Okay, we are not comparing two different forms of online nuisances, but their namesakes found in the grocery aisles:

Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream vs. Hormel Spam

Click on the image or link above to see an ingredient-level comparison.

As you can see, they even share something in common: water, sugar, and salt!

Okay, this is worse than comparing apples and oranges. But since we are at it, let’s look for some unusual ingredients in these two iconic products.

In the Phish Food column, we see Carrageenan, an ingredient in use for thousands of years, but still the most frequently mispelled word in our ingredient dictionary. Carrageenan is a gelatinous extract from seaweed. It serves as a vegetarian and vegan alternative to gelatin, which is extracted from animal bones. Today, most of the carrageenan we consume comes from the Philippines. The seaweed is grown in the waters of the Pacific, harvested, processed, ground into powder, and shipped to the food manufacturers.

Food manufacturers use carrageenan as a thickener or a gelling agent, adding it to ice creams and other milk products to provide viscosity. However, its use is not limited to food products. You may also find carrageenan in toothpastes and personal lubricants.

In the SPAM column, we see Mechanically Separated Chicken in the ingredient statement. How is ‘Mechanically Separated Chicken’ different from ‘Chicken’?

More generally, Mechanically Separated Meat (MSM) or Mechanically Separated Poultry (MSP) is a paste-like ingredient, made by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the edible meat tissue from the bones. As you can imagine, the argument for MSM/MSP is that the use of machines to extract meat scraps from bones reduces waste, improves efficiency (over hand trimming), and therefore leads to reduced prices for these meat ingredients.

Under regulation by the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service, MSM/MSP has to be labeled as such because the mechanical process may introduce crushed bone fragments or spinal cords into the meat, resulting in excessive calcium levels. FSIS rules specifically require that hotdogs contain no more than 20% mechanically separated pork. Furthermore, mechanically separated beef is banned altogether in 2004 over concerns of BSE (Mad Cow Disease). These restrictions do not apply to chicken, however. This probably explains why SPAM uses chicken that is mechanically separated, but pork that is not.

Do you have any interesting and/or unusual product comparisons to make? Share them as comments below!

Today, Capri Sun is no longer the only pouch in town. Honest Kids, by Honest Tea, a maker of bottled organic tea, is similarly packaged in a kid-friendly, ergonomically-shaped silver pouch. Furthermore, what goes inside the pouch is also differentiated. The Honest Kids packaging proclaims: “USDA Organic”, “No High Fructose Corn Syrup”, and “1/2 the Sugar of Most Kids’ Drinks”.

Capri Sun vs. Honest Kids

How do their ingredients stack up against each other? Click on the above image/link to see the ingredient-level comparison of the tropical punch variety from each brand.

It appears that the two ingredient statements are quite similar. Both begin with water and sugar, followed by some juice concentrates, flavors, and vitamins. Of course, an important difference is that the Honest Kids drink is made from organic ingredients. Even the flavoring is organic!

There is a back story that is worth noting — Capri Sun recently switched their sweetener from high fructose corn syrup to sugar. The switch was made without much fanfare, and it might have been prompted by a number of different factors, including competition from Honest Kids, being sued for claiming Capri Sun to be “all natural” when it contained HFCS, or maybe the First Lady declaring HFCS to be banished from her family’s pantry.

Highlighted on the new Capri Sun pouch, instead, is the fact that it contains “25% less sugar”. Now it contains 16g of sugar per pouch, instead of 20g. On this count, Honest Kids is still ahead, at 10g of sugar per pouch. On the other hand, as our son pointed out the other day, the Honest Kids drink contains only 7% juice.

“It isn’t a juice if it only contains 7% juice,” he objected.

“Actually, they don’t call it a juice, or even a juice drink,” we replied. “They call it an organic thirst quencher.” They are honest, after all, aren’t they?

Kellogg’s Froot Loops versus Kellogg’s Smart Start Antioxidants Cereal

Click on the image/link above to see the ingredient-level comparison.

Let’s start with the kid’s cereal. Of course, we will need those FD&C Colors to make the cereal red, blue, green, orange, and purple. And we will also need those natural flavors to make the cereal taste “frooty”. Finally, the vegetable oils used are of the partially hydrogenated variety, i.e., the ones that are high in trans fat.

Let’s turn to the cereal targeted at the adults. Notice that the product highlights “antioxidants” in its name. In recent years, marketers have been promoting the health benefits of antioxidants, claiming anti-aging and disease prevention benefits, for example. Normally, fruits and vegetables are considered good sources of antioxidants. But where do the antioxidants come from in this cereal?

Look at the full ingredient statement, and we will see that 8 out of 48 listed ingredients are food additives with an antioxidant function, including BHT which appears three times. That is a pretty good argument for calling this cereal an antioxidant cereal, isn’t it?

On the other hand, these antioxidants are food additives, i.e., explicitly added to the product. Technically, antioxidants are added to prolong the shelf-life of a food by protecting against deterioration caused by oxidation, such as fat rancidity and color changes. For example, TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) is commonly used to keep vegetable oils fresh.

