Kolasa: Veggie snacks a poor substitute for the real thing | Feature Columnist

A My quick answer is buy your veggies in the produce section or from the canned or frozen food shelves. If you want to buy your daughter a snack, think how it might fit into her healthy eating plan.

When you select the chips or veggie straws, ignore the claims on the package. Read both the ingredient list and the Nutrition Facts label. You may have seen me earlier this week in Food Lion in the snack section doing just that — reading labels so I could answer your question. I remember when Terra Veggie Chips first appeared in the early 1990s. I was at a party and the hostess had these chips made from colorful root vegetables. I thought they were fun. At the time I didn’t bother to look at the nutrition information because they were so expensive. The veggie chips have come down in price although I still think they are expensive.

I first saw veggie straws around 2006. I was watching a soccer practice and one of the kids offered me some. I thought they tasted a bit like corn puffs. I wished the kids had a piece of fruit or a bag of real veggies for their snack instead. Think of veggie chips as an alternative to a potato or tortilla chip rather than a vegetable. As I looked at the bags on the shelf, I found chips that listed beets, brown rice, kale, sweet potatoes, snap peas chickpeas, spinach and more on their ingredient list. Some of these chips had a bit more dietary fiber, a little less sodium and even a bit more protein than the typical potato chip, but the difference really isn’t meaningful. They certainly don’t have the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants you would get from eating a salad.

I was intrigued by a bag of snap pea chips since they looked like a better choice than some of the other veggie chips. The snap peas are picked and dried. They are then crushed into a powder and blended with flour — often rice flour. Vegetable oil is added to create at paste. Some have salt and sodium carbonate to add shelf life. Then this mix is shaped into a pea and baked, and some flavoring might be added. I looked at the label on Harvest Snaps Green Pea Snack Crisps. The ingredients were: green peas, vegetable oil (canola, sunflower, and/or safflower oil), rice, black pepper seasoning (maltodextrin, less than 2% of spice, salt, sugar, mushroom powder, onion powder, garlic powder, yeast extract, white distilled vinegar powder, natural flavors, citric acid) calcium carbonate and vitamin C. A serving had 130 calories, 5 grams of fat, 75 mg sodium, 240 mg potassium, 16 grams of carbohydrates with less than 1 gram added sugar, 5 grams of dietary fiber, a little bit of protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin C. One cup of sugar snap peas has only 27 calories, virtually no fat, 2.5 mg sodium, 4.8 grams of carbohydrate, 1.6 grams of fiber, 2.5 g natural sugar, 1.8 grams protein and a good source of vitamins A

If you wonder if veggie straws or stix are any better know that they are a puffed up, extruded mixture of potato flour, an oil and corn starch with some tomato puree or other vegetable powder, salt and sugar. For example, the ingredients in Good Health Veggie Straws were: potato starch, dehydrated potato, expeller pressed sunflower oil or safflower oil, maltodextrin, salt, dextrose, dehydrated tomato, sea salt, jalapeno pepper, potassium chloride, dehydrated garlic, onion powder, dehydrated spinach, paprika extract (for color), dehydrated parsley, dehydrated green pepper, dehydrated green pepper, dehydrated oregano, turmeric (for color), radish extract (for color), carrot extract (for color), yeast extract, natural flavor.

Recall that the ingredients are listed from the most (by weight) to the least in the product. You don’t need me to tell you that these are not the same as eating a vegetable. These straws are kind of fun to eat but they have 150 calories per one ounce serving, 8 grams of fat, 18 grams of carbohydrate, 350 mg sodium, 190 mg potassium only 1-gram dietary fiber, 1 gram of protein and a smidgen of iron.