Mayonnaise - What brand or type do you buy?

No. This is Vegan mayonnaise.

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Is the liquid leftover from cooking chickpeas. It is used as an egg binder in place of eggs in vegan recipes. It can also be whipped like egg whites for replacing egg whites (whipped) in recipes eg meringues or waffles and similar such fair. Makes me wonder who had the thought wave that said let’s try whipping this stuff or adding it to dishes instead of eggs to bind something…

The liquid from cans of Chickpeas is what you want to keep and try it out. You can also make it yourself by reserving the liquid after cooking some chickpeas…just make sure it is thick enough before trying to use it, perhaps by reducing it further before cooling and trying.

Found a page that echoes my post (with some nice sounding recipes to try):

In the list of ingredients posted by @wrice for the S&W Mayo (and if typed in order of ingredients) that fructose was the 4th most common additive after oil, water and chickpeas. Seems like a lot of sugar (perhaps to make up for taste)??

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Thanks, Grahroll. Learning something new most days!

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No. Contrary to what is commonly thought, to the best of my knowledge, there are no Australian requirements for manufacturers or retailers to provide for prepackaged food products info online about nutritional content, or other important consumer info such as ingredients, allergens, health warnings, health star rating, country of origin, or quantity .

Seeking info about food products and buying them on line are increasing very rapidly. Therefore, these major gaps in the info available to consumers to facilitate informed choice need to be closed quickly. I am working on a few fronts to try to achieve this.

The gaps have arisen because policy on the provision of info about prepackaged food products has focused largely on providing it on the products, or on shelf and other labels/signs in brick and mortar stores.

However, the unit price (price per unit of measure) has to be provided at online selling sites if a selling price is provided and a very wide range of food and grocery items are offered for sale.

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I don’t usually buy a particular brand, but make sure that any store bought mayonnaise has whole eggs in it. To me buying a mayonnaise without eggs is akin to buying ice cream without dairy products.

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The packing and labelling of the Kewpie mayo is unusual.
The flexible plastic container is in a sealed plastic bag on which is provided almost all of the info about the product.
The plastic container only shows the name of the product and the best by date. See photos below.
So, after opening the product, unless you keep the container in the bag or keep the bag elsewhere, you do not have much info about the product.
I’d be interested to hear about any other products with this type of packaging and labelling.



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I would suspect that Kewpie has decided to avoid the expense of producing multiple product containers for export markets, each being labelled in the language and complying with the laws of each country.

Far cheaper to simply do it on a piece of cellophane, and they have still provided the information with the product.

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Over-packaging of products is very common in Japan and some other countries. More packaging is seen as higher quality/premium product.

While off topic, the following demonstrates this point…Recently in Austria, we purchased some crackers. The biscuits we purchased had four layers of packaging (listed from outside to inside):

  • sealed external plastic packaging
  • a plain folded cardboard insert which wrapped around the biscuits (the two ends were unwrapped)
  • a clear PET tray which the biscuits were held
  • a clear soft plastic packaging around groups of 6 crackers.

I felt bad when opening these crackers …there was considerable unnecessary packaging leading to additional waste. At least two levels or packaging could have been avoided, but for some reason, the biscuits were over packed. I only assume it is what the customer is after…well packaged biscuits potentially protected from damage and individually wrapped in serving sized packages.

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That’s what I thought too. Of course any saving needs to be balanced against the cost of extra packaging materials and reduced availability of consumer info.

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Yes. I have noticed how much more packaging is used in Japan. So, maybe it is not just a coincidence that this is a Japanese brand (although the product is made in Thailand).

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Hi ijarratt
I bought in the supermarket and found the list was too small to read.
How frustrating it is for us who choose to care about our diet to not have legislation on labelling!
All the best in your endeavours.

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By printing the information in the language for each export market on the cellophane jacket instead of the product container, Kewpie would not only save on having only one generic container, but would also be able to do an entire production run for all markets as opposed to individual packaging runs for each one.

They could also keep stock on hand to quickly ship to any market after simply packaging the tubes in the appropriate jackets.

As far as keeping the jacket after opening, it is really no different to opening a packet of biscuits and then storing them in an airtight container.

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Excellent and valid points about possible advantages for manufacturers.
Makes me wonder why more manufacturers do not use this type of packaging?

I agree. However, the “best before” date, printed on the Kewpie container, is very important for mayo.
BTW these examples of consumer info provided at time of purchase, but necessarily readily available later, highlight the need to ensure that the info is available on line anytime. Also, for on line buying, that it is available on line at the time of purchase.

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Kewpie would not have wasted product containers if they leave a certain market and would also be able to very quickly start supplying any new market as soon as they have the necessary cellophane jackets produced.

However, as you suggested, they should affix use-by date labels to the product containers which would only require a labelling gun and rolls of stickers.

Or simply use an industrial ink jet printer to date each container as it is filled?

Just like this bottle in our fridge perhaps?

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I thought that @ijarratt was advising that there was no use-by date on the product containers, and I do not have one to look at.

There is obviously no problem in this regard.

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Use By / Best Before dates can be confusing - printed over printing or crinkled packaging or as part of a barrage of meaningless (to the consumer) numbers, packed on, BBD. Some dates as 20180319, 190318, I would prefer 19 Mar 2019 or 19/03/19 to avoid confusion with the American system of mm/dd. My other bug bear is smudged dates where you can’t work out if it is 2016 or 18, 19 etc.

My Black & Gold Mayo has a well presented BBD printed on the side of the plastic jar -
BEST BEFORE 106
09/01/2019 07:35

It has good contrast and does not wipe off with moisture or handling.

In contrast our Continental Garlic 210g jar has a jumble of numbers printed on the glass neck/jar screw -
622 0225
2100/01098 (last two could be 03 or 68)
I suspect that the BBD was on the cellophane tamper seal around the jar cap. Not satisfactory.

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No problem @Fred123, hopefully this helps us all.

There has never been a risk of Kewpie in our house getting any where close to the expiry date.

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That’s right. As shown in my photo too, there is a BEST BY DATE (not USE BUY) on the container. There is also the same date mark on the cellophane bag, however there it is accompanied with AB (what ever that means). On the on the container it is accompanied by BBD and AB.

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That’s very specific!

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