Healthy chips on the menu

It is the snack fast-food addicts have been praying for - a chip which is as healthy as eating broccoli.

There is a drawback with chef Randy Blaun's fries, however - they contain hardly any potato.

Ms Blaun, an American, says her new recipe chips provide as many nutrients as a portion of vegetables and are ideal for weight-watchers on the controversial Atkins diet - thanks to their low carbohydrate content.

'There is a hole on the plate in the Atkins diet,' she said. 'Potatoes are the side dish that everyone misses.'

Her chips are made from ingredients which would not normally make it into the deep-fat fryer - a mixture of egg whites, cauliflower and milk protein - but she claims they taste as good as the real thing.

She is now trying to patent a recipe for dough made from cauliflower mix which can be moulded into chips.

Ms Blaun added: 'Once the dough mix has been cooked thoroughly enough and pureed, it becomes a nice and bland. It does not smell like cauliflower.

'You have to squirt it out of a nozzle shaped like a French fry, then you flash fry it.'

The process even allows for colouring to be added to the mix, enabling cooks to produce multi-coloured chips.