I recently bought the Italian Style Fennel Pork Sausages from Woolworths. I have bought these sausages every so often over the last few years. Now they have sneakily changed the ingredients since I first bought them.
I am watching my calorie intake and so I keep a record of my daily food intake in the Australian Easy Diet Diary App. A lot of foods can be entered automatically, but the Italian Style Fennel Pork Sausages are not in their data base. When I first bought these sausages, I had to enter the nutrition information into âMy Foodsâ so I could access it in the future. Tonight, I went to add the details of the sausage that I had just eaten into the app and I noticed that the calorific value I had previously recorded was different from what was on the current sausage wrapper.
The nutrition details now are quite different from what they were a couple of years ago. More fat and carbohydrate have been included. One advantage is that they have reduced the sodium. I am rather annoyed though as the sausages are nearly twice as high in calories now from what they used to be.
I guess that they can change the recipe for the sausages when they want but I feel as if it is a bit sneaky to make a cheaper version and use the same front of the package. I donât know how the price of the two versions has changed. This is a different form of shrinkflation.
The fat content is still less that many brands of pork sausages at around 14%, 16-18% is common and some over 20%. What it was before I canât say. Fat is essential to sausages, without it they will be dry and lacking taste.
Supermarket store brands, such as these sausages, are subject to change over time. Supermarkets go out regularly to see what different suppliers offer and the prices they can supply. Each supplier has its own recipes.
Choice often sees this through regular testing of many everyday, store branded products, where Choice ratings, recommendations or measured performance changes between each test event.
Possibly you are lucky that sausages have an ingredients list and nutritional panel, so changes can be easily identified during a purchase/in store.
Some products, such as store branded detergents, donât have similar information so it can be difficult to know if a product has changed. The only way to know is the detergent doesnât work as well, smells different or looks different.
Some of the supermarkets also have testing panels which sample and evaluate products they sell under their store brands. This is to ensure their products satisfy a taste test and therefore are likely to sell.
Yes, the detergent issue is a problem. I noticed that the washing up detergent that was one of the best in 2022 didnât get anywhere near the top of the list in 2023. Something must have changed. One of my issues with our local Woolworths is that they donât keep the Choice detergent recommendations on the shelves.
Same criticism has been made of Aldi and Coles. They change suppliers regularly to be able to complete in the low price end of the market. Pushing for lower supply costs, something has to give which is quality.
In the comparison you seem to be using the manufacturerâs âserving sizeâ instead of the amount per 100g.
There is no standard serving size that would allow fair comparison of productsâ content or assessment of your energy intake. In this case it is one sausage, ie 83gm. Most people I know would have two, some who do hard work three or four. I am not suggesting you need to eat more than one but that the measure is useless.
An example of the uncertainty of one serving can be seen in references to dieting and dietary requirements that say a serving of uncooked meat is 90-100gm where a restaurant is likely to be 150-180gm. If I went to a restaurant and got one sausage it would need to be a magnificent specimen hand mixed and extruded by angels.
Another example is Woolies basic pork sausages. You get 8 per pack of 600gm, so each is 75gm and the panel says that is a serving, yet it also says four servings per pack! Confused yet?
Like âserving suggestionâ, serving size has little meaning, if you are serious about knowing what you eat forget it and work on weight.
I was working on weight. I was working on the weight of one Woolworths Italian Style Fennel Pork sausage. And I did weigh them on a reliable scale. Whether the weight of the sausage 83g is used, or the standard 100g weight, the Cal/g is still the same. In this case the serving size is the same. This is what i am comparing.
Maybe if you are not a 76 year old menopausal woman you can eat more than one sausage for a meal. But if you gain weight easily and a 1600 Cal/day diet is about right for you, then one has to be careful about individual serves. if one allows 400 Cal for each of three meals and snacks, then one cannot be excessive on the sausages. Plenty of room needs to be allowed for the required vegetables, fruit, cereal, legume and milk products. I could have had 2 at the 117 Cal/sausage, but not at the 214 Cal/sausage. This is my complaint. I donât want the new fattier sausage, I want the previous version because there is more protein/sausage and less saturated fat. It is still sneaky to have the same label but a different sausage inside.
As I indicated above it isnât sneaky. It would be sneaky, or possibly better term is misleading, if the recipe for the sausages changed but the nutritional panel and ingredients list didnât.
It is also worth noting the the figures on the nutritional panel arenât exact, they are a representation of what an average a product will be like. Depending on the batch made, the values in the nutritional panel could be higher or lower than that presented. With something like a sausage, its ingredients are variable (esp. the meat) and variation from that presented on the nutritional panel could be higher than for say ultra processed foods where the refined ingredients are more constant quality. Even packaged fresh, unprocessed foods can have significant variation from varieties, growing conditions etc.
As a result I wouldnât get too âhung upâ on the differences in the nutritional panels, as they are guides only. It is likely many sausages consumed with the old recipe had fat etc higher than the new recipe.
If you arenât happy with the new recipe for the sausages, no one is forcing you to buy them. As a consumer, you can easily switch to other sausages which may suit your needs better or look at product alternatives to sausages.
