Hawke's Bay tomatoes destined for Wattie's sauce. Photo / File
Hawke's Bay tomatoes destined for Wattie's sauce. Photo / File
Anyone attending a Labour Day barbecue yesterday can rest easy knowing tomato sauce from the Hawke's Bay Heinz-Wattie's factory is free of a controversial ingredient found in some overseas condiments.
While some manufacturers use fructose corn syrup, which is not only bad for the gut, but has also been linkedto increased insulin levels and weight gain in tomato sauce brands, Heinz-Watties says that ingredient has never been used in its sauce.
"Wattie's does not and has never used high fructose corn syrup in its tomato sauce range," a company spokesman said.
"We take our role as a leading food manufacturer in New Zealand very seriously. We have a long history of continuously improving the nutritional profile of our foods and offering many choices for consumers.
"Our tomato sauce range contains a number of different products to meet consumer preferences. In addition to our regular Wattie's Tomato Sauce, Wattie's Tomato Sauce was developed with 50 per cent less sugar (and 35 per cent less salt) over three years ago, and for over 10 years, we have had Wattie's Tomato Sauce Lite in our range, which provides consumers with an option to have 35 per cent less sugar and 40 per cent less salt than our regular Wattie's Tomato Sauce.
