Junk Food Nation, yesterday I was sick.  I feel much better today, thanks for asking.  It got me thinking about what type of sick person I am.  See, despite, my proclivity for junk food, I actually eat pretty healthy otherwise, exercise regularly, cook a lot, and have a pretty strong immune system.  Besides feeling off from time to time, I rarely actually get sick.

So, whenever I have an episode like yesterday where I felt like the room was spinning and like construction workers were digging a ditch in my throat, I become a total, and utter, baby.  Total baby.  On Tuesday when I started feeling the onset of symptoms, I staggered to the grocery store to pickup OJ and chicken soup.  As I walked the three blocks back to my apartment, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. When I stepped into my foyer, I was in full-on flop sweat.

Some of my friends are great when they’re sick.  They use it as a time to catch up on their Netflix, or re-organize their iPhoto pictures, or just lie in bed and play Words with Friends.  Other friends of mine use it as an excuse to binge – I remember seeing a female friend eat two pints of ice cream, look at me, shrug, and explain, “Hey, my throat hurts. I can’t eat anything else.”

Me? I become incapacitated.  I want to feel better so badly, I start pleading to the heavens in my head, repeatedly.  The same pleas, incidentally, occur when I wake up super hungover.  And I love me some medicine. Yummy yummy Dayquil, Advil, Vick’s, etc. – grind it all up in a blender and inject me, please.

So what kind of sick person are you? Hit me up in the comments below or on Twitter @junkfoodguy.

Today’s junk food: three different variations of Slim Jim Snap Stix!

Slim Jims, of course, are the sodium filled processed meat sticks created by ConAgra Foods that we’ve all come to know and love.  But branching out into these Snap Stix potato snacks?  I’m confused… who at ConAgra thought this was a good idea? You do realize there’s this company called Frito-Lay out there, right?  Stick to what you know, Slim Jims!

I flipped one of the bags over to get a description of the snack…and there was an ad for the other two flavors of Slim Jim Snap Stix. Oooo…k. That’s alright, ConAgra – I’ll figure it out on my own.

Ah, there’s all the description I need: potato starch, dehydrated potatoes, and rice flour… MMMM THAT’s GOOD EATIN’! Who needs Doritos when I’ve got snacks made out of potato starch??

I opened all three bags up to see how they compared side-by-side.  Besides a few color differences, they seem pretty much the same.  Why do I have a weird feeling they are all going to *taste* pretty much the same?  Oh well, let’s dig in!

First up, Ragin’ BBQ Rib flavored potato snacks.  You know I’ve never seen the word BBQ and thought that the best adjective to add would be “Ragin’.” But hell, I’m old – what do I know.  Let’s see how ragin’ these chips are!

Up close, they look like spicy fries – tubular yet square shaped potato tubes that have been dusted with red.

Incidentally, I found these all these Slim Jim Snap Stix (where else) in a gas station food mart.  Gas station food marts really are the Atlantis of junk food sometimes – a forgotten world that carries the tastiest treats.

Light, flaky, these potato Snap Stix had a nice feel to them.  Time for a bite!

Crunch crunch… ok, so here’s the dilly – they kind of taste like Bugles, which I hate, but with a potatoey finish.  The fact that these Snap Stix were in hollow tube form give it some crispness, but chewing on them felt eerily like chewing on a savory version of those chocolate filled tube cookies that come in a big ass can.

The BBQ flavor was sweet, and there was definitely a smoky kick at the back.  So, flavor-wise, not bad, but I’m not sure how much I like the base chip to begin with.  Moving on.

Snap Stix is obviously a play on Slim Jims’s famous tagline, “Snap into a Slim Jim!” And I’m guessing some genius at ConAgra voted for the chips to be in tubular form in order to get the sticks as close to Slim Jim shape as possible.

Slammin’ Jalapeno Nacho?  Slammin’? Are we just picking random adjectives from the dictionary now? Because I gotta say, these chips don’t look slammin’… they look woefully under seasoned.  With jalapeno in the title, I expected to see some speckles of green, some kind of peppery representation. But no – nada.

I took a bite of the jalapeno flavor Snap Stix… and was not impressed.  A little spicy kick? Yes.  But distinct jalapeno flavor? Nope.  It didn’t even taste like the nacho cheese flavor I described in Monday’s post.  These were just sort of bland.

Up close, these Snap Stix don’t give any indication of “jalapeno”… they just look like Cheetos. And that’s what I tasted – processed cheese flavor with a little spice.  Not what I was expecting.

Kickin’ Buffalo Wing flavor?  Oh ConAgra, I hope you know what you’re doing.  If this Buffalo Wing taste doesn’t “kick,” who do I complain to?

Wait, are these the Slammin’ Jalapeno Nacho Snap Stix? Because they look exactly the same…

All three of these Snap Stix products are either REALLY new, or they are the unwanted stepchild of the Slim Jim line, because even the Slim Jim website doesn’t reflect that these snacks exist.

The Buffalo Wing flavored Snap Stix weren’t much better – they attempted to have a bit of tanginess, but really they came up short.  Strangely, these Buffalo Wing potato snacks had a bit of kick, and the more I tasted them, I felt like they had MORE kick than the Slammin’ Jalapeno Nacho flavor.  But there was no distinct Buffalo Wing flavor to them save for a little spice and tang.  Not…great.

All in all, I’d say these Snap Stix were pretty bad – Slim Jim tried to get the flavor right, but the weird processed potato tubes set the snack off wrong, drowning any seasoned flavor with the overwhelming taste of potato starch – and not in a good way.  Pringles are a processed potato snack, but whatever potatoey flavor they have tends to complement flavors nicely.  These, on the other hand …didn’t.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy