Crisps

Crisps are a vital part of my snacking day, admittedly eating a whole six multi-pack in one sitting was never going to end favourably so some changes had to be made.

The first thing I discovered was that crisps that are high in fat seemed to be a trigger for me to over eat so I needed to find a better alternative, the first product I tried was Walkers Baked which weigh in at 100 to 101 calories per 25g bag which is significantly less than regular bag of Walkers Crisps which have 129 to 132 calories per 25g bag. The problem I had with Walkers Baked is that they still had the "fat" taste to them that triggered a desire to over indulge, so my crisp replacement quest continued.

Next up were Special K Cracker Crisps and these fitted the bill perfectly, they had good flavour and were crunchy but most importantly didn't have the fat trigger taste at all, so I would happily have one packet for either lunch or as a snack in the evening without craving even more of them. It was during this Cracker Crisp phase that I made an interesting discovery: single packets of crisps for sale in shops have a larger portion size than the packets in muli-packs, for example an individually sold bag of Special K Sweet Chilli Cracker Crisps is 23g and has 94 calories while a multi-pack bag is 21g and has 86 calories, upon further investigation I found this to be true of most multi-pack bags of crisps, so from now on I only ever ate multi-pack bags and only had them in the evening.

Next up I excitedly found that Walkers had started to produce a product called Pops that are created by blasting potatoes with hot air and they taste really good! Here is the calorie information for the various flavours (note that 19g are multi-pack bags and 23g are individually sold bags):

• Melted Cheese & Crispy Bacon Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g 102 = calories
• Original Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g = 102 calories
• Sour Cream & Onion Flavour: 19g = 84 calories / 23g = 102 calories
• Prawn Cocktail Flavour 19g = 85 calories (no individual packs are available)

Pops became my mainstay evening snack, the melted cheese and crispy bacon less so as they taste kind of odd!

Then thanks to the ability to socialise and view other people's food diaries on My Fitness Pal I discovered via my Cousin's wife's food diary that a multi-pack packet of KP Skips contains 76 calories, a new low calorie record for crisps and they are "real" versions not a product made specifically to be healthy!

KP Skips then became my main crunchy snack and I still munch a packet every day or two, I have also found the Weight Watchers Variety Pack that contains two 18g bags of the following:

• Cheese Flavour Maize Puffs: 78 calories a pack
• Sweet Chilli Flavour Potato Hoops: 70 calories a pack
• Chicken Fajita Flavour Tortilla Corn Chips: 82 calories

They are OK  but nothing special as the flavours a quite weak and I will most likely not replace them when I've used them up.

**I've now found another low calorie crunchy snack, details are in this brief post: Stop Press: Crisps