The proportions in the ingredients list changed so the recipe has changed. For instance pancakes and butter cakes have the same ingredients, but the proportions are different. They are different recipes; as are the two versions of the sausage. Sneaky!
I am not talking abut my shopping actions, I am talking about one product that is being misleading by using the same label for a different product.
It isnât misleading as the ingredients list and nutritional panel was updated - it isnât the same label. It is no more misleading than two different manufacturers making Anzac biscuits with the same ingredients but different nutritional information. This is why ingredients and nutritional information is provided, to allow consumers to make more informed decisions about the products they buy.
Disagreeing with a change in a recipe or ingredients (or their ratios) isnât misleading. Otherwise every food manufacturer would be misleading when they tweak their recipes and the product name remains the same. There would be very few products by the same manufacturer with the same product name which hasnât changed over time.
The only difference possibly is the risk of store branded products changing is higher between purchases for the reasons outlined in an earlier post.
If one has specific dietary needs, product labels should be reviewed more regularly, possibly at each purchase for some needs, to ensure it is still suitable for consumption.
A minor tweak in the recipe like using a different oil or the fat changes by a few percentage points is acceptable but when the fat content changes by 64%, the Calories by 83% and the carbohydrates by a whopping 180% and the front of packet stays the same, that is dishonest and sneaky.
Dietary needs are not the issue with the sneakiness. Can you imagine if when shopping you had to check all the nutrition labels to see if they had changed since your previous purchase. You rely on the front of the packet to tell you that the product is to all intents and purposes the same as last time. If it isnât by a large percentages, they are being sneaky.
Saying otherwise is supporting bad behaviour on the part of the manufacturer and the supermarket. Is that what you want?
We do, especially for store branded products. We are conscious of the amount of sugar, fat and salt/sodium we consume and check every product as we buy it, even if it is a regular addition to our pantry. We have heen caught out from time to time, even with branded products - only noticing differences when its is consumed.
We have also noticed changes in recipes in some branded products from time to time, as they also tweak their recipes. Their packaging stays exactly the same except for the nutritional panel and ingredients list. There are often times reports of some big brand product recipes bring tweaked, often with mixed responses from consumers - some strongly in favour, whilst others voice their disapproval.
It isnât dishonest, sneaky or supporting âbad behaviourâ of the manufacturer/supermarket. Manufacturers change their recipes for a number of reasons - some frequently, some infrequently. For store branded products, recipes are driven by costs and changes are made to keep cost basis of the products low. For branded products, it can change due to availability of ingredients, changes in consumer expectations (lower salt, sugar etc) or to try and make the product more attractive to the consumer (âhealthierâ, better taste etc).
It is worth noting that almost all products available for sale change over time, including appliances, clothing, computers/software, furniture, foods etc etc. The change in a sausage recipe isnât a unique situation.
Ongoing changes to products is the reality of the consumer world we live in.
I sympathise with you @Brolga especially that the changed recipe has more fat (unhealthy) and more fillers (cheaper ingredients). But: it hasnât been done secretly because the nutritional information list sets it all out?
Sausage makers are known to change their recipe usually without notice, the majority of the reviews from the web actually find it a bit too fat for their liking, so perhaps that wasnât a happy change.
The content of a serving is also expressed as weight, the problem is with the lack of any agreement about what is a serving. Particularly if you are comparing content, such as the proportion of fat, between brands that may not have the same idea of a serving you will only get a fair comparison using amount per 100gm. The table you provided would not be useful for that comparison.
You are never going to get a vendor putting a bright label on their goods saying âNew formula, 33% more fat!â That is completely unrealistic and an approach will not lead to making good buying decisions. There are times when what is needs to replace what ought even if we donât like it.
Like @phb, we do check nutrition labels, and particularly on store brand items, because they can be sourced from entirely different suppliers at any time. The store just re-brands them.
The packageâs front label (on all products, not just store brand) is, in my view, little more than an advertisement: intended to catch the eye and encourage the purchase, often using meaningless but evocative words like ânaturalâ. I personally would not take it at face value. Any real information is confined to the nutrition label.
However, I do believe the major supermarkets have a responsibility to be consistent with their own brand products. Such a major change as youâve described with these sausages is not consistent. This version should at least have been labelled differently.
Sneaky? Maybe not, given that the nutrition label is (presumably) being honest. Blatantly inconsistent? Definitely. Check out Woolworthsâ claims about their own brands in this article:
Eg,
Product reformulation
âWoolworths has a strong focus on making its own brand products healthier by continually reducing salt, sugar and saturated fat, and adding more vegetables and whole grains. âWoolworths continue to work towards the voluntary reformulation targets set by the Governmentâs Healthy Food Partnership, of which 79% of eligible Woolworths Supermarkets own brand products meet the targets for salt, saturated fat and sugar.
The front label on the sausages package states âItalian Styleâ which commonly refers to spices used like fennel pepper and garlic and the ingredients panel lists those exact spices, so technically the labels match.
I hear you that mostly we just just reach for our favourite package without checking the nutritional label, itâs only when we take it home that we discover a change in the recipe. Itâs their loss when we donât buy that product any more
Ainât that the truth. However unless we buy a replacement product from a different source, the original suppliers suffer no consequences. As we all know from bringing up children, training dogs, managing horses, this is not a good thing.
