crisps are described as "deliciously healthy food best enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle and a balanced healthy diet. Reducing intake of saturated fats helps to maintain healthy cholesterol levels" (it says here). And: "for optimum health, we should all aim to eat at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. Try balancing 3 veg with 2 fruit and choose different colours for a good variety of different nutrients." So get going chaps! Eat red, eat purple, eat orange, eat yellow, and then if you're feeling really strong eat green as well.

How different that is from the meat and two veg diet of my childhood. Which probably worked out as a brown and green diet. Mostly. Unless you really liked carrots. Can you imagine what the residents of the 1960s would have said if you insisted on eating foods according to colour?

Well, actually I guess it depends if we're talking about the early 1960s which were pretty much still in the black and white world we know from very early film/TV footage of The Beatles, or the rather later technicolour Beatles of the post Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band era. My parents and certainly my grandparents were firmly based in black and white land. Goodness me! My lovely Grandpa never ate pasta or rice except as a pudding and as for garlic....

Anyhow. Anyhow these apple crisps are being marketed as a healthy option to go with your lunchtime sandwich or what have you. The ingredients are just dried apple and concentrated lemon juice. Which I guess must be good. They are awfully sweet though so I confess I was a bit suspicious and thought there must be some added sugar. But apparently not.

The texture is a bit like foamy cardboard (I'm not really sure how to describe it) with rather a soft crunch and the taste isn't quite as appley as I was expecting but I accidentally ate the whole packet without noticing. A pleasant snack.

A nice little 30g packet. Suitable for vegetarians. Made in Poland.

M&S Salt & Pepper Kale Crisps

Hmmn... Salt & Pepper Kale Crisps coated in a cashew butter.

I'm honestly not convinced this is a good idea. For a start these crispy crunchy things look awfully like deep fried nettles covered in dried mud. The bag does tell me that kale can vary in appearance throughout the year with no effect on kale crisp crunchiness (I am very tempted to type kale krisp krunchiness), so perhaps this is the time of year for the deep fried nettle look. And then there's the cashew butter which is the bit that looks like mud.

The crunch is quite good (although a duller crunch than you get from a potato crisp) and the salt and pepper added to the cashew, with a hearty splash of zesty lemon, is also quite nice. There's a good lot of flavour going on. But I do sort of get the impression the whole thing could be achieved with seaweed or even nettles. Or maybe plain old cabbage.

Unfortunately a disappointingly high proportion of the crisps in this 25g bag seem to have fallen into crumbs. So what you get might be added to some breadcrumbs and used to coat chicken goujons. It might be quite nice. But it's not what you expect when you buy a bag of crisps.

Obviously we all know that kale is supposed to be madly good for you so I suppose these crisps are intended to be a healthy option for your crunch at lunch. They are part of M&S's eat well range and the bag tells us the contents are a source of vitamin E. Although according to Wikipedia kale is a source of vitamins C and K but not E so that's not at all confusing.

I think these strange crispy kale thingies are a bit too healthy for me so I'm probably not going to try them again. Maybe I'm just missing my usual crunchy potatoey goodness. But it is a pity that I'm left with lots of bits of stuff stuck in my teeth. And on top of that, well, honestly the look is not very prepossessing.

Very very extremely weird. I suspect there may be more fun ways to eat kale. But then I'd have no excuse to write about it.

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps. Crunchy dried beetroot slices with a vinaigrette seasoning. One of your five a day.

My goodness. These crunchy slices of beetroot crisp are very very crunchy indeed. And purple? Probably the most purple thing you could possibly imagine in the crispy crunch department. And in fact pretty purple in general.

These beetroot crisps have a very beetrooty flavour, so not suitable for anyone searching for a healthy crisp but they don't actually enjoy beetroot. Some of the crisps taste purely of beetroot while others are flavoured with the lemony garlic vinaigrette.

I quite like the earthy taste of beetroot. This is possibly because it was never forced on me when I was a child; my mother had far too much of it in WWII and never ate it unless she absolutely had to. She said beetroot in fruit salad was a memory too ghastly to contemplate and to be honest I can't really blame her. So I understand it isn't to everyone's taste. And I do rather wonder how popular these are going to be. Still, M&S obviously think they're on to a good thing with their new healthy range of crispy things so I guess we'll see.

One of my work colleagues bought these and then decided they weren't really her thing. She put a bowl in the kitchen for the reluctant taste testers to sample and they don't seem to have been mad keen either.

I think I rather prefer my crispy snacks to be made of potato or maize but for a real change these are quite interesting. I don't think I could eat a whole 60g packet on their own but maybe they would work well as part of a salady supper with houmous or tzatziki.