It's pretty hard to find a good tasting high-fiber cracker. You would think "wheat" or "stone-ground wheat" crackers would naturally be good sources of fiber - but, like most packaged and processed foods, they're made from enriched and refined white flour, and often have at most 1 gram of fiber per serving. Here's what's traditionally been wrong with some of the cracker offerings out there:
- Nabisco's Wheatsworth crackers (of "stone ground wheat" fame) have 1 gram of fiber and lots of white flour
- Kashi TLC Crackers have less than 1 gram of fiber and low-fiber unbleached wheat flour as their first ingredient - disappointing from a brand that usually puts out some impressive high-fiber foods
- Kellogg's All Bran crackers have five grams of fiber - but they also all have a weird cinnamon taste to all of the flavors, probably needed to mask the taste of added isolated fiber ingredients needed to get to 5 grams of fiber per serving
- Wasa's Whole Grain crackers are pretty good, light in calories for 2 grams of naturally-occurring fiber; but your friends make fun of you when you serve kind-of-cardboard crackers at cocktail parties
So up until now, you really didn't much in the way of good whole-grain cracker choices. Enter Nabisco's Wheat Thins Fiber Selects 5-Grain crackers. Wheat Thins - the ubiquitous high salt, high fat refined grain snack cracker, has actually made what seems to be a turn for the better. In 13 crackers (30 g), the Fiber Selects give you 5 grams of fiber, 120 calories - which isn't bad, considering the alternatives. The fat is a little high at 4.5 grams per serving, but only 0.5 grams of that are of the unhealthy saturated fat type and there is no trans fat.
They actually taste good too. Naturally, they're salty (260 mg per day which puts you over 10% of your daily value for sodium) - but they're nutty and crunchy and a lot more tasty than your standard Wheat Thin. The fiber in Wheat Thins Fiber Selects comes from:
- Whole grain wheat flour (the first ingredient - a good sign)
- Oat fiber
- Golden flax seed
- Whole grain barley flakes
- Cracked whole wheat, and
- Whole grain rolled oats
There is some high fructose corn syrup in there contributing to the 4 grams of added sugars - but all in all - considering the competition, Wheat Thins Fiber Selects are a welcome addition to the cracker aisle.
