Is your go to sauce to add to your favorite barbecue or meat pied barbecue sauce. Well, a few weeks back we took a closer look at tomato sauce. But we have a lot of barbecue sauce lovers we've since found out, so we thought it was also pretty important at this time of year to find out all about
this other popular meat pied topper. Hi, I'm Susie Burrow and I'm Leon Wood, and as two of austras leading dieticians who specialize in evidence based nutrition, we bring you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites we can find in the supermarket. So then I have to be honest. In my family growing up, there was only one person who liked barbecue sauce, and that was my mum. And I not really ever paid a whole lot of attention to it because I
don't buy it myself. But I know, as I said, given feedback from our listeners after we published on Tomato Sauce, that there were a lot of people asking about barbecue sauce. And there can also be a source that's packed full of a lot of sugars, so we thought it worthy of a bit of a review. What are the sauce statistics like in your household?
Oh? Growing up, SUSI, we were a big sauce house sold my mum being Malaysian, you know, we didn't have a lot of She added so much flavor and spice to the meals that we didn't really add sauce to many things at all. But I think my brother was a big male and a barbecue sauce person, as my sister and I were more the tomato sauce in in our household. You know, MEAs only just start as old, so she doesn't count at the moment. We're not giving her tomato or barbecue sauce. But I think David and I,
if anything, are tomato sauce lovers. We're not. I don't think we even have barbecue sauce in the fridge. It's just not something we really routinely use. I guess, so it's not it's not something that we got for in our household. But we do know that our listeners are big fans, so we've pulled together a couple that are we think are some of the most popular ones today, haven't we.
We haven't we have included a much requested Audi product. We know a lot of our listeners shop at Audi, as do we at times, so we have been lucky to include a Audi product, So we'll start with that. That is the Cold Way Barbecue sauce that retails for just a dollar forty nine, which is very affordable for families, particularly at the moment with the price of food so very expensive. And so this when we take a look at the green list, the first ingredient is reconstituted tomato
pure at forty six percent. The next ingredient is sugar, salt thickness, which I don't really worry myself about thickness. It's pretty innocuous products just made to give taste and consistency, so don't need to be worried about those either. Acidity regulators is also just to keep the product fresh and the acids coming from the tomato tasting right, so I wouldn't be worried about that either. Molasses smulti dextri which
is another word for a type of sugar. We should say colour one fifty D, which is a natural brownie kind of color. But it's also something perhaps we're not that keen on to be added to foods onion, garlic, spices, and flavor. It is also leanne gluten free, which is highly relevant because it is tricky to find gluten free sauces in supermarkets. And actually I noticed, just off topic a little bit a few weeks back. I know, we did supermarket hot chips and for the first time ever,
I've seen a gluten free range. Because what happens in factories and if the product is technically gluten free, it's often being made alongside other products that do contain glutens. So it can be really difficult for companies to declare something gluten free, even though it might be according to the label. So to see a gluten free variety of barbecue sauce, I think is really important because that is
relevant to a number of our listeners. All right now, the serving size listed on this is ten meal, so that's quite large for a source serve. You know, that's two teaspoons worth. I guess about the size, it's more than a twenty cent piece, Like it's a reasonable whack of sauce on the plate, I would think, because a table spoon I think is way too much. So sort of a good couple of tea spoons, so we're not
being stingy on the serving size. So per serve it's giving us just about twenty four calories or just over one hundred killo jeels, so reasonably reasonably low, zero point one grams protein, very very low, very little to know fat, total carbohydrate five point nine grams, and sugar's four point six so literally a whole tea spoon. Half that serve is sugars not insignificant, and sodium one oh three milligrams.
