Monday 8 March 2010

Someone's been licking my nuts.

I have here a bag of 200g of allegedly salted peanuts. The contents state 95% peanuts, vegetable oil, salt.

So that means ten grams of the contents are oil and salt. Well, each is coated with a thin film of grease, true, but that should still leave a high level of saltiness. There is barely a hint. It can't be cost. Of those three ingredients, salt must surely be the cheapest. Either someone at the packaging plant has pre-licked my nuts or this is trying to make me healthy by the back door.

Good thing I have my own supply.

It still says on these packets "Warning: Produced in a factory which uses nut and sesame ingredients". I'm glad to hear it. If I bought a pack of peanuts from a factory that didn't use nuts, I'd be wondering just what the hell was in it.

You'd think, by now, someone would have pointed out that it's not really necessary to warn those with nut allergies that a bag labelled 'Peanuts' might contain nuts. They're really not likely to buy it, get home and think "Damn, there are nuts in this pack of peanuts. Why is there no warning? All it has on the packet is the word 'peanuts' and a photo of about five hundred nuts."

On the other hand, someone could get a lot of compo from doing exactly that nowadays. I wonder if there's any mileage in complaining about a lack of saltiness? Probably not.

27 comments:

Dick Puddlecote said...

Good call on the nuts. I used to buy a weekly big bag of KP salted ones from those evil supermarkets who sell things cheap.

About a year ago, though, I got what I thought was a bad batch as they were dry and tasteless. In the interests of saving landfill tax, I reluctantly finished them off and bought another bag the next week.

They were the same. It's then I saw the boast on the bag that they had been 'improved' to make them more healthy.

I haven't bought any since. I liked them how they were. You know, with taste still intact.

Oddly, the massive pressure group (fake charity?) that decides that we should all be denied salt is based in a small office in a South London hospital and operates on a budget of around £40,000 per year IIRC.

That's about the wages of one person. Probably is, in fact.

Anonymous said...

While shopping in Aldi over the weekend I noticed quite large tins (well, 500gm is it?) of various types of salt - sea or rock - fine grind or lumpy. My kitchen larder is now full of selfsame tins.

AntiCitizenOne said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/science/23tier.html

g1lgam3sh said...

It's definitely getting near time for some new street furniture...putting the crossbars back on lamp posts would be a good start.

Anonymous said...

I might be nuts but I do think that peanuts are a kind of beans hence not really 'nuts'.

RantinRab said...

The Houses of Parliament should have a warning sign outside.

'Contains Nuts'.

Leg-iron said...

I added a heaped teaspoon of salt to the bag and gave it a shake. Much improved. In the old days, every bag of peanuts had residual salt in the bottom, for an end-of-bag treat.

I also have a jar of pickled eggs to make sure I'm not cholesterol-deficient.

The salt studies prove that the salt limits are rubbish. If you eat more salt, the amount of salt in urine goes up. If you eat less, the amount in urine goes down. The amount in your body... is the same.

That's because excess salt is dumped into urine. It's possible to crank up the level to a point where you risk a kidney stone but that's a hell of a level over a long time.

If there is zero salt in your urine, it doesn't mean you're eating the right amount. It means you're about to experience salt deficiency.

So you should eat more salt than you need. Your body will dispose of the excess. Just don't crank up the salt while reducing the fluids. I've never had a kidney stone but I've met people who have, and whose stone came free on its own and had only one exit to choose from. From what they say, it's not an experience I'd choose.

PT Barnum said...

Passing a kidney stone is on a par with the pain of childbirth. So I'm told.

I have a bag of salted cashews here. Cashews, yes. Salted? Barely.

timbone said...

Those were the days. Hot peanuts at Woolworths, scooped out and dropped into a paper bag which immediately became greasy. Salty salted peanuts. Not forgetting those Smiths Crisps with a blue waxey twist of paper in the bag full of good quality salty salt.

I bought a multi pack of Nik Naks the other day, first time for ages. Strange experience, spooky. Same packaging, they looked the same, but no Nik or Nak, just some tasteless textured titbit.

View from the Solent said...

Buy a catering box of little salt packets. Carry a few packets in your pocket. I do.
OK, I'll fess up. I bought an estimated lifetime's supply of catering boxes. Which isn't that many, I'm no longer young. If it turns out that they are unnecessary, no big deal.

Leg-iron said...

Timbone, it seems to be endemic. I even have to add salt to pasta now.

Salt keeps forever because it's a simple chemical. It only has to be kept dry. At the moment it's cheap an untaxed but that might change, so stock up!

Leg-iron said...

Rab - the only sign I'd like to see outside the Houses of Parliament is 'Demolition in progress'.

Never happen, but it's a nice dream.

Leg-iron said...

Timbone - forgot to say that I remember the little packets of salt. I was overjoyed when I bought a pack of crisps and there were two or three salt packets instead of one.

It was like finding a solid chocolate Kit-Kat finger. That, however, is much more rare.

Leg-iron said...

View from the Solent - what I'd like is a flip-top pocket salt cellar. If there isn't such a thing, there's definitely a market for it.

