Snacking can be serious business

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There was some very important business going on last month at SNAXPO 2006, dubbed "The world's premier event for the snack food industry."

Held March 19-22 in the massive Mandalay Bay convention area, the Snack Food Association's annual convention, exhibition and spectacle of munchies housed more than 300 booths displaying every product, flavor, color, material, package, process, system or service imaginable having to do with manufacturing and distributing snacks of every variety. And despite the availability of many a tempting sample, it was all business.

Serious business. Really.

That's why I tried only 36 different kinds of chips, popcorn, puffs, fries, dips and rinds. You know, pork rinds.

While the State of the Snack Food Industry address claimed there is an "urgency to inject healthier options into America's eating habits," most of the next-generation trends look to be like more of the same addictive, flavor-blasted morsels designed to keep us happy and high on a sugar buzz.

However, one new product touting nutrition as the main attraction, Veggie Pasta Snacks, crafted by a company called Duyvis, was so out of place in the designated snack tasting area that most people avoided sampling them altogether.

But not me. I tried them and immediately regretted it. As if they didn't look bad enough, with their odd shell shapes and drab coloring, the taste and texture were akin to a mouthful of dried mud.

Not everything healthy tastes bad, though VegNat Foods Inc.'s new Tasty SoyNuts come in several flavors, are made kosher-friendly and without peanuts, and contain five times more protein than potato chips and no cholesterol. And they're tasty. It even says so on the box.

My SNAXPO experience included lots of time at the Kraft Food ingredients booth, where I quizzed representatives about what they put into their macaroni and cheese that makes kids want to eat it for every meal.

"That's one of those things where if I tell you I'd have to kill you," said one representative, a nice guy by the name of Ed Morrin. He wasn't smiling, either. But he told me that his department of Kraft makes more than 200 varieties of that cheese powder, and that cheese powder varies wildly depending mostly on the percentage of actual cheese involved.

He let me try out a few new concepts Kraft was pitching to other manufacturers, including a Caesar dressing-flavored potato chip and something called Baccarat Mix, which was mainly a cheese puff minus the cheese, coated in Oreo cookie crumbs. Sounds crazy, tastes delicious.

All in all, some snacks were good (Vitner's Louisiana Hot Sauce potato chips -- hot!) and some were bad (Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Fries don't deserve the mouse's good name). But most were just like the stuff you've already had.

Except for a few: Shearer's Sweet Wasabi Mustard potato chips, Jenny's Caramel Dittos and the Cheddar Beer Kettle Chips. I'm praying these will find a Las Vegas distributor.

Brock Radke's food column appears twice monthly. Contact him at bradke@viewnews.com.