80 g, $3.99
available at fine food stores
for more information visit: Jans Food

Shelf Life has just returned from the Summer Fancy Food Show, which is an annual trade exhibition of specialty snacks, sweets, and savouries, this year held in New York City. The taste-tastic event was enormous, and packed to the gills with thousands of hopeful products. Shelf Life’s mission was to seek out trends in packaged food, and to avoid stuffing ourselves with aisle upon aisle of sexy new chocolates. So: we came, we saw, we sampled. One of the first things we noticed was the sheer number of snacks and chips made from vegetables and legumes. Sweet potato and lentil flavours were particularly popular. These chips are a case in point, a blend of purple and orange sweet potatoes and taro. Shelf Life liked the package, which has an eye-catching design and caught our attention with its promise of %30 less fat than potato chips. But the contents turned out to be on the skimpy side; there weren’t that many of them, and the chips were thin. On the other hand, the manufacturers held back on the salt, which is good. In the end we felt that all 3 types of chip lacked flavour, which is puzzling; we wanted them to taste rootier and earthier. This product is so-so – literally a mixed bag.

TWO AND A HALF STARS **1/2