A banana chip is a thin, deep-fried slice of banana. Once fried, the slightly sweet chips are crisp (often bordering on rock-hard) and oily. Because they look like fruit, some people mistake these for a healthy snack, but they are far from good for you. A one ounce serving has about 150 calories and 9.5 grams of fat, almost all of it saturated.
On Trader Joe's top 100 list, they included something called banana crisps. I only tried them recently, since nearby Trader Joe's seemed to be perpetually sold out of them. Unlike the traditional deep-fried diet disasters, these chips are baked. They are ultra-thin and akin to an ordinary potato chip in both looks and flavor, and actually make a great substitute for regular potato chips because they don't taste very banana-like at all, though they are slightly sweet rather than salty. Best of all, each one ounce (2/3 cup) serving has only 40 calories and 1 gram of fat.
[Banana crisp image via Trader Joe's Fan, which has a great review of them, too)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-18-2006 @ 10:35AM
Rivermaya said...
I realy familiar with this snack, banana crips is our traditional recipes. but I just know this isn't healthy snack at all :(
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8-18-2006 @ 10:39AM
mike said...
I haven't seen crisps but I've had Just Bananas, from Whole Foods. They're good if you really like banana flavor, they sort of melt in your mouth after an initial gratifying crispiness.
Maybe some day a Trader Joe's will pop up within 200 miles of here.
http://www.justtomatoes.com/html/product/banana1.html
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8-18-2006 @ 1:04PM
MJ said...
Ive had the chips and they are very bland. Thought they would taste like bananas! It was not good.
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11-03-2006 @ 4:53PM
Rick said...
You may be interested to know that Trader Joe's has taken the banana crisps off the market because the nutritional label was incorrect. The crisps actually have four times the amount of calories listed and six times the fat. That's 160 calories vs 40 and 6 grams of fat vs 6.
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11-03-2006 @ 4:56PM
Rick said...
Sorry - to correct the above post - Trader Joe's has taken the crisps TEMPORARILY off the market. And I should have written 'that is 6 grams of fat vs 1 gram of fat'.
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