Pounamu Protein Puffs

I love snacks.  I love crunchy things.  I love chips and puffs.  And, from time to time, I attempt to be quasi healthy when I munch on things.  And since I do weight lift, extra protein is generally a good thing.  And thus, I was interested to see a high protein based snack puff product line, by Pounamu.

"Meet your dietary goals and snack healthily when you are on the go with Pounamu's Protein Puffs. These delicious savory puffs are the perfect snack or healthy chip replacement to get you through your day or reinvigorate you after workouts. They taste delicious and are formulated with milk protein isolate to provide nutrients and essential amino acids.

Our Puffs are a nutritious and satisfying snack that is low in carbs and unnecessary sugars. With only 180 calories per bag, 1g sugar and 3g carbs, Pounamu Protein puffs can help support your keto, low-carb, or high-protein diet. Each serving contains 27g of dairy protein, with all essential amino acids to be easily absorbed by the body and enhance your active lifestyle; hit your protein goals with uncomplicated sports nutrition on the move."

These sounded pretty different from most other healthier styles of snack.  Dairy based ... but puffs?  Eh?  If you are interested, the dairy comes from grass-fed cattle in New Zealand, and although clearly not vegan, they are gluten-free and kosher.

They make the puffs in 4 varieties: Thai style ginger, ghost pepper salsa, rosemary thyme, and black truffle sea salt.  I had the later, because, truffle!

Black Truffle Sea Salt.

"Crispy and crunchy Pounamu Protein puffs are seasoned with gourmet flavors, including real truffles, herbs and spices, and complimented with natural flavors to create a flavor explosion."

These are weird AF.

I realize now looking at the ingredient list that they are basically milk protein isolate in puff form, so, what I tasted makes sense, but, wow, if you expect these to taste like any other kind of snack food puff (generally corn based ...), uh, change your expectations immediately.

Because these taste like milk.  Like, intense, concentrated milk.  But milk with a truffle aftertaste that is also salty.  Like I said, weird AF.

I like milk.  I like truffles.  I like salt.  I do not normally put them together.  There isn't much else to them either, just some oils for frying (sunflower, canola), a few scary things/binders/etc (maltodextrin, gum acacia, silicon dioxide, tricalcium phosphate) and a touch more seasoning (turmeric and annatto extracts).  So, yes,  concentrated milk with a salty truffle aftertaste. 

They were remarkably crunchy and yet kinda melted in your mouth, so the form factor works from a texture sense, but, yeah, wow.  So very, very strange.  **+.