Fruits can be fresh, frozen, canned, or dried, but thanks to the new Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips I can now eat fruits in a crunchy, processed chip form. If you combine the taste of bananas with the look, size, and crunch of Wheat Thins and the shape of Doritos you would have an idea of what Garden Harvest Toasted Chips are like, or you could look at the picture on the right.
According to the revised USDA food pyramid, I should be eating six ounces of grains, two and a half cups of vegetables, two cups of fruits, three cups of milk, and five and a half ounces of meat and beans every day, but who eats like that? Who eats two and a half cups of vegetables and two cups of fruit everyday?
Most likely, people healthier and skinnier than me.
I don’t even know what a cup of fruit looks like. I was going to educate myself and find out how many slices of bread I need to eat to reach six ounces of grains or how many bananas I need to eat to get two cups of fruits, but the McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meal I ate made me sluggish and lazy.
It’s good to have another option when it comes to eating fruit because fruits are a pain in the ass, especially bananas. Fresh fruits, unlike Cher’s face, eventually wilt, rot, or spoil. Picking fresh fruit at the grocery store is also difficult since I get kicked out for smelling, fondling, or slapping fruit a little too much in order to know if they are ripe.
I know that honeydew melon enjoyed it.
I could make my own banana chips by buying some not quite ripe bananas from the grocery store, waiting for them to ripen, cutting them into slices, pulling out my Ronco Food Dehydrator, placing the banana slices on my Ronco Food Dehydrator racks, setting and forgetting my Ronco Food Dehydrator, letting the Ronco Food Dehydrator do its thing, and in a time 1,000 times longer than the time it takes me to walk to the nearest hippie natural foods store and buy banana chips, my homemade banana chips will be ready.
The Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips taste like the banana chips found in hippie natural foods stores, which I enjoy, and just like Lays Potato Chips, prescription painkillers, a roll of bubble wrap, or a room full of balloons with a needle in my hand, once I pop, I can’t stop.
Despite tasting good, I was disappointed that I couldn’t reach my daily recommended amount of fruit by eating only the Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips, since a serving of about 16 chips only provides the equivalent of 1/4 cup of fruit.
If you’re too lazy to do the math from eating a McDonald’s Big Mac Value Meal, I would have to eat 2/3 of the six-ounce bag in order to eat a cup of fruit or about 64 chips. I’m pretty sure eating a normal banana would be easier, if you eat them quick enough before they start rotting. Also, bananas are an excellent source of potassium and I was hoping that these chips be another good source, but each serving only has 160 milligrams, compared with a medium-sized banana, which has 400-500 milligrams.
Overall, the Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips are tasty and they’re healthier than other snacks out there, but aren’t as healthy as an actual banana. But if you’re tired of the rotting with fresh fruits; the opening of cans with canned fruits; the thawing of frozen fruits; or the hippie, treehugger images that goes with dried fruits, you may want to give these chips a try.
(Nutritional Facts – 1 ounce (about 16 chips) – 120 calories, 3 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 60 milligrams of sodium, 160 milligrams of potassium, 22 grams of carbs, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 8 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, and 0 grams of banana peel slipping.)
(Editor’s Note: Read more about the Garden Harvest Toasted Chips at the Junk Food Blog. Then go watch the second version of the Hot Dog Dance)
Item: Nabisco Banana Garden Harvest Toasted Chips
Price: $3.99 (6-ounces)
Purchased at: Wal-Mart
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes like banana chips. Crunchy. Recloseable bag. Naturally flavored. Baked with 100% whole grain. Made with actual bananas. Decent alternative for fresh, frozen, canned, and dried fruits.
Cons: Only one-fourth a cup of fruit per one ounce serving. Not a lot of potassium with this banana product. Rotting fruit. The amount of time it takes to dry fruit in the Ronco Food Dehydrator. Getting kicked out of the grocery store for fondling melons. Bananas can be a pain in the ass.