Are namkeen and bhujia healthy? What seven Indian snack labels show

As an everyday snack, mostly not. All seven packaged Indian savoury snacks we hand-checked get more than 30% of their energy from fat, and five print 600 mg of sodium or more per 100 g. As an occasional handful the numbers are easier to live with, and the roasted and popped snacks sit well apart from the fried ones.

What the seven labels show

Per 100 g, across a bhujia, a namkeen mixture, two corn snacks, a millet bhel, a roasted chana snack and popped corn chips:

Sugar is not the issue here; fat and salt are. The two lowest-fat packs, at 15 and 16 g, are the popped corn chips and the roasted chana snack. The fried ones carry 26 to 38 g.

What a handful really contains

Nobody eats 100 g at a sitting, so scale it down. A 30 g handful of a pack at the median, 680 mg of sodium per 100 g, carries about 200 mg of sodium, a tenth of the 2,000 mg daily reference. The same handful of the saltiest pack, at 1,950 mg, carries almost 600 mg, well over a quarter of the day. How the sodium reference works.

How two of them score

Two of these packs are the worked examples on LabelSaaf's homepage. The namkeen mixture scores 54, think twice, with 28 g of fat and 680 mg of sodium per 100 g. The roasted chana snack scores 79, okay in moderation: about half the fat, and 18 g of protein and 12 g of fibre per 100 g.

Reading a namkeen pack in the shop

Compare two packs per 100 g on the sodium and fat rows; the pack lower on both is the better pick. Then look at the oil in the ingredients: "edible vegetable oil" with no name usually means palm, which is what pushes the saturated-fat row up. Why vegetable oil usually means palm.

Common questions

Is bhujia healthy?

The bhujia we checked was the saltiest and the fattiest of the seven: 1,950 mg of sodium and 38 g of fat per 100 g. Keep it to a small portion, and not every day.

Are roasted snacks better than fried ones?

On these labels, yes, by a wide margin on fat. Roasted is not automatically low in salt, though: the roasted chana snack still prints 600 mg of sodium per 100 g, so read that row too.

Is a millet namkeen healthier?

The grain changes less than the cooking. The millet bhel we checked had the lowest sodium of the seven but still got 46% of its energy from fat.

Figures on this page come from labels we have read and hand-checked. Products are described by category rather than named, and no affiliation with or endorsement by any brand is implied.

Last checked: 2026-09-25

Photograph the nutrition table on a pack and get a score out of 100, with the reason behind every point.