One of the few snack foods I can eat is potato chips. Most other snack foods are processed. 95% of all crackers have sugar or corn syrup in them. Pretzels often have sweeteners, too. (Pretzels? WHY?!?!?) Anything with a flavored powder coating like Ranch, Vinegar and Salt, Parmesan, etc. usually has dextrose or maltodextrin in the ingredients list. This leaves me with plain potato chips. So I bought some kettle cooked Lay's and noticed that the chips are mostly salt with a small percentage (2 or 3 percent would be generous) of potatoes. When I ate the chips, I felt the need to do a keg stand on a bottled water dispenser.

Yesterday I found a bag of Lay's chips called "pinch of salt" that has 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of sodium per serving as regular chips. Opened the bag, and ate one. Deja vu! This is how chips tasted when I was a kid. I could actually taste the flavor of potatoes.

Why do food manufacturers do this to food? It should be illegal.

Usually when I want a snack, I make popcorn the old fashioned way - on the stove. Not surprisingly, it tastes like popcorn, not salt.

On the ice cream aisle, I read the ingredients list for low-fat and "no sugar added" ice creams. It was very disturbing. The ice creams that claim "no sugar added" are being truthful; however, they forgot to mention all the other sweeteners that we do not call 'sugar', such as maltitol, dextrose, maltodextrin, aspartame, and sucralose. Sugar alcohols like maltitol have been altered chemically so that they deliver the same level of sweetness as sugar but at half the calories. Also, if you read the warning label, you'll see that sugar alcohols cause indigestion in many people. The labels on these ice cream containers are very misleading. It should also be illegal.

Breyer's has an "All Natural" flavor that is 'creamier' than its other flavors. What makes it creamier? A comparision between vanilla "creamier All Natural" and vanilla "All Natural" reveals one difference: corn syrup in the creamier version. How is corn syrup "all natural"? I don't know. I'm also trying to figure out how a pig could be called a dog, or how blue could be called green. It is a mystery to me.

Your best bet, if you scream for ice cream: Anything with truly 'all natural' ingredients. Breyer's lists milk, cream, sugar and vanilla on their products. Ice cream made with table sugar is a lesser evil than ice cream made with ten different laboratory chemicals.