To eat or not to eat...

Were always looking for yummy healthy snacks right?  Whether it's for ourselves or for the kiddos.  But most people are fooled by simple marketing techniques, fads, or misconceptions that they still end up eating the bad stuff.  So with that let's review a product that i found in the "health" section at my local grocery store, and go over some steps in determining if its a smart pick.

Veggie Stix
There were giving out samples of these so my children and i tried them. Not bad on the taste factor.
1. Glance at the front package:  All natural, 50% less fat than potato chips.
        -Sounds good so far, lets go to the back.
2. Check out the nutrition label:  serving size is 1 oz., 5g of fat, 1 g of saturated fat, 310mg sodium, 1 g protein, ZERO VITAMINS
      - Stop right there! These are called veggie sticks right?  Vegetables as in vitamins, minerals and good stuff right?  Why then are there no vitamins or minerals in this bag? Moving on.
3. Ingredients: of 13 ingredients there are only 4 veggie ingredients and they are listed last.
    -ingredients are listed with the most abundant ingredient first, so we can see that they is very little veggie ingredients

4. Look for anything else the bag can tell us: "We cook them to a golden crunch..."
   -So it does not specify how they are cooked which probably means fried.  If it were baked they would have advertized that healthy option.
5. Summarize:  the good- no hydrogenated oils, sea salt, natural ingredients, low in bad fat.  The bad- loaded with sodium, fried (assumed). And no fiber, vitamins, or minerals (which is why we eat food).

So to eat or not to eat?

Well that depends on you.  If you eat chips these would be a better substitute.  If you do not, these are by no means a "healthy" snack.  Me personally as FitMom, i say both. Moderation in all things.  I don't buy potato chips for my family but maybe a few times a year. We reserve stuff like that for special occasions. We recently went camping and I bought these instead of regular chips for my family.  They were good in that they ate them and enjoyed them but not amazing that they binged and ate the whole bag.

So remember to look beyond the front label.  If we had stopped there we probably would have eaten the whole bag thinking these were beneficial to our bodies. ;)