Pre packaged v loose fruit and veg

SnowyOwl_2

My local Sainsbury's doesn't have any scales at all anywhere in the fruit and veg section. I used to work there, and I had a damn good look around, and it's perfectly legal, apparently. Occasionally I'd get someone coming up to me on the till asking me to weigh things for them as they wanted a specific amount to go into a recipe. As for helping people work out what was better value, forget it...sainsbury's isn't interested.

Anyway, I digress. In Sainsbury's they have a three pack of peppers containing a red one, a green one and a yellow one (I think!) which is as far as I can remember £1.29. Their loose peppers are 79p each. My figures might be a little out as my memory isn't that brilliant, but I do know that the loose ones are a rip off compared to the packs of 3.

Bananas are ALWAYS cheaper loose than pre-packed in Sainsbury's. And all their bananas are FairTrade. I simply can't understand why people buy the packaged ones marked FairTrade as they are so dear and all they are getting extra is a plastic bag. And as for "Kids Bananas" - eh, what?? They are Fair Trade too, but just a bit smaller than a standard banana, but for some reason they attract a premium which people are v.willing to pay. Anybody with half a brain would take the plastic bag off;) and let the cashier weigh them as loose bananas, but I guess that would be cheating/dishonest.

One thing that irritates me intensely about prepacked fruit and veg, especially those in those horrible plastic punnets, is that as often as not when you get the punnet opened at home there is one bruised or rotten item which is inedible.

Today at a completely different supermarket I saw some bloke peel back the plastic bag around a celery, shove his nose right into the leaves and have a really good long sniff. He put the celery back on the shelf. I wouldn't fancy that one in my salad!

stilernin

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

you're quite right, the guidelines per serving are there so that people can quickly compare. But I'm afraid that 6g of fat per 100g does not equate to 6% fat.

the reason I worked it out is that I have always understood that the % of fat we need to eat in our diet is total energy intake.

Carbs and protein are 4 cals per gram, fat is 9 per gram.

So if an item has 6g of fat per 100g, you need to know how many calories that is.

In the 3 examples below, each food is 6g of fat per 100g, but each one has a different calorie content per 100g

So for instance, if an item had 200 calories per 100g, the sum would be
200 calories per 100g, 6g of fat per 100g.

6g of fat x 9 cals per g = 54 calories
54 calories of fat / 200 total calories = 27%, not 6%
27% of the total calories of the food are fat calories..................................

I discovered the way the 'slimming' industry pulls the wool over our eyes a few years ago. I found a book by an american woman who explained the figures that you are using. She lost a huge amount of weight once she used this information. Can anyone find the books? Mine are all packed away at the moment.

To be able to put 'less than 4% fat', usually in huge font, on the front of packaging, all they need to do is add water, or some lower calorie heavier ingredient. Oh so easy in soup and 'lighter' spreads.

For example - Ryvita caramel minis.... ONLY 3% FAT... look at the back and you find that one pack is 30 g giving you 100cals. (easy figure). The fat content is 0.8g

Fat is 9cal per gram, so the calories from fat here is 7.2 calories (9 x 0.8)

The whole pack is 100 calories so the fat content is 7.2% (100 x 7.2 divided by 100 )

The point is that you might not be on a 'calorie controlled' diet, but the percentage of fat in what ever diet you eat is relevant, and the packaging is misleading everyone. Millions of £s are being made out of people who pick up 'low fat' options of everyday foods.

Just get some of the 'low fat' foods out of your cupboard and use the formulas!!

gunsandbanjos

It may also be marked low fat, but they can put as much sugar in it as they want. Yet still mark it 'Low Fat, Good For You' etc.

anonymousie

Bungarm2001 wrote: »

On the 'mysupermarket' website, the same bag of apples is pictured like this. As you can see, there are more than 5 apples there. If I had ordered these online, and received a bag with only 5 in it, I would have been straight on the phone. I noticed today that Tesco's website is now showing this particular item as 'unavailable' I don't know about anyone else but to me, this picture is a misrepresentation of the product and definitely designed to mislead. Sorry to keep on about it, but as far as I am concerned, this is the thin end of the wedge. I'm going right to the top with this...never mind my local stores customer 'care'

I have notes recently that that supermarket bags of apples are generally smaller than they used to be- I hoped this was a "special" for the smaller city centres stores, but obviously not- be wary!

lilac_lady

I used to buy apples, pears etc in prepackaged bags thinking that they were cheaper. I now buy all fruit and vegetables individually as a way of controlling how much I spend. I buy frozen berries, peppers and mushrooms and can't tell the difference if the veg are cooked. I refuse to pay 84p for one pepper and £3 for a small packet of blueberries.

mute_posting

stilernin wrote: »

I discovered the way the 'slimming' industry pulls the wool over our eyes a few years ago. I found a book by an american woman who explained the figures that you are using. She lost a huge amount of weight once she used this information. Can anyone find the books? Mine are all packed away at the moment.

To be able to put 'less than 4% fat', usually in huge font, on the front of packaging, all they need to do is add water, or some lower calorie heavier ingredient. Oh so easy in soup and 'lighter' spreads.

For example - Ryvita caramel minis.... ONLY 3% FAT... look at the back and you find that one pack is 30 g giving you 100cals. (easy figure). The fat content is 0.8g

Fat is 9cal per gram, so the calories from fat here is 7.2 calories (9 x 0.8)

The whole pack is 100 calories so the fat content is 7.2% (100 x 7.2 divided by 100 )

The point is that you might not be on a 'calorie controlled' diet, but the percentage of fat in what ever diet you eat is relevant, and the packaging is misleading everyone. Millions of £s are being made out of people who pick up 'low fat' options of everyday foods.

Just get some of the 'low fat' foods out of your cupboard and use the formulas!!

Wrong!

The FAT content is still 2.67% as those figures are quoted by weight.

The CALORIE content FROM fat is 7.2%

They are different things!

Fat in itself will not make you fat - excess calories do that.

Being hyperthetical (sp?) say you need 1500 calories per day to maintain a steady body weight, if you got all of those calories from pure lard (and beig hyperthetical we'll assume that that caused no other nutiritional problems in itself!) you would maintain that body weight.

The only way the industry oulls the wool over people eye's is that people are generally too dim to work out for themselves what constitutes a balanced diet.

You can't argue with the laws of physics (and bioligy?) - if you expend 1500 calories per day you need to consume the same ammount to maintain weight, less to loose weight or more to gain weight. Where those calories come from has negligible impact on the end result (apart from at the say so of the numerous fad diet advocates), but UNLESS they come from a BALANCED diet there will be other nutritional problems to deal with.

MP

lilac_lady

Pineapple - 79p in Lidls, £1.89 in Sainsburys. The Lidl one was delicious and looked the same size as the ones in Sainsburys. It's no use just checking packaging, you've got to check out the grocery shops.