For some reason, Melba toast seems hard to break. It’s been in the corner of grocery stores for decades, beige, thin, and dry, long after every cracker trend has come and gone. People still buy it, though. Nutritionists keep telling people to do it. Since people are once again very interested in blood sugar, gut health, and calorie density, it’s time to do some math and figure out what this simple little cracker is doing for your health.
This kind of toast has 390 calories per 100 grams. When you think about how many crackers are in 100 grams, that sounds like a lot. Depending on the brand, that’s about 30 or more individual pieces. The standard serving size for Dare Foods is four toasts, which is a more realistic size. It only has 80 calories. That’s really low for something with real texture and crunch, if you’ve been keeping track of what you eat. The way this cracker looks may be what has kept people from understanding it for so long.
Here’s where things get more interesting and maybe a little more complicated: the amount of carbs. Melba toast is definitely a carb-heavy food, with 70 grams of net carbs per 100 grams. But its glycemic index is 64, which is in the middle range, and its glycemic load is only 6. This is the number that really tells you how much a real serving will raise blood sugar. That’s not good. The difference between GI and GL is important for people who are watching their energy levels or who are at risk for diabetes. How much you eat does a lot of the work here.
Most people are shocked by the mineral profile. Melba toast has one of the highest amounts of manganese in foods, and it also has a very high amount of selenium—nearly twice the daily value if you eat 300 grams of it every day. There are also good amounts of iron, phosphorus, and folate. These facts don’t really prove that Melba toast is a superfood, but they do show that it’s not just empty starch on a cardboard wafer.
There isn’t much fat. In the plain original variety, there is almost no saturated fat, cholesterol, or trans fats. In the 1990s, when this cracker may have been at its cultural peak, this would have been almost unattainable. People today are less likely to be afraid of fat, but Melba toast still fills a real nutritional gap that not many snacks can honestly claim.
Some people think that Melba toast has a problem with how it looks more than with how healthy it is. People often think of it as diet food, like the kind of things people eat with cottage cheese, but in reality, its nutrition is on par with much more trendy options. With sesame, rosemary, sprouted grain, and sourdough varieties, brands like Boulangerie Grissol have tried to bring the category up to date. The basic simplicity—five ingredients and no artificial additives—reads as truly clean by today’s standards.
Most of the time, the foods we don’t eat have been around for too long to be interesting. Melba toast isn’t trying to follow a trend. The next time you want a snack that seems more exciting but doesn’t really give you much, think about whether that quiet consistency is good for you in a nutritional and practical sense.
