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It’s been trumpeted as being high in fibre, comes in flavours as diverse as marshmallow and blue cheese, and is one of the UK’s fastest growing grocery products. But is popcorn really a healthy alternative to snack food staples such as crisps?
Popcorn has its benefits. For starters, it is a whole grain – a type of food linked to the prevention of cancers and heart disease due to their content of fibre, antioxidants as well as various vitamins and minerals.
“If you use a machine [at home] and you pop it in air and don’t add anything to it – or you are buying manufactured popcorn and it is cooked in a very, very small amount of oil – then I think it is a good snack,” said Clare Thornton Wood from the British Dietetic Association.
But, she warned, many popcorn products are not so innocent, having been cooked in fat and then doused with sugar, salt and flavourings. “If you take a packet of plain crisps and a packet of popcorn, they are coming in a similar sort of calorie value,” said Thornton Wood, noting that when it comes to popcorn’s nutritional value “there are better ways of getting antioxidants”.
A 32.5g bag of Walker’s ready salted crisps contains 10.4g of fat, 0.46g of salt and comes in at 171 calories. By comparison, 32.5g of Tyrrells sea-salted popcorn contains 6.3g of fat, 0.38g of salt and has 159 calories.
But what about “skinny” popcorn? Looking at Metcalfe’s sea salt offering, 32.5g contains 141 calories, 5.4g of fat, and 0.29 g of salt. Lower values than a bag of crisps, but still more than you might expect.
And for some of the more exotic popcorn products, the calories jump up: the same weight of sweet popcorn contains 174 calories, 10.3g of fat and 7.5g of sugar.
But, Thornton Wood points out, bags of popcorn generally weigh less than that of crisps, meaning that a bagful could contain fewer calories. “Popcorn is fairly moreish though,” she adds. “I think people have got to be a bit careful about portion control.”
To avoid the bittersweet side of the snack, Thorton Wood recommends popping corn at home using a fat-free machine. “Just put the kernels in, turn it on, it heats up and then it just pops them with the hot air,” she said.
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