Starbucks Sweet & Salty Popcorn

Starbucks Sweet and Salty Popcorn costs £1.75 and carries 139 calories a bag with 3.8g of fibre. Popped corn with a sweet and salted coating.

3.8g of fibre is the highest figure of any snack in the category, ahead of the fruit and nut bar at 3.6g and every bag of crisps here. Whole corn kernels are the reason: the hull and germ survive popping, so this delivers whole grain rather than the processed starch a crisp is made from.

At 139 calories it sits 51 above the lightly salted version, and the coating accounts for all of it. 3.4g of sugar is modest in absolute terms and is what separates the two bags in every respect.

Sweet popcorn also divides opinion more than plain does, and the reason is that it competes with whatever you are drinking. Against a black coffee it works; against anything sweetened it becomes one sweet thing too many, which is worth thinking about before adding it to a Frappuccino order.

Both bags still come in well under any crisp on the shelf. The lightest, sweet chilli Kettle Chips, carries 198 calories against this bag's 139, and popped corn takes on a fraction of the fat a fried slice of potato does.

Sweet and salty together works for a reason worth naming. Salt suppresses the perception of bitterness and sharpens sweetness at the same time, so a small amount of each does more than a larger amount of either alone. It is why the combination survives across snack categories rather than being a novelty.

The coating also changes how the bag behaves once opened. Sugar draws moisture from the air, so sweetened popcorn softens noticeably faster than plain, and a bag left open overnight goes chewy in a way the lightly salted one does not. It is a bag to finish rather than to save.

Vegan and vegetarian labels both apply and no allergens are declared. Salt is 0.2g and saturated fat 0.5g, both very low. Prices reach £2.20 on delivery.