Another Super Bowl is coming up. And while the Super Bowl is about football, it’s also about the musicians performing at the Halftime Show, and the great commercials… and of course, all of the great food served at Super Bowl parties. Over 100 million people will be throwing parties to watch the big game. At these parties, hosts will be serving smorgasbords of everybody’s favorite treats.
I throw a Super Bowl party every year. I love doing so, because it combines two of my favorite things: football and food. For me, it’s a great way to demonstrate how sustainable food can be fun. For the past few years, I’ve been releasing articles around the Super Bowl about my favorite snack foods. What originally began as one article has expanded into a series covering different types of snack foods in each one. As the options for better snack foods grow, I’m able to separate subcategories into their own articles.
I kick off the series of Super Bowl snack foods with potato chips. Chips, in general, are the most popular foods of all found at parties for the big game. The salty snack industry rakes in $278 million on potato chips for Super Bowl Sunday. But the next day, many Americans pay the price for the Standard American Diet. Antacid sales go up 20%. And 1.5 million people call in sick to work.
The biggest problem facing snack products such as potato has been the use of seed soils such as canola, corn, and soybean oil. Another problem has been ingredients which aren’t organic and are sprayed with multiple pesticides. The good news is over the past decade, there’s been a huge growth in chips using real ingredients. These products use healthy oils including avocado, coconut, and palm oil.
The manufacturers are responsible about the other ingredients they source too. Some of the companies give us better versions of the classic potato chips. Others do more contemporary takes using sweet potatoes and heirloom potatoes to come up with twists on the traditional potato chips.
If you serve any of these chips below at your Super Bowl party this year, you’ll score a touchdown. In alphabetical order, here are the 10 best potato chips fried in healthy oils:
Boulder Canyon
In 1994, brothers John and Mark Maggio founded Boulder Canyon to create snacks which were both healthy and delicious. The two learned how to make potato chips and soon started frying them in better oils, such as avocado oil. Boulder Canyon’s potato chips come in both ridged and thin textures and in the flavors of sea salt, malt vinegar and sea salt, cheddar sour cream, jalapeño, and limited edition offerings.
FC Snacks
FC Snacks was formed in 2007 as a family owned importer and distributor of natural snacks. They support local farmers, many of whom are direct descendants of families who first settled in the lands. Some of them even came before the Spanish conquest. FC Snacks is also involved in an initiative to engage local manufacturers in bringing back endemic plants and trees to help restore the diversity of native species. There are three labels for FC Snacks: Andean Gourmet, Samai, and Shegraa. All of the brands use palm olein. Their Andean Gourmet label has a sweet potato option.
Hardbite
Originating in British Columbia, the folks at Hardbite were determined to handcraft an all natural chip which tasted as good as the big brands but didn’t have any artificial flavors or preservatives. They experimented with cooking them until they got the perfect crunch, taste, and flavor. Along with using all natural ingredients, they were advocates of non-GMO before the movement was well known. Hardbite also buys the highest quality potatoes from like-minded farmers. As the company has grown, its product line has grown too. More recently, Hardbite introduced its potato chips cooked in avocado oil, coming in the flavors of apple cider vinegar, black truffle sea salt, spicy honey dijon, and sweet ghost pepper.
Jackson’s Chips
The story of Jackson’s Chips starts with the Megan and Scott Reamers’ son Jackson getting diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder. After trying various methods to improve his health and quality of life, they found that a high fat low carb diet worked the best. The entire family began living a HFLC lifestyle, but they missed eating snack foods. So they attempted cooking locally sourced and thinly sliced sweet potatoes over their stovetop. They loved how the sweet potato chips tasted. Their son Jackson’s legacy lives on through the chips he inspired and the company. Jackson’s Chips has sweet potatoes fried in avocado oil in the flavors of sea salt, spicy jalapeño, habanero nacho, and cheddar & sour cream. More recently they’ve introduce a regular potato chip in the sea salt variety and are soon to release sea salt & vinegar and barbecue options.
