Look around you, what do you see? Is it mostly yourself? It’s possible you’ve been hitting the chips pretty hard lately. It’s okay man we’ve all been there. Eating chips is a lifestyle choice not many people can handle. To stay fit you either have to exercise like an idiot, moderate your alcohol intake like a chump or eat healthy foods like some crusty hippie. I’m barely holding it down thanks to long walks and brutal hangovers. How many of you are really, truly eating healthy? Seriously if you’re talking about eating healthy you’re talking about a vegan diet with a lot of greens, fiber, nuts and live juices and shit. You definitely aren’t talking about cracking open bags of kettle chips shoveling handful after handful of greasy chips in your mouth at the park. Or, are you? Well the answer of course is no, but that’s not exactly what the makers of chips in this country want you to think. You see they’ve devised all kinds of clever, fucked-up ways to make it seem like you’re eating healthy even though you’re snacking away at something salty, crispy and satisfying. The real question is would you or should you substitute the awesome, indulgent snack experience that is a good bag of chips for a snack that might offer you some “savings” with regards to calories, calories from fat or grams of fat? Is it possible that you don’t have to compromise?
Let’s consider the criteria for these reviews. The main thing will be, would you eat these chips regardless of their fat or caloric content? I suppose you could tell yourself you’re eating healthy because your chips say, “reduced fat,” “baked” or fucking “Bakes®.” But you’re lying to yourself, just like the titans of the snack industry want. They don’t give two shits about whether you’re overweight or trying to slim down they only want to sell you their chips and if the difference between you buying a bag of chips or not is whether you believe you’re doing something right for yourself then no worries, the big chip makers have a whole bunch of lies and shitty chips just waiting for you. They’re not all bad, I’m just a bit angry that they get away with it at all. You wouldn’t buy weed that claimed 25% reduced THC or cocaine with 25% less refined cocaine hydrochloride if you knew that’s what you were getting. Why buy chips this way? Oh right because you’re overweight and don’t want to exercise or drink fewer shots of tequila on Thursday night. Well settle in big guy. I got a few to choose and one or two to avoid. I’ll review some healthy chips like veggie chips or flaxseed blue corn chips some other time, the chips I’m reviewing in this writeup are basically the low-fat versions of other snacks. You’ll see that I often have no idea what kind of culinary, or more likely corporate tricks these guys are using to make their snacks. Some voodoo in the oil or manufacturing process must be happening but what and how is a mystery to me. I only eat the things.
Baked! Lay’s
Fucking Lay’s always sticking their chips in your face just when you’ve found a suitable alternative. It pains me to say it, but these Pepsico hustlers have created a winning snack Despite the fact it says “Baked!” on the bag. It also says, “Our Baked! Lay’s Original Potato Crisps have 80% less fat than regular potato chips.” You see what they did there? Besides whack use of punctuation and upper-case letters you’ll see these are potato crisps, not chips. I guess Uncle Sam has a problem letting companies call reconstituted potato paste that have been pressed and baked into chip-like shapes, potato chips. I get it. When I was a skinny, yellow, hammered, pasty version of myself I didn’t want to be called Chip either.
Baked Lay’s have a Pringles-like consistency and they are in fact really tasty. I could eat a lot of these and have on many occasions. I even made a bomb cinnamon teriyaki sauce I could dip these things into that works great and if you ask I will give you the recipe. I would eat more of them if they were easier to find in snack bags. Sure if you want a big huge bag those are easy to get. But the snack-sized bags are where it’s at and they’re not as ubiquitous as regular Lay’s which is strange. One place you can find them is at fat-shaming industry titans Subway. I feel like you might be afraid of Baked! Lay’s, don’t be. At least not because of how they taste. What they’re made of and how they’re made might be horrifying though. It’s possible that the manufacturing process is the only thing keeping these chips from revolutionizing the snack industry. But if you don’t think about what they are or how they’re brought into this world, they’re actually surprisingly good.
