We made a mistake.

As you know, our mission is to make it easier to eat healthy while on the go. At the core of that mission is a promise about the health and quality of our snacks. If we cannot maintain a high level of both, we have nothing.

To ensure those high standards, we draw lines—criteria that all snacks must meet. No snack can have added sugar, sweetener or oil, and every snack must be gluten-free and made from only real, whole food, plant-based ingredients. We continue to stand by those promises.

In a few instances, we overlooked an ingredient, and we’re writing this to be clear that:

1. We’re embarrassed by this miss.
2. We’re making a change.
3. We ask for your forgiveness.
4. We won’t let it happen again.

Some ingredients in four snacks in our growing assortment do not match the health criteria above. We noticed this a few months after purchasing the snacks, and we hesitated to take action. We waited because customers liked the snacks, and the ingredient discrepancies seemed minor. That was a mistake.

We’re now choosing to stick to our promises. The unfortunate result is that we are removing these four snacks from our marketplace.

To be clear, we love these companies. They’ve been terrific to work with, and they make great products for customers who can’t get enough of their snacks. The snacks simply don’t fit within the ecosystem we’re creating.

The four snacks we’re letting go

Puffworks Peanut Butter Puffs

As peanut butter addicts, it kills us to remove this snack.

The problem is it violates our promise that each ingredient is from a whole food—specifically here, a whole grain. Although the puffs are made with whole grain corn, they also include “degermed” corn. The germ is the core of the seed where growth occurs and is rich in healthy fats, vitamin E, B vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. Without the germ, the grain is not whole, and thus, we can’t stand by it.

Earnest Eats Roasted Chipotle Snacking Avocado

Earnest Eats makes a number of better-for-you products, the company has an inspiring story. We think it is doing a lot to move health forward.

However, we have to part ways with the Roasted Chipotle Snacking Avocado. A recent change in its ingredients added vegetable oil in the seasoning, which of course violates our rule on added oil. This may seem like a small nitpick, and we understand. We don’t want to make allowances, no matter how small.

On the bright side, we are keeping the Sea Salt and Sea Salt Lime flavors, which continue to meet our guidelines.

Hippie Snacks Cauliflower Crisps and Avocado Crisps

We’re huge fans of this Canadian company, as we’ve covered before. The Hippie crew has been in the natural food game since before it was cool.

Again, heartbreakingly, it’s just one ingredient that disqualifies these two crispy snacks. The culprit is tapioca starch, which is a fibrous starch extracted from the cassava root. Based on our research into the scientific literature, tapioca starch has a lowering impact on blood glucose, which is good. And that makes sense, since it acts like a fiber.

The problem is that it’s not a whole food—it’s extracted from the cassava root, making it a supplemental fiber. Since it’s not a whole food, it violates one of our promises. If instead of tapioca, this snack used cassava flour—simply dried and ground whole cassava—that would get a green light as a whole-food ingredient.

Moving forward together in good health

First, we will ensure these types of oversights don’t happen again. We care about and believe in the promises we are making. So thank you for your continued trust.

Second, we thank our snack partners for serving us this far. They are wonderful companies with great missions we support, and we wish them the best.

Finally, fear not. The total number of snacks in our marketplace will continue to grow. In fact, we’re adding at least 15 more snacks over the next few months. They’re some of the best snacks we’ve ever tasted, and we’re confident you’ll love them.

Send us a note with questions about this topic—or any other. We love to hear from you.

Thanks for your understanding and for your patience as we grow.

Stay healthy,
Geremy, Justin and the airfare team