The chip aisle is packed with an assortment of crunchy and colorful potato chips, and everyone knows that they serve as a guilty pleasure.
With a society that harbors the weight of a fierce diet culture, where do their newer counterparts stand in all of this?
Veggie chips may sound like a diet game changer, bags piled high with many-hued roots and tubers, but are they really any healthier than their more conventional relatives? Should you make the change from regular potato chips to, say, a pack of Terra’s?
Created in the early 1990s, Terra chips were quick to fly off of the shelves as their ubiquitous influence promised a life of minimal calories and maximal taste.
They were quick to make a name for themselves among the array of already available tasty snacks. The question, however, remains a debated topic to this day.
Are veggie chips any better for your health than the average bag of potato chips? Are Terra chips truly healthy?
What Are Terra Chips?
Terra chips: the high end of all the salty snacks. Encased in a sleek black bag that gives them an almost designer likeness, luxury, and well.
Created in the early 1990s by Dana Sinkler and Alex Dzieduszycki, each respective chef left their job at four-star restaurants in Manhattan in order to pursue a humble catering business.
Their venture resulted in the birth of Terra Chips, and the two began selling them to the customers of their catering business which had grown to serve some of New York’s most elite.
Packaged in silver and black bags, Terra Chips were marketed as a lifestyle.
What Is Their Nutritional Value?
When people think of potato chips, it’s usually the classics that spring to mind, and the likes of Lay’s and Ruffle’s can often be found invading the pantry.
Your average potato chip typically contains these three ingredients: potato, a form of vegetable oil (sunflower, corn, and/or canola oil), and some salt.
When it comes to the ingredient labels for veggie chips, you’ll find that they boast great similarities, with the main difference being the vegetable.
For example, Terra chips, of whom the manufacturers rotate the veggies depending on the season, have a recipe just as simple.
Whether they contain sweet potatoes, parsnips, or cassava, the plain sailing ingredients rarely, if ever, sway: vegetables, vegetable oil (sunflower, safflower, or canola), salt, and beet juice to capture some color.
It’s not just the ingredients that bear a striking resemblance, but the nutritional facts don’t differ all that much either. A 1-ounce serving of Lay’s is highly comparable to that of a 1-ounce serving of Terra Chips:
Lays—160 calories
15 grams of carbs
3 grams of fiber
1 gram of protein
9 grams of fat
1 gram of saturated fat
Terra—150 calories
16 grams of carbs
3 grams of fiber
1 gram of protein
9 grams of fat
1 gram of saturated fat
Are Terra Chips Healthier Than Regular Potato Chips?
While their ingredients of fried root vegetables may seem like the healthier option, in reality, Terra chips offer no more nutritional value than their crispy cousins. They are still exceptionally high in calories, fat, and saturated fat.
There is an imperceptible difference when it comes to a pack of regular potato chips, and a pack of veggie chips. The largest disparity is in fact how they’re marketed, and deemed by buyers and consumers.
That doesn’t mean that Terra Chips are any less palatable, and they serve as a great option if you’re looking for something new to satisfy your taste buds.
When it comes to dietary adjustments, however, whether you decide to opt for these or not isn’t going to make or break your health journey.
Like most things, they will prove fine in moderation, but when it comes down to it, chips are chips. Whether a potato or a parsnip, both are vegetables. Both are sliced thinly, fried, and salted to finish.
Why Do People Opt For Veggie Chips?
When it comes to what’s healthy and what isn’t, we like to torture ourselves. By our own skewered logic, eating a shiny bag of Terra chips is the equivalent of a plate of vegetables.
By opting for what most perceive as healthier, and what most know to be pricier, are we doing ourselves a favor? The answer is no, but people think the opposite.
People tend to fix on veggie chips purely due to the fact that they are associated with vegetables. While it is obvious why this is the case, it hasn’t proved to be a necessarily worthwhile decision.
Potential buyers and consumers are being sold promises of a healthier option that will amount to a better lifestyle, with an optimal taste for a fraction of the calories.
People think that by having a bag of veggie chips like Terra’s they’re making a world of difference when in reality, that’s just not the case.
Conclusion
Veggie chips aren’t all that they appear to be, but neither are potato chips. One or the other doesn’t serve as a better or a worse option, as when it comes down to it a chip is still a chip.
Veggie chips, like potato chips, serve as a snack. The average person will not be consuming enough packs of Terra Chips to be able to see a difference in terms of better nutritional value.
To get that, you need to consume plenty of real vegetables. Once a vegetable becomes a fried, salted, crispy chip, all the water content is lost and a huge amount of oil is gained, rendering it a calorie-condensed snack with a pretty poor nutritional quality overall.
The nutritional information shows us that the veggie chips don’t fulfill the promises that their marketing teams may lead us to believe we will receive, and Terra Chips are no different.
That being said, that doesn’t mean that they’re a bad option. It just means that potato chips aren’t so bad either.
The addition, or lack thereof, of Terra chips in your diet wont make or break your health journey. Many factors go into making a more wholesome lifestyle a success.
One of the most common things I talk to my clients about is calories, but so few of them actually know anything about them.
Calories is not a dirty word. If you remove emotion from it, it is simply a unit of energy.
We need calories to live and thrive, and knowing how many to consume is important to ensure that you’re living a healthy lifestyle.
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