One 1⅜* ounce bag contains:
Calories: 160
Calories from fat: 25
Fat: 2.5 grams
Fiber: 2g
Protein: 3g
*Giving you a tiny serving makes their stats look pretty fucking good. Still, even if you eat 2 bags of Baked! Lay’s you’re only getting 320 calories with 50 coming from fat. A snack size of one of my favorite kettle chip brands contains 280 calories with 160 coming from fat. Good thing Baked! Lay’s are not only slimming but tasty.
Pringles Reduced Fat
Pringles Fat-Free
I like Pringles. Who doesn’t? They’re so awful but so, so good. Pringles knows this and they also know their products are addictive and probably a real reason why this country is so overweight. It’s not your fault, it’s the goddamn Pringles. So what’s a big-time, Wall-Street traded company to do? I can see the meeting, it’s a conference room in fucking Cincinnati, home of Procter and Gamble. These fat cats are sitting around burning the midnight oil, the handwriting is on the wall, or rather it’s in the form of a presentation given by Sue, Pringles is making people fat. Come on people, we gotta do something about it, what’ve you got! At this point everybody’s too scared to talk about just making Reduced Fat Pringles. They’ve gotta pull off the snacking equivalent of putting a man on the goddamn moon. What they came up was genius and sinister, Olestra. This is an oil that is, on the molecular level, too fat to make it into your liver. You think you rule the ironisphere? Consider this: In order to make you thin, these motherfuckers invented a fat molecule so fat that it can’t fit through the door to your liver so it comes down your intestines like rain on your wedding day. Once they got this oil just right, they did a bunch of FDA-mandated tests on unsuspecting suspects. Some people experienced some horrible shit-related side effects but on the plus side could now eat fatty crunchy potato chips and (theoretically) have six-pack abs, totally worth shitting yourself right? Well, not really. People didn’t take to Olestra. It’s easy to see why not, the FDA said you have to tell people right on the can WARNING you might get loose bowels and abdominal cramping and people said I’d rather be fat for the most part. Fat-soluble vitamins like D, K and THC will get absorbed by Olestra and hustled out of your body like One Direction at a Barry Sobel show. After a brief golden-fried age, Olestra was removed from a ton of other fat free products like cakes, hell Lay’s even had a fat-free Olestra chip. You can still get Pringles made with Olestra. I did. You wanna know what I think? They taste good. I didn’t experience any bowel distress but a can is only 4 ounces of chips. There’s absolutely nothing to lead you to believe that these chips are lowfat or that the oil is somehow suspect. Well, taste-wise anyway. Let’s take a look at how we got to the point where we’re okay with chips that may fuck your gut up inside while leaving you slender and acceptable on the outside. That’s a fucked up bargain and that’s what you get with every can of Pringles Fat Free.
You also get in every ounce:
Calories: 70
Calories from fat: ZERO
Fat: 0 grams
Fiber: 1g
Protein: 1g
So what’s the deal with Reduced Fat Pringles? Are these chips made poisonous by their makers to appeal to our fat-shaming instincts? No, these are lighter versions of regular Pringles, probably using the same tired reduced fat technology that other chips do which I’m guessing is some form of patting them down with a napkin across from your date like an idiot. I’m not sure exactly. They don’t taste too light, they taste a lot like regular Pringles. That is until you eat three cans of Reduced Fat in a row. Not in one sitting you animal, I just mean if the only Pringles you eat are Reduced Fat and then you get a regular can of Pringles suddenly the regular Pringles taste heavy as fuck. Like maybe the whole baseline is wrong. They should sell Reduced Fat Pringles as regular Pringles and call regular Pringles Super Saturated Pringles. I’d still eat both. But be warned these might actually ruin the “regular” version of Pringles. I really like the Reduced Fat Pringles, enough that it makes the Olestra abomination that much more aggravating. I bought my Pringles Original Reduced Fat can at CVS and they have 5.32 ounce tubes. One serving is one ounce but let’s face it you’re gonna eat the whole goddamn can because literally nothing is stopping you.
