While very delicious, are popcorners healthy to eat?
It is on par with any other typical chip, just made using corn instead of potato (and it has a small amount of sugar). I find it odd that the mainstream view is that chips are an unhealthy snack, yet none of their constituent ingredients are unhealthy in the mainstream view (Potatos/corn, vegetable oil, salt in moderation). It is, however, an ultra processed food with empty calories. It’s the kind of product that is specifically designed to exploit your senses to make you crave more (especially the kind with flavoring).
They aren’t up to my personal standards. The non-gmo corn may or may not contain glyphosate, and it’s made with seed oil (which I avoid). I don’t know whether the oil is kept at high temperature during the manufacturing process of the chip (which would make it worse), though the package does say that it is not fried.
tl;dr it’s an ultra-processed food that can be a part of a diet alongside whole foods.
They can absolutely be a part of a healthy diet. I wouldn’t call them a health food though. They aren’t inherently unhealthy either. But this is my philosophy with all food. Does it make sense for anyone to ask if a single food or ingredient is healthy without knowing overall diet and lifestyle?
They used to make a protein variant that had a pretty good macro spread considering they are ultra processed chips (essentially). Not sure what happened to those, but the non-protein ones are a decent option as far as snacking foods I think. Purely looking at caloric breakdown mind you.