Are Vegetable Crisps Actually Vegetables? A Singapore Label-Reading Guide

Are Vegetable Crisps Actually Vegetables? A Singapore Label-Reading Guide

They sit on the supermarket shelf looking like the sensible choice. Beetroot pink, sweet potato orange, a bit of parsnip beige — vegetable crisps look like something a nutritionist packed for you, especially next to a bag of ordinary potato chips. So it's a fair question to ask before you drop them into the trolley: are vegetable crisps actually vegetables, and do they count towards the vegetables you're supposed to be eating?

The honest answer is that some of them are closer to vegetables than others, and none of them are a substitute for the real thing. Here's how to tell which one you're holding.

Start with the ingredients list, not the picture

Under Singapore's food labelling rules, every prepacked food must carry a complete list of ingredients, and the Singapore Food Agency is explicit that ingredients are listed in descending order based on weight. That single rule does most of the work for you.

Flip the packet over. If the first ingredient is a whole vegetable — sweet potato, beetroot, carrot, taro — you are genuinely holding sliced, cooked vegetables. If the first two or three ingredients are potato starch, potato flour, rice flour or vegetable oil, and the actual vegetables appear near the bottom of the list (often as "spinach powder" or "tomato powder"), you're holding a starch snack that has been coloured and flavoured with a small amount of vegetable.

Both are legitimate products. They're just not the same product, and the front of the packet often looks identical.

Are vegetable crisps healthier than potato crisps?

Less than most people assume. In a review of the category by the industry publication FoodNavigator, nutritionist and author Charlotte Stirling-Reed put it bluntly: "The nutritional content of the two items is very similar and there is no significant nutritional benefit to consuming vegetable crisps instead of potato crisps."

She noted some real differences, but they cut in both directions. Vegetable crisps do tend to have more fibre. They also tend to be higher in carbohydrate and sugar, because the vegetables' natural sugars are counted as added sugars once they've been processed into a crisp. Potato crisps may have slightly more protein. And crucially, both categories tend to be high in saturated fat and salt. The extra fibre, she said, "isn't likely to be enough to have any positive impact on health," and whatever micronutrients survive are outweighed by the fat, salt and sugar that come with them.

That's worth sitting with, because it's the opposite of how the category is usually marketed.

Do they count towards your two servings a day?

No — and it's worth knowing why. The Health Promotion Board recommends two servings of vegetables a day, and defines a serving in fresh weights: about 100g of raw non-leafy vegetables like broccoli, or 150g of raw leafy vegetables like kai lan.

A typical packet of vegetable crisps weighs somewhere around 25–40g in total, and much of that weight is starch and oil rather than vegetable. Even a packet made entirely from sliced sweet potato is nowhere near a serving once you account for the water that's been driven off and the oil that's replaced it. Vegetable crisps can be a nice snack. They are not a shortcut to your two servings.

The health-halo problem

There's a documented pattern behind why these products feel healthier than they are. A study published in Nutrients, which audited 2,361 snack products across supermarkets and health-food stores in Sydney, found that snacks sold as "health foods" carried far more nutrient content claims, health claims and marketing buzzwords than equivalent products in the regular aisles — a median of five claims per product versus one, for products with equally poor nutrition scores. They also cost significantly more, regardless of how they actually scored.

In other words, the density of healthy-sounding words on a packet tells you very little about what's inside it. The researchers concluded that consumers need better label-reading education, not more claims.

A 20-second test in the aisle

  • Read the first three ingredients. If they're starches and oil, the vegetables are decoration.
  • Check sodium per 100g, not per serving — serving sizes vary between brands and make comparison harder.
  • Check saturated fat. This is where "baked" versions genuinely tend to differ from fried ones.
  • Ignore the front of the packet. Words like "made with real vegetables" are not a quantity.
  • Look for the Healthier Choice Symbol if you want a shortcut — it's an HPB scheme that does apply to packaged foods, and it's assessed against nutrient criteria rather than marketing copy.

So should you stop buying them?

Not necessarily. A snack doesn't have to be a vegetable to be worth eating. The problem isn't that vegetable crisps exist — it's that people eat them instead of vegetables, and feel like they've already done the healthy thing. If you enjoy them, buy the ones with real vegetables at the top of the list, watch the sodium, and keep your two servings coming from actual vegetables at lunch and dinner.

The most useful habit isn't avoiding a category. It's turning the packet over.

A note on what we make

We're a snack brand, so we'll be straight with you: HexaCrunch crackers aren't vegetables either, and we'd never ask you to count them as one. What our baked brown-rice crackers do offer is a snack built around wholegrain brown rice and cricket protein, so the protein and fibre are doing some real work rather than just the marketing. If you'd like to see where they land on your own label test, the Try-All 3-Pack lets you compare all three flavours — ingredients list and all.

Sources

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