Wendyl Wants to Know: Old fashioned baking with new worries

Raspberry Jam Slice. Photo / Supplied

Every week, Wendyl Nissentakes a readily available packaged food item and decodes what the label tells you about its contents.

Raspberry Jam Slice
$4.97 for 300g or 4 slices.

We've all stopped by the bakery section in the supermarket to grab a store-bought cake or slice to take to a children's birthday party or perhaps to serve friends for morning tea.

We don't always have time to bake and these products are one step better than a pack of biscuits. But you might want to rethink that.

This product is fairly typical of the cakes on offer at the supermarket as they all have long lists of ingredients with scary words like "solvent" and "egg replacer" in them. Raspberry Jam Slice is an old-fashioned offering yet this modern version has a massive 45 ingredients in it.

In my ancient Aunty Daisy cookbook I found a recipe for Raspberry Jam Shortcake which is the same thing and uses just eight ingredients. So that's 37 ingredients added into this cake mainly to give it colour and preserve it.

The best before date on this was a month after the date I bought it, which is a bit of a worry. Let's see what else is a bit of a worry:

There are so many ingredients that I have limited my analysis to additives we need to be concerned about and not given details about ingredients which are self-explanatory.

Wheat flour

Icing sugar

Raspberry jam
{cane sugar, apples, raspberries, pectin, food acid (330), flavour, preservative (202), colour (122,124)}

Most people make raspberry jam out of two ingredients - raspberries and sugar. This jam has apples to make the raspberries go further but also citric acid (330), added artificial flavouring, preservative (potassium sorbate) and not one but two colours. Carmoisine has been banned in Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the US and Ponceau 4R has been banned in the US, Norway and Finland.

Both can cause allergic reactions and there are concerns they may be carcinogenic.

Margarine
{beef fat, palm stearine, coconut oil, water, salt, emulsifier (471, 322 soy), flavour, colour (160a), acidity regulator (500,330), antioxidant (306 soy)}

I've already analysed margarine in a previous column. In baked goods margarine is often used because it is cheaper than butter (which features next on the list). Butter has three ingredients, this margarine has 12 ingredients including artificial flavour and preservative.

Palm stearine is solid fats taken from the palm tree rather than the oil.

Water

Butter
{cream, water, salt}

Nice to see something natural in here.

Sugar

Confectionery fat
{hydrogenated coconut oil, antioxidant (330,320)}

This is coconut oil which has been hydrogenated to prevent it melting in warm temperatures. Unfortunately in the process of hydrogenation it becomes a trans fat which is bad news. Trans fats have been closely associated with heart disease.

Non-fat milk solids
These are non-fat proteins from milk.

Egg replacer
{skim milk powder, maize starch, stabiliser (412), acidity regulator (330), salt, raising agent (500, 450), colour (100)}

Instead of using a real egg with all its nutritional benefits it takes eight ingredients to imitate it. This will also be used because it is cheaper than real eggs. But none of these ingredients raise any health concerns.

Raising agent (500,450)
This is baking soda and potassium pyrophosphate.

Glycerine
It's hard to tell why this is in here as it can be added to foods as a filler, a sweetener or a preservative. It comes from petroleum, but can also be extracted from vegetable fats.

Raspberry paste
{water, solvent (1520), flavour, stabiliser (413, 415), colour (102,122,123), preservative (202)}

I presume this is the icing, which when we make it at home is icing sugar, colour (beetroot juice is a good natural pink colour), butter and water which is four ingredients compared to nine. The most disturbing ingredient is the solvent propylene glycol. I've never seen a solvent listed in foods before but this is probably in here to dissolve the colour and flavourings in the paste. And again we have three colours banned in other countries. Tartrazine, banned in Norway, and the UK's Food Standards Authority called for a voluntary phase-out of its use in foods due to links to hyperactivity in children in April 2008. Carmoisine (see above) and Armaranth has been banned in the US since 1976 because it is a suspected carcinogen.

Emulsifier (481)
This is sodium lactylate to keep oil and water mixed together.

Anticaking agent (504)
Magnesium carbonate to stop the ingredients clumping and caking together.

Salt

My recommendations
I wouldn't let this anywhere near my family mainly because of the artificial colours which are banned in other countries including the United States. I also don't want to eat anything which replaces eggs with chemicals and requires the use of solvents. You can make this treat easily yourself, but if you're in the supermarket buying baked goods you probably don't have the time. Instead look for something with fewer ingredients to get better nutrition and fewer additives in your food. After much hunting I found a shortbread made by Cottrells Bakery for Progressive Enterprises with just eight ingredients. Or you could take cheese and crackers instead.

Highlights

* Contains four artificial colours which have been banned in other countries.

* Takes 45 ingredients to make something which if baked at home would take eight.

* Has a very long "best before" date which is scary for a baked product.

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