Wendyl wants to know: Artificial additives make crackers tough to swallow

Ritz Smoky Bacon $1.79 for 100g packet.

Kiwis are very keen on crackers. Everyone likes a quick snack of crackers and cheese, and it should be a healthy snack. But not all crackers are made equal. These ones, which are made in Hungary, have a lot of additives that really don't need to find their way into a humble cracker.

Ingredients

• Wheat flour - The biggest ingredient in here is flour, as you would expect with any biscuit.

• Vegetable oil (contains antioxidant 330) - Not sure what oil this is but it does have citric acid in it as an antioxidant.

• Malt extract (from barley) - This will be in here for flavour.

• Sugar - Each serving of 25g, or seven crackers, will give you 1.9 g of sugar.

• Egg - Nice to see real egg in here instead of a powder.

• Raising agents (500, 503) - These are baking soda (500) and ammonium carbonate (503), which is made by heating ammonium chloride and chalk.

• Salt - There is 289mg of sodium per 25g or seven-cracker serve.

• Flavours (bacon 0.1%) - This is a bit confusing. Is this artificial bacon flavour? Or is bacon the flavouring, of which there is 0.1% in the product, which would mean that in the whole 100g packet there is a very small amount of bacon at 100mg? One teaspoon equals 5000mg so that means there would be a 50th of a teaspoon of bacon in the packet of crackers. Having tasted the crackers I'm going to make a call and say it is artificial bacon flavour.

• Whey powder (from milk) - This is usually in a product to give a cheesy flavour.

• Flavour enhancers (621,627,631) - These are MSG (621) which healthy eaters avoid because it can produce symptoms such as burning sensations, numbness, chest pain, headaches, nausea and asthma. The others are disodium guanylate (627), which should also be avoided by asthmatics, and disodium inosinate (631).

• Colours (150c, 120) - These colours are caramel III, which is made by heating sugars with ammonia. The other colour is cochineal, a red colour made from insects.

• Flour treatment agent (223 contains sulphites) - This is sodium metabisulphite, which is a preservative that is made from sulphur. Some people have an allergic reaction to sulphites which is why there is a warning on this ingredients list.

My recommendations

If you're looking for a cracker then take the time to look at the products available in your supermarket and try to avoid ingredients like MSG, caramel colour and sodium metabisulphite.

Crackers should not need flavour enhancers like MSG or added colour or, most importantly, a preservative.

And while you're shopping for crackers, look for some with added fibre in the form of seeds.

Highlights

• Contains MSG

• Uses colouring and flavouring

• Uses a sulphite preservative

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