Healthy Chips!

There's a vegan version of everything — sour cream, cheddar cheese, beef tips, chicken drumsticks. But until now, there's been no vegan ranch-flavored chips. For years, I've lamented this sad fact. When John of the Laziest Vegans in the World interviewed me a few months ago, he asked what product I'd like to see veganized, I answered "sour cream and onion potato chips or ranch tortilla chips." That's the only thing I miss anymore.

But lo and behold, there ARE dairy-free ranch chips! But they're not made from potatoes or tortillas. They're made from kale!!! Rhythm Superfoods sent me a few bags of their healthy chips to try, and one was Kool Ranch Kale Chips. They also threw in a bag of Hickory BBQ Sweet Potato Chips.

Of course, I tore into the kale chips immediately. And wow. Just wow. These super-crispy kale chips are coated in a magical mixture of cashews, zucchini, onion, nutritional yeast, garlic, parsley and other stuff that makes them taste almost exactly like Cool Ranch Doritos.

But unlike the Doritos, these babies are loaded with nutrients. One serving has 112 percent of your daily recommended vitamin A and 80 percent of your vitamin C. I wish I had, like, 20 more bags of these since there are only 2 servings per bag. They're not cheap at around $7 a bag. But these are crispier than any I've been able to make at home in my dehydrator.

The sweet potato chips weren't quite as impressive though. Good, but not on the level of the ranch kale chips. Unlike other brands of sweet p chips, these are raw and not fried. So they're plenty healthy, but they could use a little more of the hickory BBQ flavoring.

As you can see from this picture, only one of the four chips on this plate is super-coated. That one was delicious! But Rhythm should work on making sure the chips are more evenly coated. Nonetheless, I feel much better about snacking on these at my desk than I would, say, regular old BBQ potato chips. They have 310 percent of your daily vitamin A, and the whole bag is only 110 calories.

If I were to shell out the big bucks on more, I'd put my money on the kale chips all day long. And don't worry, I'm pretty sure a kale chip splurge is in my future. They also have kale chips in Mango Habanero, Bombay Curry, Texas BBQ, and Zesty Nacho. The sweet tater ones are available in BBQ and Sea Salt. There's a store locater on their website or you can order directly from the web. They aren't available in Memphis yet.