If you are embarking on a healthy eating mission for the next 90 days to look and feel your best by summer, kudos! Eating healthy can make you live longer and look younger (in addition to feeling great and having a slimmer waistline). And as you plan for this healthier food track, you may be starting to fill your shopping cart with snacks that are billed as “healthy” in the grocery store. Wait! Leading health experts warn that many processed foods are disguised as healthy, thanks to buzzy marketing terms like “gluten free” and “low fat”-or in the case of chips, “baked.”
These can actually do more harm than good, experts warn, and it’s always best to reach for healthy whole foods like whole grains or a piece of fruit when snacking. “Baked” chips that gained steam in recent years, but here’s the skinny on why you should avoid them.
Baked Chips
The snacks were created in the salty snack space after the (obvious) backlash against their greasy, fried alternatives.
“This non-fried snack option has been quite popular for years as an alternative to the oil and fat laden traditional potato chip,” registered dietitian Trista Best of Balance One explains. “They were created to provide a seemingly healthy snack or side item for those wanting to watch their calories, cholesterol, and or waistline.”
Unfortunately, while they may be slightly lower in fat, they did not achieve this goal and “should not be considered healthy,” she warns. Yikes!
To start, baked chips are still highly processed and calorie dense. "They provide little in the way of nutrition and often give the allusion that they are healthy so they can be consumed in large quantities," she explains. The perception that a snack is "healthy" can often lead to over-eating--which in turn leads to "low-grade inflammation," and "poor satiety."
You know that empty-but-full feeling you experience after eating an entire bag of them? Therein lies the problem.
"They are high in calories but are not filling which leaves the consumer feeling hungry quickly after eating them, leading to over-consuming calories from other foods."
So--what should you eat instead? "Rather than turning to baked chips to replace the higher calorie options opt for vegetables with hummus dip or dried fruit instead," she suggest. Yum!
