The time has come for Columbus to have its very own cheese puffs. Tortilla chips, potato chips, pork rinds: we’ve already got lots of that stuff.
And now we have cheese puffs, too. Or rather, IncrediPuffs. And they come in cheese flavor, as well as a whole bunch of other flavors.
IncrediPuffs are brought to us by the Snack Brigade, a business that lists Columbus, Ohio as its home base. In appreciating the puffs, we should probably first go over what these puffs don’t have: no peanuts, no trans fats, no GMOs, no artificial flavors (wait, really?), and no gluten. What’s left? Well, there’s still salt, and uh, navy beans, at least, according to the ingredient list.
The puffs are baked, not fried, with 30% less fat than potato chips. A quick look at the ingredient label indicates that the ingredients really are normal and not terribly artificial sounding – well, relatively speaking, for a packaged snack food. There’s maltodextrin and citric acid in the mix, but those seem pretty innocuous. Outside of that, the weirdest thing on the list is…the aforementioned navy beans. They mix it up with the cheese, cornmeal, dried potatoes and seasoning.
The result? Pretty appealing, especially for a healthy-ish snack. They are definitely puffs. Uniformly tube-shaped, the puffs are not as crispy as fried snacks, but that’s hardly worth complaining about. They scratch the itch for a crunchy-salty snack. The Pizza version is especially winning, as you don’t find a whole lot of puff in that flavor on the market, and it has that garlicky tomato accent in the mix with the cheesy foundation. IncrediPuffs are offered in a regular cheddar flavor though, as well as a spicier Sriracha option, and a sweet apple pie version. Both of the of the latter two options are plant-based.
We found our bag at Weiland’s in the snack section. You can find out more about it here thesnackbrigade.com.