Snacks are his thing: Jeremy Selwyn, creator of taquitos.net, tries and reviews thousands of snacks. He watches the trends and finds the unusual. What’s the scoop on snacking? Selwyn filled Blast in on this tasty tradition.
The classics will always be around. Selwyn said snack food creators may get creative with new flavors and ingredients, but Fritos will always grace the snack aisle. "Crazy flavors aren’t going to encroach on the old market," said Selwyn.
Selwyn admits that not everyone possesses his insatiable tastes for new snacking experiences. "A lot of people aren’t as crazy as I am. They go back to the snacks they really like," said Selwyn.
Seafood chips fall short of tasty, according to Selwyn. A lot of fish-themed chips grace his "Worst Chips" list on the site. Selwyn said most of the seafood inspired munchies are sold in Asian markets, and he found them to be just terrible. He was quick to note that it is a matter of taste and it is important to try something before you judge it. "Just because I think they’re awful doesn’t mean you won’t like it," said Selwyn.
Store brands are probably made in the same factory as the name brand. Why splurge? Selwyn said in some cases there are different recipes involved, but quite frequently the same chips are filling different bags.
Selwyn journeyed to many parts of the country to find local snacks. In Pennsylvania, he said, he was able to visit some snack factories. It was there he observed the store brand and name brand snacks being packaged and produced in the same place.
"Sometimes they’ll use a cheaper brand of cheese or cut corners to make the store brand, but other times it is exactly the same," Selwyn said.
For New Englanders, Cape Cod chips are still worth the splurge, according to Selwyn. "We are lucky to be so close to Cape Cod to get fresh Cape Cod chips. They are just really good chips," Selwyn said.
Snacking is not meant to be low fat, according to Selwyn. Most of the low fat, low carb varieties of snacks Selwyn said he tried didn’t taste nearly as good as their fattier counterparts. Cheese puffs, according to Selwyn, were a snack he could eat all day, but the healthier versions were made with reduced fat cheese. The reduced fat cheese tasted terrible, according to Selwyn. "You eat cheese for a reason," he said.
Rice chips are another one of his pet peeves with healthy snacking. "The flavor doesn’t adhere to them," said Selwyn.
Selwyn said many of these healthy alternatives don’t last long in the market, but that there were people who continued to eat them. "There is a minority of people who will eat things they don’t like," he said.
Try new snacks. Selwyn said he ate some varieties of chips that were so bad he had trouble getting through just one. With other varieties, he said, it was hard not to finish the bag.
Bringing new snacks to work and watching co-workers reactions, according to Selwyn, is always interesting. "People prejudge the snacks and then try it. Sometimes they are really surprised by how good it tastes," Selwyn said.
For the future of snacking, Selwyn looked to Cheese Whiz wondering what comes after cheese from a can. "They should have plumbing throughout the city with cheese that comes right to your home. Then what comes next, intravenous cheese?"
With the popularity of his site, Selwyn receives samples of snacks on a fairly constant basis. He said he doesn’t ever see getting tired of snacks.
"There is an endless amount of things to try.”
TASTE TEST!
In honor of Selwyn’s suggestion to try new snacks, this Blast reporter decided to take a chance on Food Should Taste Good Chocolate Tortilla Chips from Whole Foods. It passed the "couldn’t get through the whole chip" mark, but didn’t quite make it to the "chips I had trouble not finishing the bag" mark.
The list of good things about this chip on the bag was fairly long. It was gluten free, lactose free, preservative free, cholesterol free, trans fat free, all natural, Kosher, low sodium, a good source of fiber, and not genetically modified. There is a little bit of skepticism if anyone would actually eat enough of these chips to make all of this good stuff really affect their diet.
The taste was first corn chip then chocolate. It was almost like biting into a hard version of cocoa powder, slightly bitter with a dry, chalky consistency. The chocolate flavor was there, but for this milk chocolate fan, it was a much darker chocolate flavoring than was expected. Taking low sodium off the list of good things might have made this chip a little better. The salty moments were some of my favorites when eating the chip.
All around it was a great chip to try. It wasn’t awful and it was definitely a flavor experience that is hard to stumble upon in New England where chocolate covered potato chips aren’t easily found.
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