Manufacturers do two things. They make stuff and then sell it. To make food attractive to the younger generation they add either salt, fat or sugar. Generally speaking (and to appeal to the uneducated health nuts) they cut down on the fat content and increase the sugar content. A vast majority of consumers are convinced that sugar will not make you fat but eating high fat content foods will… RUBBISH! Unused sugars are converted to fat and stored around the body. To cut costs, manufacturers get their stuff made in third world countries and then write nebulous, uninformative gibberish in tiny print on an inconvenient to read spot on the packaging. Most people don’t bother to read it and manufacturers rely on this to sell their products. This methodology is both immoral and unethical but it sells products. Many will say that sugar is added as a preservative. And sugar can be used as a preservative but generally speaking, it is not necessary to use it as such with today’s modern food processing methods
Sugar, along with vinegar (or some other acid) and salt help with preservation and in getting that “pickled” flavour. I am sure that they have done blind testing before committing to their recipes and those testers preferred the taste of the ones containing sugar. If you really don’t want any sugar, remembering that most of it stays in the juice anyway, you could always can your own in water.
Made In means where it’s processed. With the contents, worst case scenario, beetroot from China, and only the sugar is local. Useless product of origin labeling.
NZ grows beetroots commercially and historically imports most from Germany , with some from China to meet shortfalls…
I also recall reading somewhere that Australian beetroot is also used when other suppliers cant meet demand.
Once upon a time.
SE Qld used to be a big producer (2kg per Aussie per annum of supply). Golden Circle (Brisbane) when it was all Aussie was also a big brand for the real Aussie beet.
I don’t recollect if they needed to add sugar in the old days? If it was it would have also been local product.
Note:
Growing traditional European crops in Australia is always challenging. Australia was never intended to grow foreign plants, hence agriculture has continually needed to modify the local environment to meet our needs. Nature has a habit of fighting back. The real cost of production, sugar or no sugar can be higher than importing.
There are exceptions - free range beef as land has been cheap to buy and clear, cotton as water is cheap when available, sugar cane as chemicals and CSIRO plant breeding compensate, etc.
Beetroot just does not have the same aura although it is typically vibrant reds on the plate and yum. It has been left behind to be one more foreign supplied product. IE no export income or foreign investment interest to prop up R&D or government interest.
Has always had sugar and salt
…
Australia still produces fresh and canned beetroot. Fresh is available also everywhere (most supermarkets and green grocers) and became more available when Golden Circle moved canning offshore.
Edgell and some store brands are still made with Aussie beetroot in Australia…
And there are other Australian beetroot products such as juice, powder, chips and
I cannot understand why anyone would want to eat a burger without beetroot, let alone those disgusting American pickle slices.
Still the major producer at a fraction of past production.
Regularly found in most house holds = 1in 4.
Per @phb, it’s assumed J.R. Simplot’s ‘Edgell’ brand is one of the main purchasers.
It would be of some further interest to understand how much of the salt and sugar in the can remains in the juice (a great vegetable dye) and how much is infused to the beet. It might be the beets are healthier than be imagine?
Note:
Golden Circle branded product from NZ is listed as having added ‘herb and spice flavours’.
Pure NZ? - market BS Mr Kraft-y Heinz!
Something not included with the Edgell local product, although it’s also foreign owned, along with ‘Chiko’.
J.R. Simplot owns many iconic brands/products well known on our supermarket shelves. Including John West, Ally, Seakist and I&J. I’ve always wondered what really happened to the product John West rejected?
When I found out about the contents in the beetroot tins, I have since cooked my own and preserve it with vinegar, and it keeps in the fridge keeps as long as tin beetroot. All the more reasons for eating your own cooking.
The quantity that makes a “serve” is always listed on the product.
Yes, then you have to do the sums to work out how many serves you are eating to know how much sodium you are consuming. If you eat more than one product in a meal you have to combine them somehow. You would have to convert to weight and add them up as one serve of product A plus one and a half serves of product B is nothing in particular.
If you use weights from the start it is easier to get to your total consumption as each product uses the same units.
I never look at the serve size suggestion as we never follow it. Sometimes we consume more than the serve size and other time less than.
We use the per 100gms as this standardises the nutritional panel and lets one know what the nutritional value is.
There is no way product labelling can address your concerns. Somewhere along the line we all have to take responsibility for our own lives and food consumption is part of that. As a diabetic and a survivor of a triple bypass operation I have a lot of dietary requirements but I manage quite well given the labelling we have in place. I think we are all guilty of wanting our Governments to provide all of the answers by way of legislation but that is just not possible in this case. If we want to calculate our consumption by weight then the information is provided per 100 grams as well.
I am not disputing that. I agree with all you said in your last post, you seem to have gone in quite another direction from your previous.
going back I’m guessing over 25 years ago I remember the rep telling me that Edgell brought out their ‘summer style’ beetroot to compete with the sweeter Golden Circle beetroot and this was simply their normal beetroot with extra sugar added
“A spoonfull of sugar makes the beetroot go down”.
Perhaps the answer is legislation to make the information available online in a standard format with a standard interface - then you can scan the barcode in the supermarket and have the RDIs / serves / percentages / masses / who-knows-what calculated instantly by an app.
The problem with manufacturers’ suggested serving size is that they are simply not realistic. They under represent what most people will actually eat in order to lower the numbers on the nutritional panel. Try it yourself if you eat breakfast cereal. Frist pour your usual amount into your usual bowl then weigh it. Then weigh out what the pack says. You will likely find that you regularly eat twice or more the recommended serving size. The nutritional panel information doesn’t look so good then!
If you can use it to work out that you are serving twice the portion, perhaps it is still serving a purpose.
Isn’t it also telling us we are over eating?
Finally isn’t it telling us that the product we have been persuaded to purchase is a poor nutritional choice? A brand recommendation to look for something more suitable for our health needs next time?
IMO the only thing wrong with the panels is they are not sufficiently large or prominent to overwhelm all else on the product branding and labels. Some need a magnifying glass or mobile phone close up to read. Time many consumers don’t have. At the same time feeling guilty clogging up the slightly too narrow supermarket aisles trying to read the fine print and decide.
Well not necessarily. Who is deciding what a ‘portion’ is? In most cases it is the manufacturer (especially with processed and packaged goods). And it is their job to sell as much as they can. How many times have you seen the portions in a packet to be 3.5, or 2.7, or 1.8 etc? Having unrealistic portion sizes is a con to every consumer who looks at the panel to make their choice thinking they are doing the right thing. How many people ever actually measure what they are eating? I even read a recipe yesterday where the quantity was to make 4 muffins. However, the nutritional panel along side the recipe gave the information (in small print) for 24 portions! That means they expect each muffin to be cut into 6! Totally unrealistic and misleading!
