At Trader Joe's, we've been accused of being bananas. But bananas is just the beginning... Plantains are close relatives of bananas. While you normally eat bananas raw, plantains are almost always cooked before eating. Where bananas are sweet, plantains are on the starchy side. And though plantains are technically a fruit, they're commonly eaten like root vegetables. When you think of them this way, Trader Joe's Plantain Chips make perfect sense. Our Plantain Chips come from Peru, where the plantains are picked when they're just ripe enough to be slightly sweet. They're sliced and cooked in sunflower oil, then dusted with salt. They eat like sort-of-sweet, thick-cut potato chips, but with less fat than typical potato chips. And they're such a great value, people will probably start saying we've gone plantains!