M&S Reduced Fat Full on Flavour Sweet & Smokey BBQ

Here's a BBQ flavour crinkle cut crisp (full on flavour and reduced fat to boot) which appeared in the office one day. To my shame I cannot recall who provided it. Well, you know, the reluctant taste testers quite often proffer new acquisitions for all of us to try. Pretty much everyone from Giraffe Fan to Tech taste tester has provided something tasty over the last (not quite) 3 years. I do the writing it's true, but everyone gets to try if they want to.

And in fact I think the reluctant taste testers rather liked this gentle BBQ flavour. Not a BBQ fan myself I thought they were quite nice too.

And if you can find such a good crunch and pleasant taste together in a reduced fat crisp I think you are doing pretty well. A success then.

But I totally forgot to mention this is one of Marks & Spencer's crisps mysteriously made in Denmark.

M&S Reduced Fat Lightly Salted Crisps

Noble friend bought s multi-pack of these reduced fat crisps for her crunch at lunch and gave me one of the 25g packets to try. "They're really good," she said, "you can't tell they're reduced fat". And I think she's right.

I'm always suspicious of reduced fat foods. They frequently taste more greasy than full fat foods, and if you aren't careful you find they are full of sugar.

But these crinkle cut crisps seem to be made of potatoes, sunflower oil and salt. So no sugar. And the sunflower oil is a special kind called Sun Kernel which contains 30% less total fat and "at least 30% less saturated fat" than typical crinkle cut crisps. Hmmn..... typical crinkle cut crisps eh? I wonder what that would be?

Anyway, someone seems to have gone to quite a lot of trouble to make these crisps a lower fat option. Someone in Denmark I suppose; because that's where they are made.

Very nice crinkle cut crisps, good crunch, pretty good levels of saltiness and generally tasty. We approve.

M&S Reduced Fat Buttered Baked Potato Flavour Crisp

Sometimes at lunch it's all about the crunch. A quiet lunch will be just as filling and very likely a lot more nourishing but nonetheless sometimes you need a crunch. And on the crunch days you find me browsing the snack shelves in Waitrose or Marks & Spencer.

I never buy reduced fat anything because it's always horrible whatever it is. Much better policy to eat a lot less of the full fat stuff than battle your way through something nasty like totally fat free yoghurt. I mean, seriously, yoghurt is made of fat isn't it? (And a selection of bacteria of course.) So what can the fat free version be made of? Air, water and cardboard I suppose.

So I bought these anyway because baked potato seemed such a bonkers flavour for a crisp.

However weird it sounds, this flavour really works. These crisps really do taste of baked potato with plenty of butter.

How the flavour development team at Marks & Spencer ever came up with the idea is anyone's guess but it's a real triumph. Right at the end of the packet where the crisps get smaller and there's a higher proportion of what I call flavour dust there's a slight hint of onion, which is one of the ingredients listed. How onion makes anything taste of baked potato (or butter) I don't know but there you are.

Not a flavour for every day - they're a bit rich - but one to try if you see them. Only problem: they're never in stock.