Tempeh Crisps vs Lentil Chips, Veg Crisps and the Rest

|Team TEMPTÉ
tempeh snacks vs lentil crisps and other vegetable crisps

What's Actually in the Baked Snack Aisle

There's a section in every supermarket now for savoury snacks that aren't quite crisps. Lentil this, chickpea that, popped something, vegetable crisps in a paper bag with a matte finish.

They are not interchangeable, and the differences are mostly about what's holding them together. Here's the honest version, including where ours sits.


Vegetable crisps

What they are: thin slices of beetroot, parsnip and carrot, usually fried.

The genuine sort are thin slices of beetroot, parsnip and carrot, fried or baked. Real vegetable, visibly so — you can see the rings. These are usually fried in the same way potato crisps are, and root vegetables carry more sugar than potatoes, which is why they taste sweet. Good ones are very good.

The reconstituted sort are not slices of pure vegetables. Veggie straws and similar shaped snacks are typically built on potato starch and potato flour, with vegetable powders added for colour and name. One UK product declares its composition helpfully: potato starch first, then dehydrated potato at 30%, then oil and salt — with tomato powder, kale powder and spinach powder at 0.4% each, and beetroot at 0.3%. American versions run to potato starch, potato flour and corn starch as the first three ingredients, with spinach powder and tomato paste well down the list.

A dietitian quoted on this put it bluntly: when the vegetable sits far down the ingredients list, there's very little vegetable in the product, and it's made much the same way a potato crisp is.

Both sit under "vegetable crisps" on the shelf. The ingredients list is the only thing that distinguishes them, and it takes five seconds.


Lentil and chickpea chips

What they are: usually pulse flour, mixed into a dough with starch, then shaped and baked or extruded.

This is the distinction worth understanding. Where a lentil chip is made from flour rather than slices, what you have is a dough — pulse flour blended with potato or tapioca starch and formed into a shape. The pulse is real, but it's one ingredient among others rather than the thing itself, and the starch can be a substantial proportion.

Products vary widely, so this isn't a claim about any particular one. 

That's not a criticism. It gives a light, even, reliably crunchy snack, which is hard to achieve otherwise. But "made with lentils" and "made of lentils" are different statements, and the ingredients list will tell you which one you're holding.


Popped and puffed snacks

What they are: usually a grain or pulse flour blend, expanded with heat and pressure.

Extremely light, which is the whole appeal and also the drawback. Puffing works by driving out moisture and expanding the structure with air. Puffing deliberately takes physical density in the other direction, which doesn’t tell you how filling every puffed snack will be, but it does explain something about the structure.

Fine as something to eat. Excellent if what you want is light and airy. Less useful if that’s precisely what you’re trying to get away from.


Kale crisps

What they are: kale leaves, dehydrated or baked, usually with a coating.

Genuinely a vegetable, but also not much else. The coating — sometimes cashew, nutritional yeast and lemon — does most of the flavour work, and the leaf provides structure.

The honest limitation is fragility and price. Kale crisps shatter if you look at them and they cannot go near a dip.


Poppadoms and prawn crackers

What they are: the originals, and better than most of what's imitating them.

Poppadoms are lentil or gram flour, and they've been made that way for centuries. Prawn crackers are tapioca starch and prawn. Both are usually fried, both are extremely light, and both are considerably cheaper than anything with "plant protein" on the front.

If you like the airy texture, these already exist and always have.


Tempeh crisps

What they are: slices of fermented soya beans, baked.

The structural point is straightforward. There's no flour and no starch binder. The bean isn't ground into a dough and reassembled; it's fermented into a solid cake and then sliced, which is why you can still see the beans in the finished crisp.

That makes it denser and firmer than most things in this section. It doesn't puff, and it won't give you the light shattering texture of a poppadom. What it does is hold its shape — under a dip, under a soft cheese, in the bottom of a bag.

It also comes with several hundred years of history attached, which most of the aisle does not.


The short version

What it's made of Texture Survives a dip
Veg crisps Sliced root veg, often fried Light, sweet edges Sometimes
Lentil / chickpea chips Pulse flour plus starch Even, light crunch Usually
Popped snacks Flour blend, expanded Very light, airy Rarely
Kale crisps Whole leaf, coated Fragile No
Poppadoms Lentil or gram flour Light, shattering Briefly
Tempeh crisps Sliced fermented beans Firm, dense, grainy Yes


How to read the aisle

One habit does most of the work: read the first three ingredients.

If a pulse flour appears alongside potato or tapioca starch, you're eating a dough. If the whole vegetable or bean is first and there's minimal flour, you're eating the thing itself. Neither is wrong — but the front of a packet is designed to tell you about the pulse and quiet about the starch, and the ingredients list isn't.

The second habit: check baked or fried. Plenty of things in the healthy-looking section of the aisle are fried, and the packaging is often ambiguous about it on purpose.


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A note on sources

The comparisons above are based on ingredients lists, which change often and vary between producers — so treat them as a guide to what to look for rather than a statement about any specific product. The one reliable method is reading the label yourself.

Where there's underlying research: