From The Ground Up Snack Foods

Snacks, snacks, snacks.  One of my favorite food groups.  (Shh, yes, snacks are a food group, and every balanced diet includes copious snacks right? How else do you maintain level blood sugar all day when eating so much chocolate and desserts?)

Um, yeah, I love snacks, I love munching on things, both sweet and savory.  And bonus points, I guess, if they products have some redeeming healthy qualities.

"At Real Food From The Ground Up, we like to keep it real – from our ingredients to our message. Why? Because we’re real people too! We know the daily struggle to make good snack choices, and that’s why we’re raising the snack bar with our plant-based snack family.

Our snacks are packed with REAL Cauliflower and Butternut Squash to give you more of what you love - MORE flavor, MORE crunch, and MORE bites per serving. Everyone should live healthier and snack happier without any ‘snack-rifices’... come along and let’s get our snack on."

I was thrilled to discover Real Food From The Ground Up, a snack food manufacturer, that tries to throw in some veggies to their munchy foods.  Their products also happen to be vegan, gluten-free, non GMO, etc.

Real Food From The Ground Up produced 5 product lines: chips, crackers, "stalks", pretzels, and tortilla chips.  I was able to try both pretzels and stalks, one of each.  I loved one item I tried, and would gladly try more, particularly any of the chips, or the new carrot crackers ...

Stalks

The stalks are veggie and grain based, gluten-free like all their products.  Available with either butternut or cauliflower, each in two flavors.  Butternut squash stalks come in savory sea salt or sweet cinnamon.  Cauliflower stalks are available in savory sea salt or cheddar.

Stalks.

If you are expecting these to scream "BUTTERNUT SQUASH!!!" or "CAULIFLOWER!!!" you will be disappointed, as the first ingredient is actually cassava.  They also have rice (white and brown) in the base, along with the butternut squash or cauliflower, and a host of other veggies (spinach, broccoli, beets, tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms).

That said, I still liked them, and found them to be a fairly unique, fun product.

Cinnamon Butternut Squash Stalks.

"No puffery here in our salty and sweet snack - just downright delicious cinnamon sugar flavor."

My mom picked these up, but I was interested in try them, excited about the idea of butternut squash snacks.  She opted for the sweet ones, cinnamon flavor (not a savory one I'd pair with my lunch as I was hoping, thinking of them like, well, chips).

I still liked them though - the crunch was good, the texture was great, and the form factor quite fun.  I think the savory varieties would make for decent replacements for regular potato chips, or fries.

These however, were not something I'd pair with a meal, much more appropriate for a snack.  The cinnamon variety is dusted with cinnamon, brown sugar, and some other seasonally appropriate spices like nutmeg.  They are slightly savory, but mostly sweet and well spiced, no spice overwhelming the other.  They taste like ... fall.

They certainly are not that sweet though, I'd never consider these a dessert product.

They were satisfying as a snack, one I quickly got addicted to, and I may or may not have stole the whole bag.  I think would pair great with sliced apples spread with peanut butter for a lovely fall snack for any adult, or child.

****.

Pretzels

Pretzels also come with either butternut or cauliflower focus, in twist or stick form.  The pretzels, just like the stalks, have a cassava base, and a slew of other veggies along with the butternut squash.

They do not have the rice component in them like the stalks however.  Only one flavor is available in each form - butternut ones with turmeric and cinnamon mixed in, along with a salt coating.  The cauliflower skip the spices, and are just salt and yeast (?).

Butternut Squash Pretzels: Original.

My store only had the butternut, so, butternut it was.

Butternut Squash Stalks: Original.

"This one sticks to the basics - salted on the outside with a crispy bite."

These are pretty classic pretzel sticks - same size as you'd expect, big salt crystal coating.  

They were ok, and tasted much like other gluten-free pretzels I have had, and liked (e.g. Pretzel Perfection, my normal go-to).  Strangely, I generally do prefer gluten-free pretzels to regular ones, even though I am a gluten eater.

That said, these had a bitterness that I really wasn't a fan of.  And I didn't really taste butternut squash, nor the cinnamon and turmeric, but they were nicely salty.

Basically, a fine gluten-free pretzel stick, if you like those, but, not special, sadly.

***.