Antioxidants may be either natural (e.g., Vitamins C and E) or synthetic (e.g., TBHQ, BHT, BHA). Unfortunately, each of these three synthetic antioxidants have been linked in studies to cancer risks in prolonged exposures and/or high doses. Proponents of the Feingold Diet also believe that these three ingredients should be eliminated in the treatment of hyperactivity in children.

Let us turn to a different issue: ingredient stacking. For Smart Start, sugar makes its first appearance in third place, after rice and wheat. Kellogg’s would like us to believe that this cereal contains more rice and wheat than sugar. This is in contrast to Froot Loops, where the first ingredient is sugar, ahead of corn flour, wheat flour, and oat flour.

In reality, one serving of Froot Loops contains 12g of sugar, while one serving of Smart Start contains 14g of sugar. What is going on? In an effort to obscure the true amount of sugar in Smart Start, the manufacturer is engaging in the practice of ingredient stacking. Instead of listing sugar once, in order of prevalence (weight) as required by the FDA, it lists the ingredient at four different locations in the ingredient statement.

Essentially, Kellogg’s is saying that it is adding a little sugar to the toasted oats, and a little sugar to the crisp rice. Then, the toasted oats and the crisp rice are combined with a little more sugar, along with corn syrup (sugar in syrup form), to produce the oat clusters. Even so, the oat clusters still weigh less than the amount of additional sugar (appearing as the 3rd ingredient) added to the cereal. Finally, some high fructose corn syrup (another corn-based sweetener) is thrown in for good measure.

There are plenty of alternatives to these two cereals. Cheerios, the #1 most popular cereal in the U.S., is essentially Froot Loops without the colors, flavors, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils:

Cheerios vs. Froot Loops

Barbara’s Bakery Shredded Oats provides a good example that a healthy cereal can be made without synthetic antioxidants or sugar:

Barbara’s Bakery Shredded Oats vs. Kellogg’s Smart Start

]]> http://www.boxbabble.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=119 109 http://www.boxbabble.com/blog/?p=111 http://www.boxbabble.com/blog/?p=111#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 16:00:02 +0000 admin http://www.boxbabble.com/blog/?p=111 Memorial Day Weekend is almost upon us — time to go to the grocery store with our barbecue shopping list. What is your favorite barbecue sauce?

Let us compare two popular sauces: Kraft’s Original Barbecue Sauce and Annie’s Naturals Organic Original BBQ Sauce.

Click on the link/image above for an ingredient-level comparison. The ingredient-count and additive-count comparisons are quite fascinating. Annie’s has twice as many ingredients as Kraft (33 vs. 16), but only one additive versus the five for Kraft. Clearly, we need to do some investigation.

Let us examine the different ingredients that are found in the Annie’s sauce. They include various extra spices such as allspice, red and black peppers, chili, celery seed, clove, along with tamarind, garlic, and shallot. It also includes organic soy sauce, which is made from ingredients such as organic soybeans, organic wheat, alcohol.

What about the Kraft sauce? The first and the last ingredients on the list really do stand out — high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and Red 40. Given that the ingredients are listed in descending order of predominance, this means that there is quite a bit of HFCS in that bottle! FD&C Red 40 is also known as Allura Red AC or E129. It is a food coloring approved for use in the US by the FDA, but banned in many European countries such as Denmark, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.

The kraft sauce does list spice as one of its ingredients, though it doesn’t specify what type of spice it is. The sauce also contains paprika, which is ground bell/chile peppers, along with mustard and salt which are common to the two sauces. Finally, there is the natural flavor. As you probably know, this is one way for food manufacturers to keep their recipe a trade secret (think Coca Cola). But it is also a convenient way for manufacturers to sneak in extra ingredients in a catch-all term. Read more about artificial and/or natural flavors here.

Bottom line? A shorter ingredient statement is not necessarily better. Look out for those problematic ingredients (e.g., HFCS, artificial colors), as well as ingredients like natural flavors that may be hiding something behind them.

Looking at the packaging, an obvious difference is that Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies bears the USDA Certified Organic seal, whereas the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish does not.

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish vs. Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies

What about the ingredient statements? Click on the image or link above, and you will see that the goldfish has almost twice as many ingredients as the bunnies (29 vs. 16).

Both crackers are made with wheat flour, cheddar cheese, milk, and other common ingredients like salt, yeast, and annatto which gives the crackers their color.

Both use a combination of different vegetable oils. Annie’s specifies that they use the expeller pressed method for oil extraction. In contrast, vegetable oils that are not expeller pressed are generally extracted using chemical solvents such as hexane. Presumably this is the case for Pepperidge. Studies have found instances of residual hexane in vegetable oils. Given that the long-term toxicity of hexane is well known, some consumers and manufacturers have chosen to adopt expeller pressed oils in their products.

So, what are these extra ingredients found in the goldfish? First, there are the various B vitamins plus the iron added to enrich the wheat flour. Second, leavening (comprising of baking soda, calcium phosphate, and ammonium bicarbonate) are used as raising agents, essentially making the goldfish rounder and puffier as they are baked. Finally, we see sugar in the ingredient list, though thankfully it is not at the head of the list, and it adds only 1 gram of sugar to each serving.

