Simply Smartfood White Cheddar Is Decent—But Needs More Cheese

I’m on board with getting rid of the garbage from junk food. It’s not like it magically makes these snacks “healthy”, but removing the junkiest ingredients at least makes junk food less bad for you. 

As a kid, I was a big fan of Smartfood. The cheese flavor was just so good—it was so incredibly, well…cheesy. So when I saw Simply Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn, I knew I needed to give it a shot. Here’s my take.

The TLDR: they’re fine—decent but not great—but they absolutely could be amazing. Compared to snacks like Simply Cheetos Puffs, the difference is pretty noticeable.

Let’s get into what works and what’s lacking.

The Good

Nice corn flavor

Smartfood is almost certainly made from commodity-grade corn (in fairness, your favorite bourbon is too). Even so, this cheese popcorn has a nice corn flavor—which is the foundation of a good corn-based snack, especially popcorn.

Good cheese flavor

The cheese that is there is solid. It actually tastes like real cheddar, which is awesome.  

What’s Lacking

Not enough cheese flavor. 

This is the core issue. Even though the cheese flavor itself is good, there just isn’t enough of it. 

Simply Smartfood ends up tasting like regular popcorn with a faint hint of cheese. For something positioned as a cheese-forward snack, it just doesn’t deliver.

Understanding the Problem

Good news! There’s an easy fix. 

To see how, let’s take a quick look at Simply Cheetos Puffs—another product from Frito-Lay. 

That snack is delightfully and unmistakably cheesy. It comes down to a few key ingredients in Simply Cheetos Puffs:

• Cheese powder
• Whey
• Sour Cream
• Torula Yeast
• Lactic Acid & Citric Acid (cheddar has a natural acidity, which these help replicate)

Together, these create a layered cheese flavor that is delicious—savory, tangy, and creamy. 

Now compare that to the cheese-related ingredients in Simply Smartfood:

• Cheese powder 
• Less than 2% [by weight] of:
  • Lactic acid & citric acid
  • Yeast extract

That’s it. 

No whey. No sour cream. And the acids and yeast extract are present in very small amounts (the story is a bit more nuanced—see the footnote below¹). 

Whey and the sour cream add milkiness and creaminess—key components of a convincing cheese profile. Their absence likely explains why Simply Smartfood falls flat, especially compared to Simply Cheetos Puffs.

An Easy Fix

The fix is pretty simple: use a seasoning closer to Simply Cheetos Puffs.

Of course, Smartfood has a different overall seasoning character than Cheetos Simply Puffs. And I’m sure it’s not quite as simple as swapping one seasoning for another. But Frito-Lay is a huge company, and is owned by an even more massive company—PepsiCo. If anyone has resources—like food scientists and engineers—to make this work, it’s them.

So, to my friends at Frito-Lay: take the cheese seasoning blend from Simply Cheetos and bring it over to Smartfood.

To bring the cheese character in line with Smartfood and keep the products distinct, tweak it:

• Adjust the ratios (a little less torula yeast, a little more sour cream—or vice versa)
• Dial back the total seasoning

 But keep the core structure intact.

One other snack worth mentioning: since these are corn-based snacks with cheese seasoning, it makes sense to try Smartfood Cheetos Cheddar as well. It’s not part of the “Simply” line, but its branding suggests it uses the same seasoning as regular Cheetos.

If Simply Smartfood used a cheese seasoning closer to Simply Cheetos Puffs, Smartfood would go from “fine” to genuinely excellent.

Final Verdict

• Flavor Highs: Solid corn flavor; cheese seasoning is nicely cheesy.
• Flavor Lows: There isn’t enough cheese flavor.
• Worth buying? Maybe—Simply Smartfood is a decent cheese popcorn, but they’re unlikely to wow you.

Who Should Try Simply Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn

• Lovers of cheese popcorn (but keep your expectations in check)
• Snackers looking for a cheesy snack without artificial colors or flavors
• People who already like Smartfood and want a slightly cleaned-up version
• Anyone who prefers a lighter cheese flavor over a heavily seasoned snack

---

1. A point of clarification (for my fellow food geeks out there): the Simply Smartfood label clearly identifies which ingredients are present at less than 2% by weight, while Cheetos Simply Puffs does not. This doesn’t necessarily mean Simply Puffs contains more of those ingredients—just that the labeling approach is different. According to FoodLabelMaker.com, “the FDA has specific guidelines on ingredients that are present in a food product in a quantity of less than 2% by weight; these ingredients can be listed in any order after the ingredients that make up more than 2% of the product.” In other words, Frito-Lay may have simply listed sub-2% ingredients in descending order for Cheetos Simply Puffs. Notably, Simply Smartfood confirms that cheese powder exceeds 2%, so it’s entirely possible that whey and sour cream also exceed 2% in Cheetos Simply puffs—but it’s not guaranteed. ↩︎