Product Review: Food Should Taste Good Hemp Chips

My co-op is running a sale for the first two weeks of July on Food Should Taste Good Hemp Chips (but none of the other Food Should Taste Good products), so I decided to give the chips a try. I love the FSTG sweet potato chips best, but haven't disliked any of their chips so far.

The same is true for these hemp chips, which to be honest, are glorified blue corn tortilla chips. In fact, organic blue corn is the first ingredient, followed by high oleic sunflower and/or safflower oil, THEN hemp seeds, corn bran and sea salt. All ingredients I can pronounce. Pronounceable ingredient lists is becoming increasingly important to me.

The chips have a nice crunch, are about the same size as traditional tortilla chips (but a bit thicker than many commercially available brands), and aren't particularly salty.

Chip Relative to Picture on Package

But I'd have liked a little more...hemp flavor. Hemp has a distinctive flavor--if you've ever gone the hemp nut or hemp seed milk, you know what I'm talking about, a mild nutty taste (geez, this is true of so many seeds that it feels like a non-description). It's there, but subtle.

If you've tried FSTG products before, you should give these a try. And if you haven't...maybe try one of the more interesting chips first. They aren't, nutritionally speaking, much better for you than regular chips -- similar calorie counts, more or less fat and protein depending on the variety you pick -- but they are lower sodium, which is important for some diets, gluten-free, non-GMO, certified vegan and kosher, etc. And they taste much better than most traditional chips I've tried (and I don't think that's just a psychological result of the name). These are the reasons you should try FSTG chips. And, if you're bringing chips and dip/salsa for a party, the hemp chips, or most of the other varieties would be great (maybe not the chocolate for anything but a sweet dip? I haven't tried it, but the website indicates these are good crumbled on ice cream. Hm....)

Also, if you're in the "you can get high off hemp; it should be banned" camp, you're wrong. Technically, you could get high off industrially raised hemp, I suppose, but according to my research its bred to have an incredibly low THC level (this is what gets people high) in favor of being much more fibrous. The THC that is present on the outer portion of the seed can be "dabbed off with alcohol" or scrubbed off with a brush. In other words, you'd have to eat a lot of raw hemp. A lot.