KIWI’s Snack Closet Favorites

We’re lucky, here at KIWI’s editorial office in New York, to have a sample closet overflowing with tasty treats. Of all the genres of snack food represented in the closet, my favorite is the Healthy Version of the Junk Food Staple. Even when chips, cookies and candies are purged of ‘bad’ ingredients like trans fats and refined carbs, they still appeal to the allure of forbidden food. They satisfy my impulse to use junk foods as a reward, but save me the nutritional hangover. Here’s what I can’t get enough of this month:

Chips: Snikiddy Baked Fries, Classic Ketchup flavor.

These potato and cornmeal chips have the dimensions of McDonald’s french fries, the texture of cheese puffs, and the distinct flavor of ketchup. It sounds gross, but they are addictively tangy and have just the right amount of sweetness—they may even be better than the real 57. One KIWI intern, for whom french fries are a particular weakness, said they reminded her of summer and being at the shore—minus seagulls trying to scam her fries.

Bonus: Even though the Baked Fries look like a highly-processed laboratory food, I recognize all of the ingredients as real food in my pantry. No nuts, gluten or corn syrup, either.

Cookies: Bear Naked Soft-Baked Granola Cookies, Fruit and Nut flavor

We recently came to the consensus that cookies are pointless unless they’re home-baked, yet these are quickly disappearing. Dense with organic oats, nuts and dried fruit, they are more of a hybrid food—healthier than a cookie but tastier than a granola bar. I didn’t feel ashamed to have one for breakfast.

Bonus: They improve greatly with a few seconds in the microwave.

Candy: Q.bel All Natural Wafer Bars, Double Dark flavor

I know some people satisfy their chocolate cravings with austere square inches of fine dark chocolate. I’m not that person. I’ve got to have the complete candy bar experience, colorful wrapper and all. A Q.bel bar fits the bill, and contains less sugar than a Luna bar. The Double Dark flavor has airy dark chocolate mousse wedged between crisp wheat wafer cookies and dipped in Belgian dark chocolate. Best, each pocket-sized pouch comes with two bars. They are light, not too sweet, and—by the same psychology that made Twix and Almond Joys my childhood favorites—totally satisfying.

Bonus: Nothing hydrogenated or artificial. The Double Dark flavor is vegan!

—Kat, KIWI intern

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