Okay, so I’ve been talking about all these crackers you DON”T want to eat, how about some that are healthier?

Following is a list of brands/types of crackers that have at least 3-grams of fiber per 30-gram (1 ounce) serving, and many are 100% whole grain. There are NO saturated or trans fats in any of these, and they have 200mg of sodium, or less, per serving.

The following crackers are pretty good even thought they have 1 gram of fat.  They also have 3 grams of fiber and 220mg of sodium or less:

• Kraft South Beach Diet, Woven Wheat (1 pack of crackers/100 calories)
• Nabisco Triscuit – except Cheddar, Reduced Fat or Thin Crisps (6/120 calories
• Nabisco Triscuit – Reduced Fat (7 crackers, 120 calories)
• Nabisco Triscuit – Thin Crisps (15 crackers, 130 calories)
• Nabisco Triscuit – Cheddar (6 crackers, 120 calories)

I’m sure there are other crackers out there worth eating.  Just check the labels and find those with 3 grams or more of fiber per serving, and as little saturated and trans fats as possible.

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Crackers Worth Eating

When you’re in the grocery store deciding what crackers to buy, there’s a few more little quirks to watch out for. Stuff that sounds like it would make crackers good health food is once again not all it’s cracked up to be.

One important quirk to look for is the kind of fat in crackers. It’s hard to make crackers without some sort of fat, and of course you want to avoid trans fat. But even if the label says there is zero trans fat, you’re not home free. Sometimes the cracker is loaded with saturated fat.

You want to avoid both trans fat and saturated fat as much as possible. The trick is to look for crackers with no more than 1 gram of saturated fat, and no partially hydrogenated oils, or trans fats.

Then let’s consider those crackers with vegetables in them. Wow, crackers with vegetables added! That should be a great combination for a health food, right?

Well, think about this — Nabisco Vegetable Thins, Roasted Vegetable Ritz, and even Kashi TLC Fire Roasted Vegetable crackers all have more oil than they have dehydrated vegetables. Considering they don’t have that much oil, the amount of vegetables in those crackers is pretty tiny.

Bottom line here, watch out for the kinds of fats used to make crackers. And don’t be fooled by labels shouting about great ingredients like vegetables.

Forget the quirky crackers and look for crackers with 100% whole grain goodness.

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Cracker Quirks

Used to be all you worried about with crackers was how much salt they had. If you picked a low-sodium or no-salt brand, you could feel pretty virtuous about eating healthier food.

Now, however, we’re looking for more whole grain foods and fiber, and eliminating the bad trans fats.

Once again, labels that are supposed to be there to help us are misleading and confusing. Food manufacturers have the tendency to put a spin on their label information, to make the food seem as wonderful as possible. After all, their goal is to get you to buy, so sometimes plain facts are hard to come by.

To make cracker comparisons even more confusing, for labeling purposes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows cracker companies to choose between a 15-gram serving, or a 30-gram (1 ounce) serving.

Naturally, the cracker companies choose the large serving size if they want to emphasis how much healthy-for-you whole grain and fiber is in their crackers, and the small serving size to talk about trans fats or sodium.

That means if you want to compare whole grain in different brands of crackers, you need to make sure you are comparing the same serving sizes, or do the math to even them up.

For instance, Triscuits uses the 30-gram (or one ounce) serving size. When comparing them to something like Ry Krisp, which has the 15-gram serving size, you need to double the numbers on the Ry Krisp label so you can get a better comparison between the sodium, fiber or whole grains in each cracker.

The moral of the story is, once again, to check the serving sizes when comparing food products, and made sure you’re comparing like sizes. It’s the only way to get a better idea of which is closer to a true health food!

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Crackers Aren’t Always All They’re Cracked Up To Be