Snacking is the kind of everyday luxury I can really get behind — nothing beats a little mid-afternoon nibble. And I’m mostly vegan, so the snacks I eat are probably really good for me, right? Well, whether something is “healthy” or not actually depends on nutritional content, not buzz words. Unfortunately, a lot of people tend to conflate “vegan” with “healthy,” and marketers play into this by pushing it as a catchphrase on plant-based snack labels and packaging.
Those marketers are savvy — so can you really blame anyone who thinks seeing a picture of a vegetable or the term “plant-based” front-and-center on a bag of chips or a vegan jerky wrapper means it’s a solidly healthy choice? That said, we should always take claims on food packaging with a grain of salt, so I asked nutritionists to help me investigate whether these plant-based snacks are really healthier than their alternatives.
