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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Once upon a time, people ate real food. Food that grew or was raised near their homes, and then prepared at the home. It may have been bland and boring to eat the same food over and over, and it certainly demanded a lot of work, but people intimately knew what was on their plate.

Then came trade and technology and progress and lots of great things happened in the world, including access to new foods and spices and flavors.  Refrigerators and freezer and microwave ovens and TV Dinners followed. And fast food, and food science with additives and preservatives and busy families that forgot what it means to prepare a meal by cooking it from scratch.

For a while, the abundance led to great things. People were not hungry anymore. They lived longer. They could spend time on other things rather than food preparation.

But as a society we took things too far.

And the results of abandoning our kitchens are evident all around us. The “food” we consume today is making us live shorter lives than we potentially could. We are consuming too many food-like products and too little real food. So we try to educate ourselves on nutrition and nutrients and what to eat and what not to eat. We buy diet books and diet products.

And in the last few years, we are buying more and more functional foods. Manufacturers don’t want us to stop buying their products, and so the big trend is dressing up these pretend foods with a healthy image. This is done by adding vitamins to soft drinks, calcium to ice cream, and various other fortifications that create a health halo for products that are mere snacks.

And unfortunately, we as consumers are falling for this trick:

The industry calls these products “nutraceuticals” or “functional foods.” Critics say they could lead people to consume too much of certain nutrients, plus too many calories and fats.

New York University food scientist Marion Nestle calls them “calorie distractors.”

“Functional foods are about marketing, not health,” she said. “They delude people into thinking that these things are healthy,” and they often eat more than is wise, she said.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t get fooled or confused by slick packaging and health claims. The more you cook and prepare meals at home, the healthier you’ll eat. The less processed your raw materials, the more nutritious your meals. And the more water you drink instead of all the vitamin/energy/soft drinks, the better off your wallet and your body will be.

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We wrote about the huge US salad dressing industry in a previous post. Today we’ll look inside the label of one of the most popular – Hidden Valley The Original Ranch.

This dressing comes with some history. In the late 50’s, Steve and Gayle Henson would host guests at their dude ranch in southern California. They concocted a special salad dressing that was served to the guests, and the rest is history. Hidden Valley is now a ranch dressing empire. it is owned by Clorox (!?) of cleaning detergent fame.

Let’s take a peek inside the dressing, shall we?

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…

The word salad conjures, for most people, mounds of iceberg lettuce, a few other veggies, and a hefty ladle of dressing. As with many things, the US did not invent it, but in the last 50 years we have elevated salad dressing to a billion dollar industry with hundreds of varieties awaiting us in a special condiments aisle in the supermarket. You know something is big when it has its own trade organization.

In southern Europe and the Mediterranean, a salad is dressed by mixing some fresh lemon juice, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and drizzling on top of a freshly cut salad. It seems that here, though, folks cannot complete that basic task and therefore gladly pay $3.00-$4.00 for a bottled solution. The price paid isn’t just monetary, as there are ingredients in some commercial dressings that are better kept away from our bodies.

Read more…

Very healthy! Or at least that’s what new research, sponsored by ConAgra, has shown. Here’s the press release:

ConAgra Foods announced today new research that shows people who ate Healthy Choice(R) really did get healthier. Participants in the 24-week study, on average, lost 18 pounds – all as fat – trimmed their waistlines by about three inches, and lowered their cholesterol by 12 points. Leading cardiologist Dr. James Rippe, founder and director of the Rippe Lifestyle Institute, led the research team that conducted the study, which was presented during the 2009 Experimental Biology Conference April 18-22 in New Orleans, La.

get it all here…

Excuse us while we scratch our heads. How can The Rippe Institute conduct a truly objective study when it is being heftily paid by a company with a vested interest in a specific outcome?

Reading into the study, the people eating Helthy Choice got healthier because they were forced to excercise, eat only fruits, vegetables, lean meat and dairy, and whole grains. Oh, and one Healthy Choice meal once a day. How can the weight loss be attributed specifically to the frozen meal?

This press release is part of a huge rebranding of the Healthy Choice empire, including the introduction of new products, reformulation of some existing lines, and new packaging. ConAgra is estimated to be spending close to $100 million on this effort, including National TV Ads starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and web activities.

What you need to know:

While frozen dinners have made some headway over the past few years in terms of nutritional content, they still lag far behind home made food on several fronts:

1. high levels of salt – in the clip above, Julia Louis Dreyfus is stuffing herself silly with Sweet Asian Potstickers containing 600mg of sodium. That’s a quarter of the daily maximum value.

2. high levels of sugar – 19 grams or 4 teaspoonfuls. Hey, is this dessert?

3. too many ingredients* – here’s what’s inside the Sweet Asian Potstickers:

Vegetable Potstickers: (Filling [Cabbage, Vermicelli {Mung Bean, Water}, Baked Tofu (Tofu [Water, Whole Soybeans, Nigari], Tamari [Water, Soybeans, Salt, Alcohol, Wheat], Natural Flavors, Spices), Bulgur Wheat, Precooked Rice, Water Chestnuts, Green Beans, Onions, Carrots, Soy Sauce (Water, Wheat, Soybeans, Salt), Sesame Oil, Evaporated Cane Juice, Salt, Xanthan Gum, Spice], Wrapper [Wheat Flour, Water, Corn Starch, Soybean and/or Canola Oil]). Cooked Whole Grain Brown Rice, Water, Sugar, Carrots, Red Peppers, Sake, Rice Vinegar, Scallions, Corn Starch, Wheat, Soybeans, Spices, Sesame Oil, Garlic Puree, Salt, Locust Gum

To be fair, most of the list above is actually understandable, and there are no freaky additives or preservatives in this dish. So when the food scientists want to, they can dish out healthy fare…

* We could not find the ingredient information on the Healthy Choice website. The customer support group did reply promptly to our email, though.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you really really can’t prepare your own food, and must grab something from the Frozen Dinner Aisle, take a look at health brands such as Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine first. The brand does not automatically promise you’ll get a nutritious dish, but it improves the chances.

Proceed to check the ingredient list, scanning for unpronounceable chemicals, and then look at the sodium count. It should be in the neighborhood of  400-500mg or less. The sugar count should be lower than 12 grams. Usually the calorie count will be decent, because manufacturers know that’s the only number most people look at.

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Lean Cuisine, A Nestle brand of frozen dinners, is very popular with dieters. “Lean Cuisine” is considered a nutrient content claim by the FDA, so all products under this brand are required to meet the “lean” criteria per serving: less than 10 grams of fat, less than 4.5 grams of saturated fat, and less than 95 mg cholesterol.

We decided to take a look at Lean Cuisine’s Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta described by Nestle as:

Shrimp and angel hair pasta in a creamy seafood sauce with accents of sherry, tossed with red peppers.

Read more…