Everything Old Is New Again in Snack Foods : Marketing: Fancy low-fat creations fail to survive the test of taste. Potato chips and pretzels continue to do well because they taste good.

Forget the baked, not fried, jalapeno-raspberry wafers. Pass the old-fashioned chips and pretzels, please.

Americans are avoiding the fancy, sometimes bizarre, flavor combinations and munching on plain packaged snacks, such as potato chips that make no bones about having lots of fat and salt.

Why? Because they taste good.

Two out of three manufacturers expect to introduce new products this year, about the same as last year. But it is unlikely many of the taste combinations introduced of late--French vanilla popcorn, raspberry granola snacks, lime tortilla chips and cinnamon snack nuts--will survive the taste of time.

Snack food experts say some of the newest items, especially the low-fat or low-sodium snacks that are baked or microwaved, not fried, simply don’t taste very good. Even if they do taste good, there is a perception if something is good for you, it can’t taste good.

“There are psychological reasons why we snack,” said Lauve Metcalfe, president of Organizational Health Consultants, a health promotion consulting company in Tucson, Ariz.

“Often it’s out of boredom or loneliness,” not necessarily for good health, she said.

And, she said, “if someone says you can’t have something, you want it more.”

According to a survey of snack food makers, old standbys continue to be best sellers. In fact, of the 100 snack food makers surveyed by Thomas Food Industry Register and Find/SVP, 62% said regular, not low-fat or low-sodium, snacks were their best sellers.

Potato chips remain No. 1 in the $14.6-billion snack food industry. Americans ate about 1.7 billion pounds, or $4.6 billion worth, in 1993, the last year for which statistics are available.

And they ate 592 million pounds of pretzels, valued at $1.1 billion, and 1.2 billion pounds of tortilla chips, valued at $2.9 billion.

Overall, Americans ate 6.6% more snack food in 1993 than in 1992, and that pace is expected to have been the same for 1994, according to the International Snack Foods Assn.

Nonetheless, low-fat and lower-sodium snacks, while less than 10% of snack food sales, are growing more popular. Slightly less than half of the manufacturers surveyed said these sales were increasing, and 38% said sales were the same.

Frito-Lay, maker of Fritos and Doritos, predicts about one third of its business will be lower-salt or reduced-fat snacks five years from now.

Ready-to-eat popcorn is losing popularity, statistics show. Consumption fell 13% in a 36-week test period last year, according to industry experts, and less of it is likely on store shelves in the future.

Metcalfe said she expects food companies to introduce more low-fat and reduced-calorie versions of traditional snacks, “with less of a focus on sugar-free.” Nutritionally speaking, sugar is less the enemy than fat, she said.

Snacking is not all bad, she noted. It can be an essential way of maintaining a healthy diet, particularly by filling in the gaps from missed meals.

But skipping meals is a mistake, Metcalfe said, “because you’ll be more likely to snack on something higher in fat and calories to fight off the hunger.”