Again we've spoken about this before, not insignificant, given that you know, a sauce is a very small addition to a food, and that's about what is that ten percent, no, twenty five percent I should say, sorry, five percent of our overall daily sodium recommended intake. So not overly high, not overly low. And if you had someone who was smothering it, it would be very easy to get quite a
significant amount of salt from that product. So for Melian, this standout benefit of this is that it's declared gluten free, which is tricky to find with sauces. But to me, it's not low in sugar. I'm pretty unhappy with that amount going in with sauces. If it was my client, I would be saying, look, use it in moderation and try and perhaps stick to about a teaspoon worth as a serving size. You know, less than half of it's made up of actual fruit, given tomatoes, a fruit or
vegetable if you put it in that category. So, yeah, I think there's better ones out there. But I guess it is gluten free, and we do struggle sometimes to that in a sauce in general.
Yeah, it's not my favorite. I mean, it's really budget friendly. You know, a dollar forty nine for a bottle of sauces is really really affordable for a lot of families. But I'm going to go the opposite to you, Susie and actually say that ten meals as a serving size is actually quite small. I know a lot of people that when they use sauce, they use sauce, if you
know what I mean. I actually think that a lot of the majority of my clients and myself included, I actually think I would have more than ten mills of salce. I'm not a barbecue sauce girl, but if I was to have someone like chuttney or a bit of selicia with my meal, which I tend to use even something like a little bit of tomato sauce, I honestly would probably have a better tablespoon or so, so I'm sort
of thinking that. I think a lot of our listeners out there, some of them may be under that telmal serving size, but I feel like a lot of us would be a lot more so. I mean, if this has got, you know, close to five grams of sugars per serving, and you're using two three times the amount of serving, it's quite a lot about it. Sugar's in there. So it's probably not our go to barbecue sauce product,
but it is quite cost effective. So if you are someone that really needs, you know, a budget friendly option for your family, I would definitely be keeping the amount of the serving size very small. As Susie said, I.
Think a reference if we would estimate how much saurce someone has on a meat pie, just off the top of our head, I would say people are having at least a tablespoon of sauce on a meat pie at least, so this is about half that. But it lends itself
to reminding families. It's really good to get kids to start to measure their sauce when they put it on, because like anything, the more you pour, the more you consume over time, so you get basically it primes the brain to seek out more of that sweet slash salty flavor, and so the more they have, the more they want, and vice versa. So I think for families, particularly if you feel you've got a problem with sauce at home,
get the kids to measure it out. And even for yourself, it's a really good way to push and control and keep mindful of actually how much you might be pouring or squirting on something, because you're right, you know, chances are people are having actually a lot more of that, even though it sounds like a lot when we're describing it here. All right, Well, the next one we've got is an interesting product because we've seen this with the tomato sauces, that there's a growing range of both reduice
salt and reduce sugar varieties in supermarkets. Now this is Master Food. It's a very well known source bread and it is a product that's relatively new to market. It's a reduced salt and sugar product at four seventy five mil a reasonable size tube container, it's three dollars twenty so what's that almost double the price that you're paying, or actually more than double what you're paying at Audi.
And it's not declared as gluten free, so for anyone requiring that it does have wheat in the ingredient list, a serving size here is listed as fifteen meals, so closer to that tablespoon and probably what most people are having. Calorie Wire is very very similar to the Audi brand at one hundred and four killogels, little to no protein, little to no fat as we would expect, and again almost identical nutritionals. You would possibly argue it's the same product,
but it's slightly different. Sometimes these products are made for Audi, are the same supermarket brand and then repackaged for AUDI, so you can imagine there's not twenty five different sauce makers in the country, so often they'll be making for the no name and Audi brand. This is six grams a cup of serve in slightly less sure a four point four, so it's not the exact same product, but
your targets it is similar. Sodium is lower though, seventy nine, so that's about what twenty percent lower than what we're getting from the AUDI product. Not that significant really, since it's being marketed as reduced sugar and salt. You'd want it to be less, and it's not significantly they's sugar wise, that's for.
Sure, hotopsisi, but it is a larger certum size. So if you look at it, per hundred milligrams is actually half it is half.
Oh, it is half.
Yeah, So it's five hundred milligrams per hundred mils versus one thousand milligrams per hundred meals. So the sodium is about half of the aldi version.
The sodium's half, but the sugar's not, is it.
No, So twenty nine grams versus forty six So the sodium's half. Yeah, the sugar's higher.
