Are Cape Cod 40% Less Fat* Kettle Cooked Chips Healthy?

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I’m not going to lie, Cape Cod chips might be my favorite chip, at least my go-to chip that most supermarkets have.  Perhaps it’s growing up in New England and eating them long before “kettle cooked” style chips made if further south.  I’ve probably been eating the 40% Less Fat* Cape Cod chips for at least a year, mostly trying to cut a bit of fat out of my diet and upping protein while trying to keep calories the same, thus getting some “Low Fat” items.

Anyway, the other day when I grabbed the 40% Less Fat* bag I decided to do a comparison because I have been pretty surprised how well the lower fat version stacked up to the normal chips being 40% Less Fat*.  Lo and behold, when I looked at the nutrition labels there was only a 10 calorie difference per serving.  130 vs 140.

40% Less Fat*                                                                     Original

What?!  1g of fat is 9 calories for reference, so how could 40% Less Fat* only be 10 calories less than the standard chips?  That math didn’t add up, so upon closer inspection of the front I saw the “*”, if you were wondering why I kept including the asterisk every time I typed “40% Less Fat*”, this is it.  Zoom in a bit more under the “40% Less Fat*” section and underneath it says, “*40% less fat than the leading brand of potato chip”.  See Below.

That got me thinking, what is “the leading brand of potato chip?”  Well, after a quick google it appears to be Lays, pretty much the original generic chip.

Doing a bit of quick math and yes, 10g of Fat * 0.4 does equal 6g of fat, and yes, that is the amount of fat the “40% Less Fat* Cape Cod Kettle Cooked Potato Chips” has.  It’s honestly a bit depressing to me that people are buying Lays Classic chips and actually consuming more calories per serving instead of eating Original Cape Cods.

So what do I think of all this?  Honestly, I think I’ll just eat full fat Cape Cod chips, get the slightly superior full fat taste and look for other places to cut fat.  I am a bit disappointed in Cape Cod though, while their marketing is technically accurate, I can easily see someone quickly grabbing the Reduced Fat version because of the “40% Less” in large letters, and then giving themselves 1.5x – 2x a “full fat portion” of chips thinking they they’re fine, when in actuality they are calorically overconsuming a slightly inferior tasting chip by accident.  Also, why ever eat Lays Originals at 160 calories a serving?

Let me know what you think in the comments below!