I was recently looking at a packet of Walkers Scrumptiously
Smoky Bacon with pork from Norfolk crisps and wondered what exactly the ingredients were.
In March this year Farmers Weekly told us Walkers crisps were getting even more British, and "For the first time Smoky Bacon will be made using real meat flavourings produced using Freedom Foods-approved British pork".
WOW! A product with meat in its name that now actually containing meat! Bizarrely, back in 2003, Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps were not suitable for vegetarians, but they changed the recipe after the Vegetarian Society awarded Walkers their ‘Imperfect World’ prize.
This got me wondering how much pork is actually in a packet. There's a piece of pork (with an ingredients arrow pointing at it) on their web site above, and also on the back of the packet. It seems considerably larger than the crisps.
However I still wasn't sure exactly how much of this much trumpeted pork was in the bag.
Fortunately their web site says Ask us Anything:
So last month I sent them a Tweet:
I'm still waiting for an answer, so I decided to study the ingredients.
I've listed them below:
Potatoes,sunflower oil (24%), rapeseed oil, Smoky Bacon seasoning (dried milk lactose, salt, sugar, flavouring, hydrolysed soya protein, citric acid, smoke flavouring, malic acid, colour (paprika extract), Norfolk dried pork shoulder.
By law, the ingredients must be listed in order of weight, with the main ingredient first. So I'm still not entirely sure how much pork there is, but as the front of the packet tells me the pack contains just 0.32g of salt. There's another seven ingredients with a higher inclusion rate than pork, but less than salt, so the pork content is going to be next to nothing.
The purpose of this post is not to have a go at Walkers, but to ask why more people don't question exactly what they are eating. The fat content of this product is over 30%. I regularly see young people eating large amounts of crisps, and wondering why they're fat!
A report in the Guardian this week tell us about a survey of adults where 24% admit to eating cereal for dinner at least once a week, while 21% turn to the biscuit tin. There's clearly a lot of education that needs to be done!
Today my Sunday lunch is made from a shoulder of Dexter beef I purchased yesterday at Nantwich Farmers Market. I've had a chat with the people who reared the animal, and I'm now reading on their website about the birds on their farm.
The beef has been slowly cooked with onions, carrots and celeriac and herbs out of of my garden. There's no artificial additives in it, the only "E" you'll get is me exclaiming delightfully when I get it out of the oven!
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