A Shocking Discovery Unwrapped in Holiday Snack Food

Unwelcome Presents in Snack Food Ingredients

I am so bummed about Bugles!

I used to love this snack food as a child but seldom eat them these days. Most of the time I come across Bugles is around the Christmas as a party snack food.





Reading food labels has been a habit for me for the last 1-2 years, and I decided to take a peek at the Bugles label. I was mainly looking for the usual things such as

• Serving size 
• Calories per serving 
• Fat per serving 
• Fat content - saturated vs unsaturated 

Bugles didn't show me much that I didn't already expect such as a calorie content of 160 calories per 30 gram serving. Why don't the companies quantify in # of Bugles in a serving? It's a major hassle to weigh out chips on a kitche scale. I suspect that the serving size is around 12 to 15  Bugles based on some other chip labels that do give chip counts per serving.

However, the biggest surprise for me were the ingredients list in Bugles. The two main ones that caught my eye were

• Degermed yellow cornmeal 
• BHT (Butylated hydroxytoluene) 

The degermed cornmeal is basically the same a white flour. It is cornmeal stripped of all the fiber. I'm sure the glycemic index for it is higher than less processed cornmeal.

BHT is a preservative, not unexpected. I recognize toluene as a chemical compound from college organic chemistry, and it is not something that I would ever want to eat especially knowing now that  embalming fluid and jet fuel also contain BHT.

Sadly, Bugles and I must part ways now. I ate my last chip yesterday. The lesson that I learned again yesterday and share here is the lesson to always read labels not only for servings and calorie information but also to investigate what you are eating. 

I intend to eat less processed foods, foods without perservatives, and more whole grains this coming New Year. How about you?