Truth in marketing warning: Skinny Pop will not make you “skinny.” The “skinny” part comes from Skinny Pop’s commitment to using the fewest, simplest (skinny’est) ingredients to bring you amazing popcorn. With only three ingredients in the Original Skinny Pop (popcorn, sunflower oil and salt), it’s “pure popped perfection” for those of us looking for healthy snacks without all the gunk. Skinny Pop is a great snack for vegans and people with common allergies and sensitivities. Skinny Pop is free of animal products, GMOs, MSG, peanuts, soy, nuts, and gluten.
Skinny Pop Popcorn was founded in 2010 by Andy Friedman and Pam Netzky in Chicago. In 2014 Amplify Snack Brands bought Skinny Pop and started distributing Skinny Pop nation-wide. As a consumer, this is fantastic news because you probably have noticed Skinny Pop everywhere in the last few years. Skinny Pop has even expanded into more than popped popcorn. You can now buy Skinny Pop microwave popcorn, popcorn cakes, and popcorn mini-cakes in your local stores or on Amazon. Today we’re going to try their original product, Skinny Pop Original popped popcorn. Skinny Pop popped popcorn is also available in White Cheddar, Aged White Cheddar, Pepper Jack Cheese, Sea Salt and Pepper, Naturally Sweet, and Jalapeno. The Original, Sea Salt and Pepper, Naturally Sweet, and Jalapeno are vegan. All of the flavors are available on Amazon.
Taste Experience – Score: 9.5 out of 10
Warning: Once you open this bag it’s going to be hard to put it down. Find friends or family now to share with.
I don’t know how Skinny Pop does it, but opening a bag of Skinny Pop smells just like freshly popped popcorn. Most other bagged popcorn has very little fragrance when you open the bag. Skinny Pop either bags the smell at the factory or they just make better popcorn. Let’s try a few bits. YUM! Each piece is a delectable popped bliss. Some kernels taste a bit saltier, some a bit richer with oil, and some more plain. These slight variations in taste create a beautiful mixture of flavors and textures. Skinny Pop is perfectly popped…light and airy while crisp and crunchy from start to finish. It’s easy to see why Skinny Pop has become so popular. The taste and texture is incredible!
Nutrition – Score: 7.5 out of 10
Popcorn is a fantastic snack. It provides about one gram of fiber and protein per cup with only five grams of carbohydrates. It’s a highly recommended snack for diabetics and people watching their weight. However, I’ve never felt comfortable recommending traditional convenience popcorn. Both microwave and pre-popped varieties usually have too much salt and added oils. You could pop your own kernels at home, but it doesn’t keep well and most people need on-the-go snacks. Skinny Pop offers you the healthy nutrition of popped-at-home popcorn, but without all of the work.
In a 3 ¾ cup serving size of Skinny Pop, there is 150 calories. That’s the perfect amount of calories for a snack. Dietitians and nutrition professionals recommend that snacks be less than 200 calories. Skinny Pop has 75 mg of sodium in a 3 ¾ cup serving. This is significantly less sodium than found in traditional butter-flavored popcorn or other convenience snack foods (chips, crackers, pretzels). One ounce of potato chips has about 190 mg of sodium and one ounce of salted pretzels has about 350 mg of sodium. That’s 2-3 times MORE sodium and other rubbish than in Skinny Pop! There’s a really good chance your body doesn’t need that extra sodium, so do yourself a favor and stick to a lower sodium snack like Skinny Pop.
Skinny Pop is also naturally free of trans fats. Many other snack foods can’t say the same. Trans fats are a kind of unsaturated fat that is manufactured to help keep the fat more shelf stable. This is accomplished by fully or partially hydrogenating the fat until it solidifies. By manipulating the fat, it becomes significantly less healthy. There are several studies that link trans fat with inflammation and heart disease which is why as of January 2006 manufacturers must clearly label whether a food contains trans fats. This is a great regulation because it prompted manufactures to eliminate trans fats from several snack foods. Overall, I think Skinny Pop is a great snack food, but only when you eat it moderation. My trick to not eating the whole bag is to pour some into a small bowl and then put the bag away. It’s just too easy to overeat when you have the bag next to you.
If you’re interested in trying Skinny Pop, you can get all of the flavors, including the non-vegan ones, on Amazon by clicking HERE.
Now let’s see what my lovely husband has to say. Note: the opinions expressed below are solely of the non-vegan husband and we vegans neither condemn nor condone his statements. Continue at your own risk.
The Non-Vegan Review – Score: 8 out of 10
So, people of the interwebs, what we have here is a bag of popcorn that splits the difference between “tastes like nothing popcorn coming out of your grandma’s Betty Crocker air popper” and the “amazing, best ever popcorn” you get at the movie theater (with extra butter of course). Skinny Pop is the bipolar cousin of those two options. First bite is the best movie theater popcorn, so you go for another, thinking you’ll get movie theater taste again, but no, you get grandma’s popcorn. So you try again and you get movie theater popcorn this time and the vicious cycle starts over. Soon you realize SkinnyPop either has lazy seasoners or they’re the smartest people ever. You’re enjoying popcorn that’s way healthier than movie theater popcorn, but you’re still getting the movie theater popcorn experience sprinkled in (see what I did there).
SkinnyPop is really great popcorn. My only beef (can I use that word here) with SkinnyPop is the name. I can’t exactly pull a bag of SkinnyPop out during the football game without getting a bunch of crap from the guys. The word “Skinny” makes it sound like it’s a diet snack. Good thing my plant-killing wife has big bowls to serve it in. Non-vegan husband out.
Parting Thoughts
Skinny Pop is a wholesome vegan snack with simple ingredients that you can feel good about eating. The on-the-go mainstream availability of Skinny Pop makes it an awesome choice if you’re at a gas station, in the car, at the desk, or going to a friend’s house. Don’t hesitate in trying it out or stocking your pantry with it. Thanks for swinging by and checking out my review. If you’d like to try Skinny Pop, consider buying it on Amazon by clicking HERE. Same price as going to Amazon’s website, but you’ll be supporting a fellow vegan. Thanks!
For people with peanut and tree nut allergies, cooking Skinny Pop popcorn with Sunflower oil is just as dangerous for people with allergies to nuts, etc. I kept getting my allergy to nuts symptoms when I ate your popcorn because when I read the “sunflower oil” ingredient, I realized the sunflower seed allergy I had to stay away from, it the same as the oil from the sunflower oil. The minute I stopped eating your popcorn, my allergy symptoms stopped, so the sunflower oil ingredient had to affect this outcome. I loved the fact that your skinny pop popcorn as no peanuts or tree nuts, so I bought numerous bags and then I had to return them because of the “sunflower oil” ingredient. With all the other cooking oils out there, could you please cook your popcorn with canola oil, vegetable oil, etc, but NOT coconut or sunflower oil as these two are still dangerous to people who have nut or tree nut allergies.
The commercials are so obnoxious that I won’t buy the product.