Smartfood – Jalapeno & Cheddar Popcorn

Popcorn is the ultimate movie time snack. It’s relatively quiet, comes in big buckets, and is nice and light so you don’t pass out from a food coma or anything. For me, the key selling point is that it’s light and comes in seemingly bigger portions, given it’s fluffy, round size and near negligible weight. It’s because of this some people tout it was the ultimate “healthy” or diet snack. I would be somewhat inclined to agree, as for the same handful of chips vs. the same calorie’s worth of popcorn, you’ll feel like you’re eating more. With dieting, sometimes the illusion is more than enough when it comes to portions.

The thing is, I don’t go by that. Sure if you were to break it down, I would eat slightly less popcorn in calories than I would another snack, but because it’s so light and fluffy I end up eating more. In the end, it doesn’t make much difference to me. Unless the popcorn is seasoned or has toppings on it, in which case I just end up consuming twice the amount of sodium and fat. That being said, sometimes I crave popcorn, and nutrition labels be damned, I dive head first into a bag of well-seasoned popcorn.

Smartfood has always been the top pick when it comes to pre-seasoned popcorn. The classic white cheddar was always a delight and made me feel slightly less guilty than eating an entire bag of potato or corn chips. I’m pretty sure that’s not how they intend for you to consume it, but I was a growing boy. I always knew nothing about it was healthy, but it was still slightly healthier than the alternatives. Just slightly. Mostly though, it was that unmistakable cheddar flavour that always brought me back. I never could find anything quite like it. I guess that’s why they managed to go so long without innovating or releasing new flavours.

I feel like it wasn’t until the past few years that they started branching out from their white cheddar into all sorts of other flavours, like the Jalapeno and cheddar flavour I have with me today. I imagine they’re playing to their strengths and keeping to the cheese theme here. A little jalapeno to mix things up seems like a good idea doesn’t it?

Texture is pretty standard for bagged popcorn. It’s very light, fluffy and has a melt in your mouth texture, if you let it just sit there. There’s not much to say about the texture of popcorn, since it’s pretty standard stuff and most of what you’re buying this for is the flavour.

Cheddar jalapeno seems like a pretty standard flavour to me at this point. It’s the taste of a cheddar like cheese powder along with a side of jalapeno flavour. The jalapenos add a bit of an earthy, veggie like flavour that almost reminds me of banana for some reason. The spice isn’t too strong, and you likely won’t feel the heat building until after a couple handfuls. It’s a nice flavour that has a slight kick to it to change things up, so that it’s not just cheese. Unless all you want is cheese. In which case this still delivers.

It’s always nice to change things up, and this one does that quite well. While it’s not quite as good as the white cheddar flavour, I wouldn’t say no to this if it was my only option, or someone offered it to me. I might even consider this once in a while to breakup the routine of just white cheddar. Not bad, not bad at all.