Food Packet’s Nutrition Information
I was pleasantly surprised when I gave these veggie chips that I spotted at Coles a go. The chips are very crunchy – I really enjoy crunchy foods – and not too salty nor greasy. Their local store has this Scoop & Weigh station for loose nuts, seeds, trail mixes, sweets and other snack-sort of foods. The veggie chips I tried can be found at this station. My next thought was that kids would surely love it too!
I took this suggestion to the childcare centre’s cook whom I cover for as a casual. I suggested she try it because their menu does include an occasional side of potato or corn chips, and I thought this mix would make a good alternative, with more fibre and phytochemicals, and less sodium and fat than potato or corn chips. She immediately tried serving the veggie chips as a side dish at lunch, but, although the children loved them, she thought it was way too expensive to make it regular.
That compelled me to go ahead and carry a little research I already wanted to: I collated and compared a few snack-foods I know are popular with children attending childcare services – I see these on menus and in children’s lunchboxes – and I share here my findings:
Now, as anyone who shops at supermarkets - well, pretty much everyone reading this! -, we know how hard it is to skim through the dozens of options of a single type of food. On top of that, choosing the healthiest amongst those is a very very very very hard task! No wonder most people will simply decide their purchase based on the most attractive feature of the product. Be it the colourful package, or the health claims on it, or the price…
For example, note that Harvest Snaps has a 5 Health Stars Rating (HSR) even though its saturated fats content is above the maximum recommended per 100g of product (4.6g > 3g recommended). This could be because the HSR is a voluntary scheme where the manufacturer is responsible for calculating the rating and then decide if it goes on the packet or not; and also because the HSR calculator’s algorithm compares each key nutrient of a product against other similar products in its database (and on the supermarket shelves). In this case, Harvest Snaps has a much lower content of total fats (19.4%) than other products (e.g. Smith’s Crinkle total fats is 34.8%). These factors must have influenced the calculator to give this product a five star rating.
So, I tried my best to compile the most important health information on the table above. And I must be honest with you, it wasn’t easy to get it all together and display it in a way that made sense and looked straightforward. Please, let me know if it doesn’t.
Anyways, if there’s any straightforward recommendation I can give you to choose an as-healthy-as-possible snack, I’d say go for those with a Health Star Rating of 3.5 or higher and compare the price per kilo. Hopefully your children will like that one!😉
As for the Coles Veggie Chips being seen as “too expensive”, I’d revisit that view because it isn’t more expensive than less healthy options, and it is very close to counting as a vegetable serve instead of a discretionary food! From the table above, that’s my pick!* 😊
There is quite a lot more I could add to this article, but I decided to stop here, so, if you have questions, please, feel free to get in touch. Also, you can get more digested (pun totally intended!) information on snacks in our eBook MY LUNCHBOX HOW TO, including a simplified way to read AND understand the Nutrition Information Panel (NIP) on food packets.
*I have no conflict of interest with any company marketing the products mentioned in this article.
References:
Coles Online (06/01/2025) for prices and nutritional information of products
Australian Food Composition Database - Release 2.0
Eat For Health website (Australian Dietary Guidelines) – Food Labels
Health Star Rating System website