Kiwa
Kiwa founder Martin Acosta had a calling to change the world. At the beginning, he had just five employees and basic plantain chip machinery, but he also had a room filled with dreams. It took the company a year and a half to figure out what exactly they were going to do, to put the basics of the business into practice, and to get selling. In 2009, Kiwa introduced their first product, the vegetable chips mix. Presently, Kiwa is a global leader with their vegetable chips sold in over 30 countries. They take part in the Direct Trade program. This program connects farmers to manufacturers, building long term trusting relationships between the two sides, guaranteeing better working conditions, technical support, and a higher pay for the farmers. Kiwa has also shifted from its traditional farming practices to regenerative agriculture. They work directly with farmers in eight of Ecuador’s 24 provinces and northern regions of Peru. Kiwa’s offerings are all cooked in palm and have a Native Andean potato chip choice.
Jans
Since 1998, Jans Enterprises‘ mission has been to improve people’s quality of life by providing them with better food products. Their product line consists of everything from beverages to dairy products to desserts to chips. Among Jans’ chips are organic yellow and purple sweet potato chips fried in coconut oil.
Roots Potato Chips
Roots Potato Chips‘s mission statement is to source the best ingredients, healthier oils, and farm fresh potatoes while being transparent at every stage. Their Idaho grown potatoes use methods of regenerative agriculture, including cover crops, pollination, crop rotation, soil health, composting, and animal integration. They’re certified regenerative by the Soil & Climate Initiative. Roots reduces its food waste by using the entire potatoes, skin and all. They’re also certified plastic neutral by rePurpose as they support global waste recovery projects to fund the recovery of the same amount of plastic waste as their footprint while supporting waste workers. They include a QR code to learn about the farmer where the potatoes came from in that specific bag. Roots’ avocado oil fried potato chips are available the flavors of sea salt, barbecue, sea salt & vinegar, and purple potatoes with sea salt.
Rosie’s Chips
Being originally from Central Pennsylvania, the potato chip capital of the world, Rosie’s Chips began with a vision of introducing to the world an all natural potato chip using the simple three ingredients of potatoes, grass fed & finished beef tallow, and microplastic free sea salt. The chips are kettle cooked in small batches. The name Rosie’s Chips comes from 102-year-old Central Pennsylvania icon Rose Adams, who raised the founders’ family and was known for her delicious comfort foods and snacks.
Siete
Siete‘s formation can be traced to founder Veronica Garza’s family of seven (or siete in Spanish) helping her overcome numerous health challenges. As a teen, Veronica was diagnosed with multiple autoimmune conditions which made her fatigued, overweight, and depressed. So her family began exercising and joined her in following a low-inflammation, grain free diet. Being a Mexican American family in South Texas, using lettuce in place of the flour and corn tortillas for tacos and fajitas wasn’t cutting it. Veronica began making grain free tortillas. When her Grandmother Campos told her that the grain free tortillas tasted better than the flour tortillas her grandmother had been making for decades, Veronica knew she had a winning product she could sell on the market. The first products were tortillas and tortilla chips made from cassava flour and fried in avocado oil. Siete has since delved into avocado oil potato chips available in the flavors of sea salt, fuego, queso, sea salt & vinegar, chipotle BBQ, chile lime and the new spicy dill pickle.
Vandy
Unsatisfied with all of the chips on the market, Ancient Crunch founder Steven A. set out to create a chips with two simple requirements. First, the corn must be naturally grown and the tortillas must be naturally prepared. Second, the tortillas need to be free of any inflammatory seed oils. So he came up with MASA, the first tortilla chips made with both organic corn and grass fed tallow. After MASA, Steve followed up Vandy, potato chips cooked with out seed oils, pesticides, or other additives. He uses the three basic ingredients of potatoes grown naturally and free of CIPC, grass fed & finished tallow, and unrefined sea salt. Vandy comes in original and smokehouse, their take on the rich smokey flavors or Texas and Carolina barbecue.