![]() If you eat an ounce (the serving size listed on the bag), you're in chip territory, nutritionally speaking.įor the most part, our tested popcorns' nutrition was in line with their front-of-the-bag claims. To level the popcorn playing field, we consistently used 2 cups in our ratings, which is also what we believe is a good-sized snack. That's because the values listed in the Nutrition Facts label are for 1 ounce, and the cup measure for that amount is 3¾ to 4 cups, depending on the brand. But flip to the back of the bag, and you might start to feel like you need a calculator in hand. The fronts of the packages boast the calorie count per cup. Still, any of the five popcorns makes a healthier choice than chips or pretzels. The fat and sodium counts cost them a higher rating, says Consumer Reports nutritionist Ellen Klosz. That put them in the Good or Fair rating category for nutrition. We looked at the original or the most basic sea salt variety of five bagged brands: Angie's Boomchickapop Cape Cod Popcorn, Indiana SkinnyPop and Smartfood.Īll of them had just three ingredients-popcorn, oil, and salt-and contained 70 to 78 calories, 3 to 5 grams of fat, and 40 to 117 mg of sodium per 2-cup serving. ![]() Manufacturers of bagged brands have capitalized on popcorn's relatively healthy reputation, splashing the front of the packages with such claims as " whole grain," "gluten-free," and "50 percent less fat." Many brands also boast the calorie count per cup.Įven some of the popcorn brand names-such as SkinnyPop and Smartfood-make the products sound like health foods, if not outright diet aids.Ĭonsumer Reports' food testing team set out to see whether bagged popcorn is really a healthy snack, and whether there were any meaningful differences in nutrition and taste among brands. "That's 100 percent growth from four years ago," says Caleb Bryant, a senior analyst at Mintel. According to market research firm Mintel, 54 percent of Americans surveyed in 2016 had purchased ready-to-eat popcorn in the previous six months, and sales topped $1 billion. Perhaps that explains the huge increase in demand for bagged popcorn. Popcorn has the crunchy, salty appeal of chips or pretzels, but you can have 3 cups of the air-popped snack for slightly fewer calories than you'll find in one sourdough pretzel.
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