A little bit, a little bit. Sugar is a bit less, but the sodium is the one that's significantly less, which is interesting when you're doing that comparison. Would be so ideal if companies had to compare identical serves rather than us doing our maths here on a Saturday night.
Yeah, it would be a lot easier, all right.
Ingredient wise, very similar fifty percent tomatoes from pace. We know that there's some benefits coming from tomato paste. It activates the lycopene, a powerful antioxident, particularly for men and prostate health. But second ingredient is sugar, water, wheat starch, so that's why it's not gluten free. So that's sort of bulking it up with some extra carbohydrate, a second form of sugar and glucose syrup, food acids, food acids, I should say salt color. So they're all using that
color to make it a richer look. Thickener which is pecked and pretty nothing to worry about there. Yeast extract tamarine paste to give it a bit more flavor, I would say clove, onion, nutmeg, and pepper. So made in Australia from about fifty five percent of Australia ingredients. So again I'm sort of sitting middle ground with it. Is it significantly better than audi to justify the price the
sodium it's a bit better sodium wise. I don't think I would say to someone that this is that much better to go and pay double for it if you're already shopping at Audy, particularly if you needed a gluten free product. So yeah, I still think it's not low in sugar at all. You know, almost five grams of sugars given the que recommendation leand for added sugars in the diet is less than twenty five grams per day. You know you're getting twenty percent of your sugar intake
from this sauce, so it's not certainly not low. In my mind, I couldn't argue that this was a better product, especially for the cost.
I completely agree. So I think if we're looking at it from a nutritional perspective and a cost perst perspective, I really do think that the Aliti one is a standout here because, particularly because the mast Food one is marketed as reduced salt and reduced sugar, I do really feel like the salt content is a lot lower, but it's kind of insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It's not like you're getting a huge whack of salt
in there. The sugar is slightly more reduced, but again it's not I think it's sort of minimal compared to, you know, how much barbecue sauce you're actually using. It's not like you're having half a plate of it. But I will sort of just say that there are two
allergens declared here. There's an allergen of wheat and then there's an allergen maybe present, so obviously on the same you know, processing lines as other foods containing peanuts, So for anyone with peanuts or wheat or celiac, that's something that you need to be aware of. With the Master Foods one, but yeah, I don't think and even the Aldi one that's made from ninety five percent austrain ingredients,
Food one only uses fifty five percent Australian ingredients. So for me, out of these two susi, the Aldi one is the winner. It's a more budget friendly one nutrition and they're pretty similar, and the Alti one uses far more Australian based ingredients. So we do like to support local where we can.
True, and I think the other alarving thing is that we have a chosen ones that are overly hind sugar, Like I've seen ones that are close to eight grams of sugar per served for barbecue sauce, So there's far worse out there in general, So these compared to those, are better. But Leanne has come and saved the day because she has found an outstanding barbecue sauce, which is our winner for good reason. Do you want to take us through the fountain barbecue sauce that's reduced sugar that
you stumbled across from your day to day work. Leanne.
Yeah, so one of my clients is barbecue sauce subcess, we shall say. So she's like, Leanne, I need to have it in my life. And I said, all right, all right, I'll go to a soupermarket. I'll find you a good brand. And I was like, Wooay's. And I came across the fountain a barbecue sauce reduced sugar, so five hundred mils, so similar serving sites. It's two dollars seventy so it's actually more affordable. And that's not on sale that that was a standard woolworst price, So it's
more affordable than the Master Food one. Still a lot more of you know, I guess expensive, you know, dollar soil, more than the Aldi version, but sort of sits mid range in terms of prices, allergens that may be present gluten when we're looking at the ingredient list per serving. So it's fifteen meals, so the same serving size as the Master Food one, but about five mil higher than the Aldi one, So forty kilodels per serving, very very low.
You know what roughly ten calories, minimal protein, minimal fat, just like the other two. Minimal carbohydrate, so one point one grams of carbohydrate and point five grams of sugar, so half a gram of sugar per serving, which is excellent. Interesting that they've listed dietary fiber. They're zero point one grams. I imagine that's probably from the ingredients which are the fruit, pure, susy. And then we've got sodium at ninety milligrams as well.
