Michael Season’s Ultimate Cheese Puffs

Sitting down to a snack of Michael Season’s Ultimate Cheese Puffs, I was optimistic. I’m a fan of such puffed corn treats, and the thought of eating some without being left with the standard glowing orange cheese glove made me happy.

I tried two varieties – Cheddar and White Cheddar. Both use real cheese, take the sodium down a notch, and avoid preservatives as well as artificial colors. With 13 grams of fat per 28 gram serving, we’re not talking about health food here. In fact, these have more fat and more saturated fat than Cheetos brand puffs. But the ingredient list of these Michael Season’s snacks
Both varieties have a nice texture – light and airy, crisp, dense enough not to completely melt away to nothing. The real cheese in each of them was the strongest flavor; salt was in there, too, but I thought the lower levels of it allowed the cheese to stand out more.

I give the White Cheddar a thumbs-up. They tasted simple, unmarred by chemically aftertastes, and leaving only the faintest hint of cheese residue on the fingers. If I’m throwing a party and feel that cheesy puffs would be appropriate, I’d buy these. In spite of the slightly higher fat content, I like the natural flavor and color as well as the reduced sodium, which not only makes them a little healthier but also makes them taste better too.

The regular Cheddar weren’t as good. Expecting perhaps a slightly different cheddar flavor from the White Cheddar, I was instead perplexed by a couple of distinctly different tastes vying for my attention.  Another look at the ingredient list showed that these not only have cheddar, but also blue cheese. I’m not a huge fan of blue cheese, so maybe you’ll like these better than I did, but I just didn’t think the combination worked. They’d probably be better off giving blue cheese its own variety, instead of combining the two the way they did here.

By the way, Frito-Lay apparently offers a strawberry variety of Cheetos in South Korea. I’m not sure what to think of that.