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Once upon a time, chippies – the Brits call them crisps – were simply slices of potato fried in oil, sprinkled with salt and eaten straight from the foil packet. But the snack aisle has had something of a virtue-signalling makeover. Now we’re lured by kūmara crisps, cauliflower crackers, and pea-protein puffs which promise all the crunch with extra virtue – more protein, more vegetables and less guilt.
But are these products healthier, or is it just clever marketing hype wrapped in recyclable packaging?
While the front of the packet might trumpet “crafted with really real ingredients” or “real cauliflower”, the back often tells a less appealing story. Vege chips range from simple root-vegetable crisps, such as kūmara, carrot or beetroot slices fried in plant oil and seasoned, through to ultra-processed versions with only a token amount of the hero ingredient, bulked out with potato starch, corn, rice or tapioca flour. Most are still fried or baked with added oils, flavour enhancers, additives and salt. The end result? A crunchy, moreish snack — not a bowl of steamed veg in disguise.
One of the key selling points of pea-protein or lentil chips is their protein content. Under New Zealand food labelling rules, a snack must have at least 10g of protein per serving to be called a “good source of protein”. Regular potato chips have around 6g protein per 100g. Many pea-protein or lentil chips deliver higher protein levels than potato chips so that the label claim may be legitimate.
Protein helps with satiety, keeping us feeling fuller for longer. But chips are rarely eaten as a protein source; they’re usually a crispy snack that we can easily overeat. If you’re truly looking to boost protein, you’ll get more nutrition for your kilojoule buck from nuts, seeds, boiled eggs, dairy or hummus with wholegrain crackers.
Despite the marketing, vege and protein chips often match regular chips for fat and can equal or exceed them in salt. Legume-based versions may offer more fibre, but they still don’t count as a serve of veges. And being energy dense, even small portions deliver plenty of calories.
Vege chips benefit from the “health halo” effect: when a product is marketed as healthy with front-of-pack buzzwords like “natural” or “plant-based” that sound wholesome but come with no nutritional guarantees. Consumers tend to underestimate the energy content of foods with a “health halo” and eat more of them. In other words, labelling a chip “made with vegetables” or “plant-based” can backfire if it leads us to eat twice as much.
There’s also a crispy complication with vege chips – acrylamide. Recent German research found that vege chips had the highest acrylamide levels of any food tested, containing on average 1430 micrograms per kg, nearly eight times higher than potato chips. And that’s not good news as acrylamide is classified as a probable human carcinogen.
Acrylamide forms naturally in plant-based, carbohydrate-rich foods when cooked at high temperatures (think frying, roasting, baking) via the Maillard reaction — the same chemical process that gives chips their delicious golden-brown crunch. Potato crisps, hot chips, toast, biscuits and cereals are well-known sources of acrylamide but these new results suggest some vege chips are even worse offenders. The exact amount depends on the vegetable used, its sugar content and how it’s cooked, but beetroot, parsnip and sweet potato crisps tend to be among the highest. While we can’t avoid acrylamide entirely, keeping deep-fried or dark-brown snacks as occasional treats is a sensible idea.
So, while vege and protein chips may offer some small benefits over standard potato chips, such as more protein or fibre, they are not a substitute for whole foods rich in protein and fibre and free from additives and other ultra-processing aids. If you like the taste, enjoy them in moderation and mind the portion size. But if you want more protein, have a boiled egg or some nuts. If you want more vegetables, eat a salad. And if you want chips, well, sometimes only chips will do.
As well as Jennifer Bowden’s columns in the NZ Listener magazine,listener.co.nz subscribers can access her fortnightly myth-buster column which explores food and nutrition myths.