Mrs Rigby said...

"what I'd like is a flip-top pocket salt cellar"

Use an empty 'Tic Tac' box - those little mint things.

wv=saltanni

TheFatBigot said...

When I was a lad we had two types of salt in the house, cooking salt and table salt.

Cooking salt came in a big rectangular lump and had to be broken down to manageable bits; that was a fun job. Table salt came in a cylindrical container with a red plastic pop-up spout.

"Too much salt" meant too much for the taste of the individual consumer. Some liked a lot, some preferred little. It was always thus.

As it is with elephants at salt-licks. No two elephants take the same amount, each takes what he or she wants. There is no elephant nanny standing over them with a clipboard noting when more than the official guideline has been consumed.

The day I read of elephant mortality being affected by consumption at the salt-lick is the day I will take notice of the naggers. Until then I will take as much or as little as my body tells me I should take.

Uncle Gus said...

Here's something you may not have considered.

Just recently I had a heart attack (no sympathy please - I'm still rocking on, just on five cylinders temporarily). The doc of course put me on a low fat, low salt diet. Perfectly reasonable in the the circumstances, if you accept that salt tends to raise blood pressure and fat shows up eventually as plaque in the arteries. No reason of course why perfectly healthy young people should be scared of either thing, but my Granny lived to be 96 and I intend to beat her record.

The scary part is that the people I'm expected to go to for dietary advice are the same dipshits that want to put schoolchildren on fat-free diets despite the certainty that this would turn them into morons. Anyone can set themselves up as a dietician, and extreme and obsessive ideas seem almost to be a recomendation. "Guidelines" are obviously made up on the spur of the moment.

Of course, I use my own common sense, but as so often I find myself thinking, "What do really stupid people do?".

Uncle Gus said...

Me again. Trying to get the Google account to work.

PJH said...

apocalypse - you're right; peanuts aren't nuts, they're legumes, and anyone allergic to peanuts isn't necessarily allergic to nuts, and vice versa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_allergy:

Peanut allergy is a type of food allergy distinct from nut allergies.

microdave said...

I agree it shouldn't be necessary to warn about nut content on a packet of nuts, but we have a whole generation who accept without question anything they are given (or occasionally pay for). So they probably don't automatically assume that the contents are a true reflection of the label. Remember Cadbury's "Smash"? It was marketed with the slogan "Contains real Potato pieces"....

"If there is zero salt in your urine, it doesn't mean you're eating the right amount."

How does one check? I was wondering if I should pee on my food to see if it improves the flavour.....

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr Leg-iron

The body requires salt. It normally comes wrapped in calories. If the government through food control legislation insists that food companies wrap half the salt per calorie, then the body, demanding salt, will insist one eat twice as many calories to get the salt it needs. People will get fat. Simples.

Add a pinch of salt to taste and the problem will go away. Better yet, get the government to go away. Would that it were so easy to solve.

“Leg-iron said ...
Rab - the only sign I'd like to see outside the Houses of Parliament is 'Demolition in progress'.

Never happen, but it's a nice dream.

9 March 2010 00:53”

Mr Leg-iron, your dream may become a waking nightmare. When the EU decrees it, Parliament will be redundant (only 20% to go) and the Houses of Parliament may be safely demolished, or converted into Disneyland London as a future fair for all, and we will be truly under the heel of the EUSSR jackboot. Not a rosy outlook.

DP

Leg-iron said...

Peanuts are beans? But... that makes them vegetables and therefore they count towards that five-a-day nonsense. Add in a bag of chocolate raisins and I'm there.

Sorted.

PJH said...

Don't forget chips and tomato ketchup count for 2 towards your 5 a day!

Leg-iron said...

Microdave - no need to check anything unless you feel ill ;)

Leg-iron said...

DP - A lot of obesity is caused by current dietary advice such as don't eat fat, eat carbohydrates.

Fat doesn't make you fat. You eat it as fat cells containing fat but it's not human fat and not human cells.

The whole lot is broken down, some used for energy and some for building cell components and some reassembled into human fat for storage. It's a slow process.

Carbohydrates are burned very fast, a lot of energy-containing products go into the system, far more than the body can use at once so that's converted to fat and stored too. Which is as it should be - but eating fast-burn foods rather than slow-burn ones means the fat builds up faster.

In the end, it comes down to a simple equation. Are you using the energy in the food you eat? If not, you get fat.


Parliament is already pretty much redundant. That might be why all those parties are trying to lose the next election. None want to be the ones History remembers as signing the UK's death warrant.

Leg-iron said...

PJH - Cows are vegetarian, so eating beef is passive vegetarianism which must also count as half of a five-a-day.

So, peanuts, beef, chips, ketchup, chocolate raisins, all I need is another half.

Popcorn. That's it, five-a-day exceeded. This isn't as difficult as the health nazis make it sound.

PJH said...

Passive vegetarianism - that sounds like something cancerous. Are you sure you have your facts straight on that one? What about 3rd-hand vegetarianism?

Perhaps we need a charity of some sort to do some research. We could fund it with taxpayers money....

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