Calories 140
Calorias de grassa: 70
Total Fat: 7 grams
Fiber: 1 gram
Protein: 1 gram
Nothing healthy to see here. Again, I can’t recommend the Fat-Free because no no no Olestra is too fucked up to put in this body (again) and that’s saying something. I risked shitting myself for this review I hope you people appreciate that.
Kettle® Bakes
If you want the quick version of this review it’s this: Fuck Kettle® Bakes. For starters what’s up with the name? Kettle® Bakes? Is it a typo? It should say Baked. Maybe baked might be seen as a stoner reference? ON A BAG OF CHIPS NO WAY. Oh I get it it’s a Kettle® but it Bakes?!? That’s only the first irritating thing about these chips. Maybe I should just jump to the part about the near-redeeming quality of these and that is that they’re obviously real chips, real slices of potato. But there’s nothing kettle about these chips except the Kettle® on the bag. So why are Kettle® putting out such subpar chips in a bag that’s hard as hell to open?
Probably to fuck with us. In a mean-spirited, shitty way the corporate gasbags over at Kettle® are laughing their asses off. First it was Maple-Bacon flavored kettle chips now these? “Don’t worry you fat fuck, we got Kettle® chips with no fat right here” they’re saying, knowing it’s a damn lie. Don’t buy these, it only encourages them. If you decide you’re going to take the plunge on these get ready for a flat, flavorless chip. These are the chips I’m warning you people about. Every calorie you get from these is just added anyway because there’s no way you’re gonna eat these chips for flavor crunch and satisfaction. You might actually look at the packaging and think, hey wow, a lowfat baked kettle chip? From Kettle® now I can eat a million of these but you won’t unless they were somehow negative calories. Like they suck the calories of the rest of your meal out like these chips suck the life out of chip eating. Assholes.
1 oz. of these chips give you:
Calories 120
Calories from fat: 25
Total Fat: 3 grams
Fiber: 2 grams
Protein: 2 grams
Deep River Lightly Salted Kettle Chips
40% Reduced Fat
You may remember Deep River from my kettle chip review. They really should get a good review but man was I drunk when I bought and ate them. Boy was I sober when I picked up the Lightly Salted 40% Reduced Fat variety. Here’s what they get right that Kettle® gets wrong: these are good kettle chips. I mean these are actually thick, crunchy, earthy, yummy kettle chips. I don’t know how they make that 40% less fat claim although these chips are noticeably less greasy and salty. These chips are actually crunchier than regular kettle chips because they haven’t been sogged down by extra oil. 
By themselves they lack that snack punch you want from a bag of kettle chips. But don’t despair because in a way these chips are like a different flavor of kettle chips. Like the unsalted power crunch flavor or something. You can always add salt. That would probably bump these chips up a notch but I respect what Deep River is trying to do. That’s a good reason to try these. Plus, you could absolutely swap these chips in with other kettle chips at a party and nobody would complain. Probably because it’s a party. I’ve seen dudes eat pizza out of the compost bin at parties. But these are respectably close to the original and in their own way are pretty satisfying. Pair with Corona because I’m trying to get a Corona sponsorship.
Calories 120
Calories from fat: 50
Total Fat: 6 grams
Fiber: 1 gram
Protein: 2 grams
Well folks now you know how a crazy old white guy named Chip feels about some popular lowfat chips. I think they’re a bullshit reason to buy chips, or eat more chips. You should be eating chips because they are yummy and satisfying. Some of these chips are absolutely good enough to eat regardless of their so-called lowfat status, although don’t be fooled they’re still not healthy. The important thing to remember is that you’re beautiful just the way you are and you should be able to enjoy life without big corporate chip makers making you feel less than beautiful. So keep snacking. Until next time. Follow me on twitter or hit me up there @kliksf