CheeCha Puffs – Triple Cheese
When it comes to snacks, people are always looking for something that can satisfy their craving, but also not have such dire after effects or consequences to them, namely their hips and stomach. Imagine if you could enjoy all the potato chips you want, without all the fat, sodium and other nasty stuff that it does to your body shortly after. We all want our cake and to eat it to, right? Alas, life is full of trade offs, and often the stuff that is unhealthy tastes the best, while the healthy stuff is usually not so tasty. Looking at you kale.
I bring this up because today’s snacks are part of that movement towards “healthier” snacking. I wouldn’t call it healthy exactly, but its touted as being healthier alternative to the typical bag of potato chips we come across. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the science or process behind how these are made, but these air puffed potato snacks have been all the rage in the past few years, and today’s snack is no exception. Apparently they aren’t fried, which tends to lock in all the oil and bad stuff to give it the taste and texture, so from that perspective these are a bit better.
CheeCha Puffs are a puffed potato snack that are touted as a guilt free snack food, since they are supposedly low in calorie and if we go by that alone, a 105 gram bag will set you back about 450 calories, which is not bad, all things considered. Personally though, I’m more of an all or nothing kind of guy. If I’m going to snack, I know it’s going to be damaging one way or another, so I just go for what I like, instead of going for something I assume will be less damaging. That said, I love trying new things, and I’m interested to see how this plays out. A totally random note, these are apparently made in Canada with Canadian sourced ingredients. Just thought that was a nice thing to know, being from the North and all.
The three cheeses in this puff are supposed to be Cheddar, Romano and Parmesan. While I love cheese in general (even the old, smelly ones), there’s something about Parmesan that bothers me. Not fresh Parmesan, but the powdered, packaged stuff. Something about the smell seems very pungent and off putting to me, so much so that I sometimes avoid it. While the smell off these isn’t instantly off putting, the smell is Parmesan is still present, so I can’t smell this for too long. The cheese smell from this is quite strong, and visually I can see these are coated generously in the cheese powder.
I am kind of curious how they decided on this whole X inside an O shape. I feel like it’s intentional for when they make these, but I don’t know the process to be able to tell you why. I’m just going to refer to them as wheels for convenience. These wheels look to be about the size of a dollar coin, and are fairly flat. A lot of them appear to have curled, which I imagine is part of the drying process. Equally likely that they decided they wanted this to be the final shape, and they had to bend over backwards to get it to come out this way. I don’t want to downplay their effort if that’s the case, just pointing out how strange the shape is.
The flavour of these reminds me of the baked Lay’s cheese chips.Or of the cheese flavoured Pringles. The flavour is definitely there, but it feels like an after thought, in the sense that it feels as though the powder was coated on after the fact. Like if you were to dust the coating off, you’d be left with no flavour. Most chips are made this way, but I guess because it’s not fried, the powder and flavouring doesn’t stick to it as well. That’s not to say it doesn’t taste good, it just feels a tad more muted and subtle than I imagine a fried chip would be. That isn’t a bad thing though, since it’s not overly salty or overpowering. This is especially important if you find yourself capable of binging on snacks, which this one definitely is. Whether that’s a good or bad thing I’ll leave to you to determine.
The texture is where things get interesting. It’s got a slight crunch to it, but as you bite into it you can instantly tell that there’s not much crunching required, and it’s mostly air. Kind of like a slightly more brittle cheese puff; it has one or two extra crunches to it, but it just as easily melts in your mouth if you leave it there. In fact, if you leave one of these on your tongue you can probably hear or feel the crack and popping as it melts. Put all that together and what you end up with is a very light, airy snack. It’s no wonder why they say you can eat the whole bag in one sitting. These go down very quickly, and are pleasant enough that you can easily finish a bag in 15 minutes. I finished most of my bag in less than that, I’m ashamed to admit.
While I am hesitant to believe any claims about healthy snacks, I do have to admit that these are quite tasty, and don’t leave me feeling disgusting or full afterwards. This might also work against me, if I were to find myself in the vicinity of three or four bags. Knowing me I’d probably plow through them, and end up just as bad as having eaten an entire bag of regular chips. All this is to say that I do recommend getting a bag of these. I plan on trying their other flavours, but the three cheese one gets a big thumbs up from me.
