Ryvita and seaweed crisps: The joyless prick's guide to snacking

SNACKING is one of the few sources of joy we can look forward to each day. Here health obsessive Lauren Hewitt reveals the best foods to make it miserable.

Energy bars

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a bag of KP Fruit & Nut Mix fell into a rubbish compactor? There are now literally hundreds of companies answering this very question. Anyone for dried-out walnuts and bananas compressed into a log denser than a neutron star? Form an orderly queue, food lovers.

Ryvita

Ryvita is one of the few commercially available snacks that, if were to eat them without any form of spread or dip, would make you dangerously dehydrated and requiring hospitalisation. That said, they’re incredibly low on calories, and considering how hard it is to actually burn them off, being put on an emergency saline drip seems a small price to pay.

Celery stick

A rod of chewable water? Sign me up! While some people might be tempted to pair celery sticks with dips like hummus, tzatziki, or some other flavour-based spread, this really only detracts from the joy of celery itself. Eating raw, plain celery allows you to appreciate the vegetable’s unmistakable taste of soil and old grass.

Seaweed crisps

Crisps are perhaps the classic snack and so simple they are surely impossible to ruin. Which is why replacing delicious fried potatoes with brittle shards of ocean vegetable that fish have definitely pissed on is so ingenious. Instead of rich, greasy potato, you get to gnaw on a sort of sheet of dried, aquatic paper. Delicious. Well, I like to pretend so.

Plain rice cake

When you need a little something to tide you over from your lunch of kale soup to your dinner of kale and chickpea soup, why not tuck into a delicious plain rice cake? It packs in all the flavour of lightly-seasoned styrofoam and will make a bowl of tepid kale juice with beans in it feel like a flavour supernova.

Prunes

Prunes are often overlooked in the dried fruit snacking world thanks to their more sexier, more glamorous cousins, raisins and sultanas. But sweet treats like chocolate will be far from your mind after you’ve tucked into desiccated plums. What’s more, they’ll keep your bowel movements as regular and vigorous as a freight train, which health fanatics love to discuss.

Dads looking for new foods to air fry

FATHERS have confirmed that they are excitedly searching for new things to air fry. 

Having initially experimented with air frying in a bid to cook more healthily, dads are finding themselves gripped by the need to find new foodstuffs to put in their special little man-cooker. 

Martin Bishop, 42, said: “You start small at first, a chicken breast, salmon fillets, some chips at weekends. Nothing serious, just experimenting. 

“Then you start doing it on weekdays – meatballs, a cheeky empanada or two. You don’t realise it, but you’re going deeper down the air-fried rabbit hole. 

“Before you know it, you’re thinking about your air fryer at work, counting down the hours until you can slip a carrot cake or 75 per cent less fat chicken wings into its easy-to-clean basket. 

“You join air fryer groups on Facebook. Your wife catches you downstairs at 2am watching videos online of air-fried Oreos. I had to slam the laptop closed and say I was just looking at teenage porn. Luckily she believed me.”

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “We have noticed a worrying rise in the number of middle-aged men in the grip of air fryer addiction, and a related decrease in sales of unflattering cycling gear.”