Flat Earth - Baked Veggie Crisps Review

Like most folks that have been diagnosed with Diabetes, I became a manic label reader. Not that I didn't read labels before, but now I look for other things besides just calories and fats, weighing each gram of carbohydrate against that of fiber. I'd already cut down on eating a lot of chips and other snacks to try to keep my beefy figure from becoming porky, but now that I know these junk foods can kill me, I've begun missing them. That's why these Flat Earth Baked Veggie Crisps caught my eye.

The packaging looks more like something you'd see at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's than sitting o display by the checkout at Dominicks, so I took a look. They're a bit more expensive than most chips, so they weren't an easy impulse buy, but the unusual flavors intrigued me, along with the fact they were being touted as some sort of "healthy" snack, or ay least less unhealthy.

The six flavors are divided between 'fruity' and 'non-fruity'. The fruity ones are Apple Cinammon Grove, Wild Berry Patch and Peach Mango Paradise, while the others are Farmland Cheddar, Garlic & Herb Field and Tangy Tomato Ranch. Well, you've got to admire them for not just naming it Cheddar, but specifying Farmland so you know it's not Tenement Cheddar or Back Alley Cheddar.

Ah, yes, the label. The back of the random package I picked up surprised me, as I didn't know Flat Earth is a Frito-Lay division. According to their Story, some rebellious women at the company challenged the status quo by coming up with snack recipes that are nutritious without being boring, an event which was predicted by nay-sayers as only happening "when pigs fly". The numbers do indeed add up well though - by mixing rice flour, potato flakes and oat flour as a base, then baking the chips, they already cut way down on fats and sodium.

Then they flavor the chips with real fruits and veggies, a "1/2 serving in every ounce". If you read further into the ingredient list, you find other surprises like pumpkin and beet juice. Feeling daring, I took home the Berry flavor. I wasn't crazy about them on the first bite, but the sweet & salty thing grew on me, as did the lightly crispy texture. By gawd, I'd swear they were actually juicy!

On the next grocery trip, I tried the Tomato Ranch. Again, yummy!

So now I can't wait to try the other four flavors, and unless I hate one of them, I'll be rotating them with each shopping trip.

One extra note: their Flash site at www.ImpossiblyGood.com is so much fun! Lots of blue sky and farmland and pigs flying around - very cool.