Rhythm Superfoods Texas BBQ Kale Chips

Wanna know the worst person at a party? It's not your drunk uncle Manny, hitting on your teenaged cousin. It's not your parents, renegotiating their restraining orders and custody over dill potato salad. It isn't even that one doppelganger of a cousin you have, who somehow grew up with the same people you loathe yet is far more successful, interesting, and skilled with the ladies. 

No, it's that one guy who may have wandered in from a homeless commune- ah, no, he's somebody's boyfriend, the one who goes over the edible offerings at any barbecue or gathering like he's Larry the effing Health Inspector. You'll find him loudly braying about raw food and omega-3 viruses and chlorine in chicken breasts to anyone who can stomach it while pigging out on potato chips and beer, both of which are most definitely cruelty-free and organic. The irony continues when you notice that he's strapped an infant to his midsection for the past three hours- nope, that's just his beer gut. He's hypocritically fastidious about what he eats and he's a colossal fatass. Thankfully, the best way to get someone like that out of the way is to occupy them with these chips.

Appropriately sourced from a discount, free-range, local grocery store, Rhythm Superfoods Texas BBQ Kale Chips are about as Texan as his 'n' his bedazzled bridal Stetsons. (But seriously, Rick Perry, those would be awesome.) The kale tastes like an absorbent sponge of oil, organic fertilizer and salt. Holy crap, are these terrible. If this was an Elementary Agromarijuana exam question, the answer would be "flesh-eating microvirus". Gross. The basics of food reviewing 1.0: if it's good, say it's good; if it's bad, say why. But where the hell do I start? These are bad because they have the texture of particle board and the flavor of body odor. They are thick, brittle hunks of UFOs- Unidentified Food-like Objects, choked with coconut oil and inexplicably, tahini. They are flaky, shedding copious amounts of barbecue-flavored food dandruff all over the place, and come three to a bag, a bag originally priced at $6.59 marked down to the low, low price of $3.00 for what amounts to a fistful of kale and broken dreams.

I guess that would be the only offensive thing about them if they were healthy and good for you and provided an alternative, albeit, terrible niche market for people who have moral or ethical concerns about eating barbecue potato chips. Logically speaking, a customer who purchases something proudly advertised as air-popped, organic, and raw is likely doing so because they are looking for a healthier alternative to snacks that are not air-popped, organic, and raw. So how do you explain why a 2 ounce bag of these have more calories, fat, and carbohydrates than a McDouble from McDonald's?

It's also worth noting that McDonald's, for all the criticism it receives, has been fairly reliable about accurately reporting nutrition facts and has never gone on the record indirectly implying that eating its food can cause weight loss. Rhythm Superfoods' website and bag have different caloric values and they have no problem convincing you that eating raw lets you "pig out" and potentially lose weight at the same time.

At least I can shoulder the realization that regardless of caloric value, these will still taste like crispy disappointment every time. Unlike a McDouble.