Western snack makers are frequently advertising their products as ideal food for binge watching TV series. Binge watching has gone off in China as well, and I recently ran into an influencer’s suggestions for binge snacks. They are specifically marked as relatively healthy products,

I will introduce them in this post to give you an impression of how much these products differ from those of the likes of Lay’s. There are so far only four, which is probably insufficient to draw detailed conclusions.

Boli egg rolls

Egg rolls are light, so you can eat several without immediately feeling guilty. They do crumble, though, so you probably will need to vacuum after your binge session.

Ingredients

Wheat flour, eggs, vegetable oil, sugar, liquid egg white, black sesame, salt

Luqin milk dates

Milk still gives any food a healthy image in China, but make sure that your product does not have a strong creamy flavour. However, the most salient feature of this product is the almond inside the dates. It creates an interesting mix of flavours and textures.

Ingredients

Xinjiang dates, almonds, whole milk powder, condensed milk powder, butter, salt

Bruno’s chocolate brownie crisps

This is the only foreign product in the list. These crisps approach the Western crispy potato-based snacks in texture, but not in flavour.

Ingredients

Cocoa powder, coconut powder (17%), coconut fat, brown sugar, cassava starch, egg white, cashew nuts, almonds, salt

Crispy chick peas

Chick peas are a relatively new food in China, but they are becoming popular rapidly. This is the simplest product in the list in terms of ingredients.

Ingredients

Chick peas, salt

Hot strips (latiao)

Hot strips has become the number one snack among young Chinese consumers for any situation, so it does not come as a surprise to find the listed in this post. Latiao is a popular snack, especially among younger Chinese and children. Pingjiang (Hunan) is the hometown of latiao and the base of 116 latiao enterprises, with an annual production value exceeding RMB 20 billion. Three people from the county invented the snack in 1998, and more than 90% of the founders of latiao companies in China come from Pingjiang.S

These by Maiyixiang are recommended as healthier than the average hot strip.

Ingredients

Wheat flour, purified water, soy bean oil, salt, chicken essence, MSG, cumin, sugar, sesame, Sichuan pepper, onion, spices

Parasol mushroom

Yaoyao produces this processed parasol mushroom (Macrolepiota procera). It is a typical product from Yunnan, China’s top fungus region. This will be harder to get accepted by Western binge watcher as a healthy replacement of their crisps.

Ingredients

Wild mushrooms, parasol mushroom, vegetable oil, sesame, salt, chicken essence, chili, spices

Dried apricots

This is a simple dried apricot product by Ayanggao.

Ingredients

Carefully selected apricots, water

Dried shiitake

Another dried natural product, this time by Chaweng. Actually, mushrooms can be quite filling, so chewing on dried shiitake could decrease your caloric intake while watching all episodes of your favourite show.

Ingredients

Shiitake, vegetable oil, maltose, salt

Common features

These four products have one thing in common: they produce considerable noise. This seems to be a universal expectation among binge watchers worldwide. The products recommended by this influencer indeed seem to be more nutritious than the typical snacks consumed in Europe. This corroborates the strong focus on nutrition among (young) Chinese consumers.

Sesame seems to be a recurrent ingredient. Chinese love sesame as a flavour component in snacks and pastries.

I will keep expanding this post, whenever new information appears in our screening of the Chinese information streams.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success