Walkers Squares Crisps mystery ingredient

[gumboot]

I've just bought a multipack of Walkers Squares crisps. The ingredients list of the salt and vinegar variety states that they contain a substance called saccharose. What could this stuff be I asked myself. Could it be related to saccharin?

Turns out it's nothing of the sort. Saccharose is just another name for plain good old table sugar or sucrose.

Why the hell do these food manufacturers do their utmost to deceive us over the ingredients in their products. Are there really consumers out there that would drop a packet of these crisps if they discovered they contained sugar - it's plain to see from the nutrition value list anyway, so what's the point?

Why don't they go the whole hog and call it α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-fructofuranose which is another name ascribed to it according to wikipedia.

I cannot see any justification for this behaviour from Walkers. Whilst I realise that the EEC forced the UK to turn "water" into "aqua" on it's health and beauty products, there's just no reason behind it here.

What's going on?

[heathfield]

The bigger a company becomes, the more weasels there are running it.

[nickmo]

Oooooooh I love this argument...just spent 60 mins going through the same thing with the organisers of the forthcoming Loch Lomond Food and Drink Festival - (8th & 9th September at Balloch in case you wondered).

The factory processed foodstuffs need to give information about the contents of the products included and there has been some rationalisation of terms used of ingredients. In this instance, the term 'sugar' is insufficient information to be used, and the 'gluco etc etc etc' term is too 'chemical'. But is it a sucrose octaacetate, or sucrose benzoate, or a sucrose stearate, etc etc??

As there are numbers of consumers who have allergies or conditions that preclude eating or even touching certain ingredients etc, they are given details using standardised terminology to look for in ingredients labelling.

In the case of sugar, there are loads of types and problems associated with them - lactose intolerance is one a lot of people have heard of and that is present in milk and milk by-products. And glycosuria - a problem where sugar is passed in urine - is one of the ailments that sufferers need to have information about amounts or presence of sugar. Diabetics also use varying terms for sugars too of course.

In general, a rationalised name for ingredients on labelling allows for standardised naming of products. Allergies are getting so common - sunflower oil has become one of the rising problems - and as many of the chemically enhanced ingredients actually come form such things as 'distillations' of petrol - true! - it is esential we give up processed muck and just eat proper, simple, seasonal food I reckon....

[bigbanana]

Incidentally, I'd like to add that heathfield and nickmo have made very sensible replies which I'm sure gumboot will appreciate.

[bigbanana]

Hmm. My last post doesn't seem to make much sense as I had a previous post expunged by the AB Editor.

This was no doubt my punishment for commenting on the idiotic, puerile and nonsensical post of another AB'er who shall remain nameless, although he knows who he is. His post was also removed.

If nothing else comes of this, it may make people who make idiotic remarks think twice in future.

Whether this post remains here to be seen by others, well, I'm in the hands of the editor.