Tuesday, April 03, 2012

How much sugar in "All Gold" Tomato Sauce? 36 spoons!

All Gold Tomato Sauce has been a family favourite for years. They claim there are 36 tomatoes in every bottle, but that's just advertising lies. Only recently have I asked the question: how much sugar is in the sauce?
Today I obtained the answer: 21.3g of sugar for every 100g (or was it ml?). So that means that a 700ml bottle has 150g of cane sugar, i.e. 35.5 teaspoons of sugar (4.2g). Ouch! Not so healthy after all, even though there are no preservatives. Still, it's better than "ketchup" which has all kinds of other nasties.
They have a version with artificial sweetener instead, but I think the health risks of that concoction must be pretty toxic. One has to ask why they need to put so much sugar in the product. To counteract the taste of the vinegar? The mind boggles. I mean, there's a teaspoon of sugar for every tomato in the bottle! I guess they had to "work hard to cram them all in".

Update: According to the label (which uses a very small font) there are 27g of carbs per 100g serving. That means that in a bottle there are 40g of carbs not comprising cane sugar. Divide that by 36, and you get some very small tomatoes, unlike the giant ones shown in the TV ad below. According to Answers.com: "One medium, whole, red, ripe, raw tomato, 2 3/5 inches in diameter and weighing 123 grams contains 5 grams of carbohydrates, on a year-round average." That means there would be 8 tomatoes in a bottle of tomato sauce, not 36. Since they actually use "reconstituted tomato paste", the ad agency claims about tomatoes have been all lies from the beginning, whichever way you look at it. I don't understand why food companies think it is OK to mislead the public like this.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think they should call it "Tomato Syrup" not "Tomato Sauce"

Anonymous said...

I hope the Youtube vid doesn't get pulled.
IOL has a report on misleading ads:

www.iol.co.za/iol-shopper/retail-news/we-can-stop-these-dodgy-price-hikes-1.1273582

def said...

It might have been 36 in the past, but those adverts aren't being used anymore.

Donn Edwards said...

The advert may not be in use any more, but All Gold and their ad agency have never apologised for lying to the public either.

def said...

I see, that makes me think about all the "smoking is good for you" adverts that used to be around.

Unknown said...

I can't find any info on what "spices" are used in the sauce. Anyone know?

Unknown said...

150 grams of sugar sounds a little excessive, I mean that much sugar in a 700ml bottle would make anything pretty sweet and the sauce doesn't taste that sweet. Anyway i use that sauce in a particular recipe and need to have the sauce analyzed for nutritional info. Then we will know the sugar quantity.

Unknown said...

Is there garlic in

Donn Edwards said...

@Shalome
I very much doubt it. Its not listed in the contents. Are you allergic to garlic?