Wendyl Wants to Know: Moreish biscuits stand up well to scrutiny

Photo / Supplied

Each week Wendyl Nissen takes a packaged food item and decodes what the label tells you about its contents.

Two Krispies?" "Too right." We can all remember this TV advertisement which had the quintessential Kiwi bloke being served a cuppa by his mother (or perhaps nana) and being offered a couple of biscuits. Later on, in the '90s, we had the television commercial where a man and his colleagues refuse to stop eating them, saying: "Just one more okay?" while others moved out of the office and it was eventually demolished while he and his colleagues perched precariously on the top of the building. Krispies are a regular feature in most office biscuit barrels and resthome biscuit trays, but as Kiwi as these biscuits may seem they were actually invented by an Englishman called Nick Cody in the 1950s. He had worked in the American cookie industry and retired to New Zealand where he used his experience to help expand Griffin's range. He was also responsible for MallowPuffs, Chocolate Macaroons and Snax to name a few.

Krispie biscuits
$3.25 for 250g or about 30 biscuits.

Wheat Flour
Ordinary white flour which you make biscuits with at home.

Sugar
Table sugar you use in your baking.

Vegetable Fat [antioxidant (306)]
This doesn't tell us which kind of vegetable fat is in here but the 306 refers to tocopherol concentrate which is Vitamin E and added in here probably to preserve the fat. It is a natural ingredient.

Coconut (11 per cent)
This will most likely be desiccated coconut, which is coconut flesh that has been shredded and then dried. Many people believe coconuts have medicinal values and indeed in Asian and Pacific cultures it is used for this purpose. Nutritionally it is a good source of calcium, manganese, selenium, zinc and iron.

Whey Powder
Whey is the by-product of cheese-making and is high in protein. When making cheese the milk separates into curds and whey. The curds are taken off to make cheese and the water substance left behind is called whey. In baked goods like these biscuits it makes an economical substitute for eggs and can improve the texture and colour of the biscuits.

Salt
This is ordinary table salt.

Raising Agent (baking soda)
Baking soda is a very old-fashioned raising agent as there are many chemical combinations available to the food manufacturers these days so this is refreshing to see.

Flavours
It's a shame a natural flavour hasn't been put in here to top off what is a very good report card for these biscuits. It is probably a synthetic version of vanilla. However it is last on the list which means that whatever synthetic or artificial flavour is in here, the amount is very small.

My recommendations
I can't verify it, but it seems to me that not much has changed in this ingredients list since these biscuits were first made as most of the ingredients are good, old-fashioned baking ingredients such as flour, sugar and fat.

Two of these biscuits will give you about 85 calories of energy so they make a good snack to have with a cup of coffee or tea.

As far as I can ascertain this product has no artificial preservatives or colour and the only worrying ingredient is the flavour but it is a tiny amount. Nutritionally you're getting about 3.6g of fat per serving (2.5g of it saturated) and just over a teaspoon of sugar so it is definitely a snack treat rather than a regular food.

You could make these yourself but the only difference would be that you would use an egg instead of the whey powder, butter instead of the vegetable fat, and natural vanilla essence.

However, they might not be as moreish as these biscuits are. While I was writing this column and taste testing it was a case of "Just one more okay?" and "Two Krispies?" "Make that four."

Highlights

* It takes eight ingredients to make these biscuits which is similar to the number required if you made them yourself.

* One serving will provide you with about 85 calories.

* A true Kiwi biscuit produced here since the 1950s.

Do you have a food product you would like to feature in Wendyl Wants to Know?

Email wendylwantstoknow@gmail.com with suggestions. Unfortunately Wendyl cannot correspond with readers.