And more importantly… should you?

I’m always wary of new products that either:

a) sound too good to be true
b) are too “faddy”
c) are too dietetic and likely taste crappy

These new Trader Joe’s Whole Grain Lightly Salted Tortilla Chips definitely fell into all three of these categories when I first saw them a few weeks ago.

Lucky for me, though, I have a very brave and health-conscious and perenially curious sister-in-law (Hi Anisa! Wait… who am I kidding? She doesn’t read my blog! Bad sis!) who is always fearlessly trying new stuff that I’m not quite sure of. She had a bag of these chips at a get-together recently and so I tried them (after making a few snotty comments about how they couldn’t possibly be good) and they weren’t bad. I’ve been on a major chips and salsa kick lately (love the TJ’s Roasted Tomatillo Salsa!) so I figured that if I used these whole grain chips, I could lower The Guilt Factor quite a bit.

The upside to the chips… great crunch and flaky-light texture. Not cardboard-y at all, surprisingly. A perfectly acceptable vehicle for delivering guacamole or salsa directly into my system. If fitting into my jeans were no concern, I’d of course choose white corn chips or something more indulgent. But these chips seemed to be a good whole grain alternative.

Here’s the ingredient list:

Stone Ground White Corn, Corn Oil and/or Sunflower Oil, Apple Fiber, Oat Bran, Brown Rice, Flaxseed, Sea Salt, Water, Trace of Lime

120 calories per 10-chip serving, 4.5 grams of fat, 4 grams of fiber, and 50 milligrams of sodium.

Here’s the drawback, though… once I got a whole bag to myself, I realized that they are way too salty! I don’t think I’ve ever said that about anything in my life, but I’ll say it now! They say they’re “lightly salted” but by the time you get to the bottom of a bag, the chips are completely inedible and nasty. Maybe there’s another ingredient that adds a salty flavor? I don’t know… The sodium count on the nutrition label is lower than my regular chips, but somehow it’s intolerable in these ones. Strange…

But I’ve given these chips one last chance in our household. I’ve even taken to dusting off some of the coating on each chip before biting into it. It does help, but that shouldn’t be necessary.

Anyone else got any thoughts on these new-fangled chips?