It’s no surprise salt and vinegar chips are a popular snack, with their tangy taste and satisfying crunch. But they’re often rich in carbs, fat, and sodium, and they don’t contain many other nutrients to keep you full. While chips and other snack foods can be part of a healthy diet when eaten in moderation, consuming them often may lead to weight gain and contribute to other health issues, notes the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Accordingly, you may want to eat them in limited amounts.
Even heart-healthier varieties, such as baked or reduced-sodium chips, are best enjoyed only once in a while. If you’re regularly craving chips, consider making your own at home by thinly slicing sweet potatoes or other veggies and air-frying them.
How Eating Chips Affects Your Health
Salt and vinegar chips are rich in calories, carbs, and fat. These foods are highly processed, in general, and don’t provide many vitamins or other nutrients, advises the University of Central Florida.
Because chips often don’t contain protein or fiber, they’re less likely to make you feel full or satisfied. Consequently, you may eat significantly more than the recommended serving size. This means you’re also taking in quite a few more calories, which contributes to weight gain.
Highly processed foods like chips are often high in saturated fat, too, which can increase your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels, notes the American Heart Association (AHA). Having a high LDL can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.
If you eat foods like salt and vinegar chips on a regular basis, your sodium intake is likely to be high, too. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 90 percent of Americans consume too much salt on a daily basis. And much of this high sodium intake comes from packaged, prepared, and processed foods like chips.
Regularly eating high-sodium foods can increase your blood pressure. And having high blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, notes the FDA.
Excess sodium can also cause you to retain water, contributing to bloating and even weight gain, the AHA advises.
Salt and Vinegar Chips: A Closer Look at the Nutrition Facts
Salt and vinegar chips are a popular snack food. Some chip companies, like Lay’s, produce a variety of salt and vinegar chips, including original, baked, and kettle-cooked options.
According to Lay’s, a serving of original salt and vinegar chips is 28 grams (g), or about 17 chips. Each serving has 160 calories and 10 g of fat, with 1.5 g from saturated fat, reports the U.S. Department of Agriculture FoodData Central database. The chips also have 15 g of carbs, and 1 g of fiber.
There aren’t many essential nutrients in Lay’s salt and vinegar chips. But you can find 10 percent of your daily value for vitamin C and 9 percent of your daily value for potassium in each serving.
As their name implies, salt and vinegar chips also have a large amount of sodium. There are 220 milligrams (mg) of sodium in each 17-chip serving. This accounts for nearly 15 percent of the daily 1,500 mg of sodium recommended by the AHA.
Though baked, kettle-cooked, or reduced-sodium chips are often presented as healthier alternatives — and they may have less fat and salt — they can still be high in calories and carbs, contributing to weight gain and other health issues, if eaten regularly. For example, a 28 g serving of original baked potato chips has 120 calories and 21 g of carbs, according to FoodData Central.
Satisfying Snack Alternatives
Salt and vinegar chips are a snack food you may want to enjoy once in a while, rather than every day. If you’re craving traditional potato chips, aim for baked varieties, which contain less fat. Also look for those with minimal ingredients, which may indicate they’ve undergone less processing, advises Hartford HealthCare.
Or try making your own at home. You can thinly slice plantains, cassava, beetroot, russet potatoes, or sweet potatoes and air-fry them for heart-healthy alternatives. Baking kale and broccoli until they’re crispy and roasting Brussels sprouts with seasoning can also provide a satisfying crunch.
When reaching for a snack, Harvard Health Publishing recommends opting for more filling, nutrient-rich foods instead. Healthier snacks include unprocessed foods, like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, notes the AHA. These all contain protein, fiber, and healthy fats to keep you feeling full.
For some non-chip crunch, try apples with peanut butter, or enjoy roasted chickpeas or air-popped popcorn. Low-fat cheese, hummus with vegetable sticks, and roasted cashews are also nutritious snacks.