So this one, even though it hasn't been marketed, it's you know, it's somewhat low sodium, but it's exceptionally low in sugar for something like a barbecue sauce, because that's when we had they get the sweetness into the barbecue
sauce is actually from adding the sugar in there. So let me just pull up the nutritionals, right, So for the ingredients we've got, it doesn't actually list the amounts of the percentages, which I find interesting, but the top ingredient, so we know that that's the largest percentage in terms of the ingredient list is tomatoes, followed by apple pure,
followed by water. Then we've got some sweetness in here, so it gives this sweet taste, but actually it doesn't have the added sugars in there, so the sweetness are malotoles, sorbitol and Stevie May's Thicken our food, I said, like the other couple of brands, a little bit of salt. There's color one fifty d which Susi remarks to add sort of that brown, you know color to it, onion powder,
thicken our spices, and natural flavor. So nothing overly, I guess concerning about that, a lot of people don't like to use sweetness, but I think in the very small amount that you would find it in this product. But it's a fourth ingredient on the label out of probably only what seven already ingredients, and you're using such a small amount of it that I think that it's absolutely okay. I'd give this to my kids, or I wouldn't give
it to me because she's only six months old. But if I had, you know, toddlers or you know, younger children, I'd be absolutely fine giving something like this to them, even though it did have a bit of sweetness. And how do you feel about this on Susie, I think the benefit of the no added in it is probably a big positive overall.
I think you've done an outstanding job. And if anyone if that wonders what dieticians do all day, we sit at a computer or we go through supermarket products. I think I go to the supermarket at least once a day, if not twice, and particularly since supermarkets are so annoying now they all stock different ranges, so you'll go to the one coal so they won't have it. So that's how Eleanne and I spent most of our day. It's at the supermarket with a light on the phone trying
to see these tiny labels. I think you've done an outstanding job of finding this. I agree one hundred percent is a standout, a really really good product, and I think over time in the end we will see more and more of these. You know, what would you say engineered products to be much lower in sugar in particular? I think, you know, we do have to have a bit of a disclaimer that some people with alcohol sugars
like manitole, they can get a bit of bloating. Now, I would say, in the amounts in this kind of product that's already a small amount, it would be insignificant. It's a bit different to plow through loads of chewing
gum or sweetener in baking. You know, these volumes would be very very low, So there's no real or cause for concern there that I would have no issue recommending this, But it did lead me to think about a question around when should you introduce sauces to children, And I would say I would be really reluctant to add a sauce into a child's diet until they are at least two, and i'd probably try and push it back to three
or four. I can't remember exactly when I did it with the twins, and when I did it, it was probably with something like sausages, but I would like to say it wouldn't have been till that they were at least two, hopefully three, because what happens with small children and their flavor palettes is that when we expose them to very concentrated flavors, which is the case with tomato or barbecue sauce,
it primes them to want more of that. So really, we want our kids to have their foods as plain as possible for as long as possible, and that means that they're going to seek out less salty, less sweet food overall. And then basically more likely to accept their plain vegetables and plain meat. So if you can delay the introduction of sauce to small children, that would be our advice, and certainly to if not three, and basically the later the better. But I'm with you, Leanne, it's
my standout. I would recommend this to my clients now when I'm doing trolleys on sources, I will absolutely seek this product out. It is a standout and probably really apart from people who require a gluten free saurce, the one I would use. And if I did require someone to have a gluten free I would say to them, go to Aldi if you can, and get that certified
gluten free barbecue sauce from there. All right, Who would have thought we had so much to talk about just on barbecue sauce yet, And I did go and do recently a source trolley and couldn't believe how many flavors
and seasonings there were. So certainly we've got several episodes coming up looking at things like curry, sauces and products that people are using to flavor their food, particularly through these colder months, when you're looking at using curries and casseroles and dishes like that, but that does bring us to the end of the product review for another week.
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