Bottomline: while there is a difference in ingredient count, there are no controversial ingredients in either product, and so the main differentiators are the types of vegetable oils used, and the fact that the bunnies are made from organic ingredients.

If you want a more *colorful* comparison, here is a bonus:

http://www.boxbabble.com/bvb5.php?pid1=5977&pgroup=5974

Would you like to add all these artificial colors to your Yuck! List?

Want to make your own product comparisons? Click here.

Of the many mac & cheese meals in the store, how do they stack up against one another? If you are familiar with the BoxBabble Leaderboard, you will already know that children’s meals have some of the highest ingredient counts across all food categories.

So, are all mac & cheese meals created equal? Let’s find out by comparing two popular offerings:

Macaroni & Cheese: Kid Cuisine versus Mom Made Foods

Click on the link above to see an ingredient-level comparison of the two products. Wow! Look at the disparity in terms of ingredient count and additive count. To be fair, the Kid Cuisine meal includes a MIXED BERRY FRUIT FLAVORED ROLL, which adds 17 ingredient elements to the count. Still, the ingredient statement is very daunting to read, especially when it is in ALL CAPS.

Let’s begin with the 13 common ingredients. Thank goodness both include macaroni and cheese, made from durum wheat and milk. Annatto is a natural (as opposed to synthetic) food dye from a tropical tree that is often added to cheddar cheese. So, a product that contains Annatto can be labeled as “all natural” or “no artificial colors”.

The Mom Made Foods offering includes three extra organic vegetables, and vitamins found in the milk and cheese powder. The product is USDA Certified Organic, meaning the product is made from organic ingredients.

Let’s turn to the Kid Cuisine offering. We can see a number of artificial colors (Yellow #5, Yellow #6, and Red #40). There are six vitamins, mainly added to the wheat flour. There are sweeteners in the form of sugar, corn syrup, and maltodextrin (showing up six times on the ingredient statement). There are a variety of food additives serving as emulsifiers, acidity regulators, stabilizers, and thickeners. Also, you may notice that salt appears 10 times in the ingredient statement.

A final note on the provenance of these products: Mom Made Foods is started by Heather Stouffer, a mom, in 2006, specializing in organic meals for children. Kid Cuisine is a brand marketed by ConAgra Foods since 1990. Of course, the biggest player in this market segment is Lunchables, marketed by Kraft in the US since 1988.

So, which box would you go for?

Betty Crocker Supermoist Cake Mix, Dark Chocolate

1-2-3 Gluten-Free Devil’s Food Chocolate Cake Mix

Betty Crocker is an American household brand, established in 1921, and part of General Mills. Betty Crocker cake mixes have been sold since 1947. 1-2-3 Gluten-Free, founded by a mother and daughter team in Ohio, makes baking mixes in “a dedicated gluten-free (and peanut-free, nut-free and allergen-free) kosher facility utilizing only gluten-free ingredients”.

Using BoxBabble’s Compare/Contrast tool, we can perform an ingredient-level comparison of the two cake mixes:

Chocolate Cake Mix: 1-2-3 Gluten-Free vs. Betty Crocker

First off, we see a significant difference in ingredient count (30 vs. 12) and additive count (12 vs. 3).

The two mixes have six ingredients in common, and there are no surprises here: cocoa (we are baking chocolate cakes), baking soda and calcium phosphate (combined to release carbon dioxide, which makes the cake rise), artificial and/or natural flavor (the catch-all ingredient), xanthan gum (a thickener), and salt.

Now, let’s looks at the ingredients that are unique to each mix. First, we see that the 1-2-3 mix uses rice flour and tapioca starch, as opposed to wheat flour in most cake mixes. Of course, this is exactly what makes the cake mix gluten-free.

Second, we see that the 1-2-3 mix uses a baking powder that is explicitly aluminum-free and corn-free. In general, baking powder is a combination of three ingredients, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), a low-temperature acid salt (e.g., calcium phosphate), and a high-temperature acid salt for generating a second rise in the oven. The 1-2-3 mix uses sodium acid pyrophosphate as the high-temperature acid salt, while the Betty Crocker mix uses sodium aluminum phosphate, which is where the aluminum comes from.

What’s the issue with aluminum? There have been some concerns regarding possible health effects of aluminum in the body, but studies have yet to offer any conclusive findings. On the other hand, there is still the taste factor to consider. As David Lebovitz points out, that bitter, “tinny” flavor you experience when you bite into a muffin is probably due to the type of baking powder used.

Finally, the Betty Crocker mix has a number of extra ingredients. They include added sugar (problematic as it is first on the ingredient list, even ahead of wheat flour), vitamins like niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, folic acid (to put back the nutrients removed when the flour was bleached), partially hydrogenated oils (source of trans fat), plus food additives like Di-Acetyl Tartrate Ester of Monoglyceride that have such long names that they have their own acronyms (DATEM).

So, which cake would you like to bake for mom this weekend?