Sloppy Joes are an iconic American family meal dating back to the 1930’s. They are comprised of ground beef, tomato sauce, onions, and seasoning, all inside a hamburger bun. In this era of minimum preparation at the kitchen, most consumers forgo a full blown preparation and opt to mix cooked ground beef with a ready made everything-else. ConAgra’s Hunt’s division introduced its Manwich line of sauces exactly 40 years ago and has been very successful through good marketing (“A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal.”) and palatable products.

At 40, the Manwich brand must be having a mid life crisis, so Hunt’s marketers decided to change the advertising strategy from “family fun” to “nutritional value”. The new tag line, seen in commercials – “There’s a full serving of vegetables in every Manwich.”

Our nutrition investigation team decided to take a look inside the label to uncover the real story. We took a look at the Manwich Original Sloppy Joe Sauce.

What you need to know:

Here is the ingredient list:

Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Distilled Vinegar, Corn Syrup, Less than 2% of: Salt, Sugar, Dehydrated Onions, Dehydrated Red and Green Bell Peppers, Chile Pepper, Tomato Fiber, Spices, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Dehydrated Garlic, Carob Bean Gum, Natural Flavors.

Tomato Puree as a first ingredient is to be expected. But why is it composed mostly of water? The reason is that tomato paste is highly concentrated (they take the water out when manufacturing paste).

Next – why sweetener in the #2 position?  Chefs know that adding a spoon of sugar to round out the flavor of the slightly acidic tomatoes is fine, but come on folks, we were first expecting to see some more veggies.

Ingredient #3 is vinegar, not something you would add to a homemade tomato sauce. and then at #4, another sweetener. Seems like a lot of liquids for the first 4 ingredients. That’s where the gums come in later on in the list (guar gum, xantham gum, carob bean gum – all natural). They all serve as thickeners, so you’ll feel like you’re getting less water, more tomato.

The nutrition facts are as follows: a serving is a quarter cup of sauce (not including the beef) which seems quite small. Mixing a 15.5 oz can with 1 lb of beef and then dividing to 7 portions as suggested will yield much less “joe” than is pictured in the  images on the product label and in the commercials. The “mini-serving” has 40 calories, 6 grams of sugar (1.5 teaspoons) and 2 grams of fiber (good, but comes from added ingredient called tomato fiber…). The sauce is not a substantial source of vitamins A or C, but cooked tomatoes are a great source of lycopenes, a kind of antioxidant that is supposed to help ward of cancer. The little serving has 410 mg of sodium, about 16% of the daily maximum value. A real manwich serving would be double the sodium though – upping sodium to a third of your daily max.

So is this a nutritious product? Yes and No. You can’t argue with tomatoes, although they are heavily watered down in this product. And all the added sugars / high fructose corn syrup seems superfluous.  And if you eat a portion as pictured in the label – you’ll be getting a hefty amount of sodium. On the other hand, there are no artificial preservatives here and the calorie count is low (lots of water…). There are worse things you could add to lean ground beef.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re going to be sauteeing the beef anyhow, why not start off with a tablespoon of canola or olive oil, a diced onion, 2 bell peppers and some spices? When the veggies get soft, add the beef, and when it loses all its pink, add a can of crushed or diced tomatoes and simmer for 15-30 minutes. Salt to taste. If required, a single teaspoon of sugar will round out the flavor of the entire skillet.

So much better, not much harder. Can keep in the fridge for up to a week.

Here’s the shopping list: lean ground beef, can of diced tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, one onion, (oil, spices)

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Sara Lee is the number one fresh bread manufacturer in the US, so there’s a good chance you’ll find some of their loaves in your local supermarket. We wanted to take a look at a product that caught our eye due to it’s somewhat oxymoronous name – how could a white bread be whole grain? Isn’t whole grain bread supposed to be, well, not white?

Ah the wonders of food science and marketing.

The company boasts, on the package, albeit in small print: Made with whole grain. 30% whole grain (This product provides 10 g of whole grain in a 2 slice serving. USDA recommends consuming 48 g of whole grain every day.).

What’s really inside?… Read more…

Salutations, today is Cinco De Mayo. Originally a Mexican holiday commemorating a great military victory 150 years ago, it has come to symbolize, especially in the US, Mexican heritage day. A very important piece of that heritage is the scrumptious Mexican food so abundant here, especially in the southwest.

Today we’ll take a look at guacamole, Aztec for “Avocado Sauce”. The classic dip is composed of very basic ingredients – ripe avocados, onions, lime / lemon juice, salt and pepper. Additions include chili, tomatoes, and herbs and spices. (see our easy recipe below).

So how different can a supermarket guac dip be from the basic configuration described above?
We were S H O C K E D when we laid eyes on Dean’s Guacamole Dip.

Here’s a look inside the label. Read more…

1. Ketchup, one of the most popular condiments in the US, is a half a billion dollar industry.

2. Ketchup is originally a spicy fish sauce called Ke-Tsiap from east Asia. It was brought west in the 17th century and by the early 1800’s recipes for ketchup as we know it started to appear in cookbooks.

3. H.J. Heinz Company is the world leader in ketchup sales, with a 60% market share in the US. It sells over 600 million bottles of ketchup annually.

4. Nutritionally, ketchup , as well as other cooked tomato products, is a good source of the anti-oxidant lycopene. Lycopenes are beneficial in the prevention of prostate and colon cancers. This is one of the rare cases where cooking a raw vegetable actually improves the bio-availability of a nutrient instead of reducing it.

5. 25% of ketchup is sugar!! Now you know why kids love it, and consider ketchup the main part of a meal, with the rest of the food serving as a condiment.

6. Ketchup is also high in salt. a single teaspoon contains almost ten percent’s worth of the daily maximum recommended value of sodium.

7. The ingredient list for Heinz ketchup is:

Tomato Concentrate , Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion Powder, Natural Flavoring.

If you were wondering why corn syrup (a cheaper sugar than table sugar) appears twice, a possible answer could be that by splitting the sugar ingredient into 2 separate ingredients, it doesn’t appear in the second place in the list, psychologically reducing the fear of buying the product. We’re still trying to figure out what that Natural Flavor is. Spice too.

8. The FDA strictly regulates what products may be called ketchup; especially important are viscosity and the presence of tomatoes and tomato solids.

9. In 2005, after urging by Heinz and several other tomato product manufacturers, the FDA allowed tomato product labels to tout health claims, due to the aforementioned lycopenes. The ruling includes ketchup as well as tomato pasta sauces and marinades.

10. Squeeze bottle were introduced in the 1980’s to solve the problem of ketchup not flowing out of glass containers.

11. Not everyone is a big fan of ketchup. In the Netherlands, mayonnaise is the condiment of choice with french fries.

What to do at the supermarket:

It seems that ketchup is a staple in every household. If you are concerned about sugar, look for ketchup products artificially sweetened as a way to reduce sweet calories. There are also reduced sodium ketchups available in most supermarkets.

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