Nicola's Baby Blog

Equality Brand Potato Chips

We did our groceries at Food Basics again today.  I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping but it does give me a tiny bit of retail therapy.  What can I say; I love spending money!

With Jake's GFCF diet, we spend quite a bit more time shopping for food now than we did before.  We read every label and search, normally in vain, for something to feed him.  Eating gluten-free isn’t that hard and neither is eating dairy-free, but comibining the two has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

While reading the label on the potato chips, I discovered an interesting and disturbing trend:

Firstly, I should explain that the Food Basics brand is called Equality (part of the Fresh Obsessed group) and these products tend to cost less that brand name items and they are packaged in a rather plain blue design.  We buy a lot of Equality products because we find that the quality is just as good as the food from the big names and the price is right.  A lot of the products are transfat free too, which is very important to us.

So I was reading the label on a pack of the Equality brand Ripple potato chips that have a flavor that would be described as plain, regular or salt.  I was pleasantly surprised to read the ingredients as potatoes, canola oil and salt. 

Such simple ingredients!  You wouldn’t call the chips healthy - because chips are never described as such - but the list makes me feel good about feeding them to my children who, by the way, love them.  I know what’s in them and I understand each ingredient.  No long words, nothing ‘hydrogenated’ and no words that end in ‘ate’ or ‘ium’ or ‘ide’.

But then I went further and looked at the flavored chips:  barbeque, sour cream & onion, all dressed, etc.  The ingredient list was shockingly long and confusing.  Obviously, I put a pack of the plain chips in our shopping cart rather than the flavored ones!

When I got home, I tried looking up the ingredient list online but found that although the company had a website, the ingredients were not listed there.  I wanted to be able to post the list here but obviously I can’t remember the details from the packet I read earlier today.

So instead, I will quote from the President’s Choice website, which is the brand from the Independant store.  For the record, when we’re not shopping at Food Basic, you’ll find us at the Independant and we regularly buy their store brand as well.  Their website is much more comprehensive and includes ingredients.

Here goes:

PC Thin Ripple Cut Potato Chips - Regular Flavour
Ingredients:  Specially selected potatoes, vegetable oil, salt.

Sounds good!  But then there’s…

PC General Tao Chicken Chips
Ingredients:  Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola and/or sunflower and/or corn), seasoning [sugar, brown sugar, hydrolyzed soy and corn protein, fancy molasses, spices (including chilies, ginger), salt, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate, onion powder, gum arabic, natural flavour (including garlic), caramel colour, sunflower oil, citric acid, glucose solids, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, silicon dioxide], salt.

Oh my.  What does it all mean? 

OK. How about organic chips?

PC Organics Regular Cut Potato Chips - Barbecue
Ingredients:  Organic potatoes, organic sunflower oil, seasoning (organic sugar, organic tomato powder, sea salt, organic corn flour, organic onion powder, organic garlic powder, organic spices, natural mesquite flavour, citric acid, silicon dioxide), sea salt

And, everybody’s favorite:

PC Kettle Potato Chips - Cheddar Cheese & Green Onion
Ingredients:  Potatoes, vegetable oil (sunflower and/or safflower and/or canola), seasoning [modified milk ingredients, corn maltodextrin, green onion powder, sea salt, sugar, cheddar and enzyme modified cheddar cheese solids (contain soy lecithin, hydrogenated soybean oil), yeast extract, sunflower oil, spice, garlic powder, citric acid, disodium phosphate, corn syrup solids, flavour], sea salt.

Can you understand why I chose to stick to Regular chips?

8.11.07 03:07