Dean
April 22nd, 2002, 01:34
Some supprising facts about pies:
Consumer group goes cold on pies
The chunky bits in meat pies could come from a buffalo or a camel and be just about any part of the animal's body, the Australian Consumers' Association said today.
Sometimes the chunky bits aren't even meat at all - just textured vegetable protein (TVP), said ACA spokeswoman Gail Kennedy.
An investigation by the ACA found that under the Food Standards Act, "meat" doesn't just mean steak coming from muscle flesh.
Meat pies are allowed to include meat from cattle, buffalo, camel, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep.
And the meat can include ground-up bone, brain, fat and meat scraps, the ACA said.
Ms Kennedy also said frozen meat pie companies were able to fudge the required 25 per cent meat content in pies, because it was impossible to work out what percentage of a pie was meat.
Scientists instead measured the amount of protein in pies, she said.
Companies could therefore add TVP to boost the amount of meat that appears to be in a pie.
"There is no minimum or maximum level of TVP that can be added," she said.
An ACA survey of 22 types of frozen meat pies bought from supermarkets found three failed to meet the required 25 per cent meat amount.
There also were several pies where the lumpy bits turned out to be TVP instead of meat.
The survey also found each pie contained about 15-30g of fat, or the equivalent of a golf ball-sized glob of fat.
The survey results appear in the latest edition of the ACA's Choice magazine.
http://www.designz4you.com/pie.gif
Consumer group goes cold on pies
The chunky bits in meat pies could come from a buffalo or a camel and be just about any part of the animal's body, the Australian Consumers' Association said today.
Sometimes the chunky bits aren't even meat at all - just textured vegetable protein (TVP), said ACA spokeswoman Gail Kennedy.
An investigation by the ACA found that under the Food Standards Act, "meat" doesn't just mean steak coming from muscle flesh.
Meat pies are allowed to include meat from cattle, buffalo, camel, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep.
And the meat can include ground-up bone, brain, fat and meat scraps, the ACA said.
Ms Kennedy also said frozen meat pie companies were able to fudge the required 25 per cent meat content in pies, because it was impossible to work out what percentage of a pie was meat.
Scientists instead measured the amount of protein in pies, she said.
Companies could therefore add TVP to boost the amount of meat that appears to be in a pie.
"There is no minimum or maximum level of TVP that can be added," she said.
An ACA survey of 22 types of frozen meat pies bought from supermarkets found three failed to meet the required 25 per cent meat amount.
There also were several pies where the lumpy bits turned out to be TVP instead of meat.
The survey also found each pie contained about 15-30g of fat, or the equivalent of a golf ball-sized glob of fat.
The survey results appear in the latest edition of the ACA's Choice magazine.
http://www.designz4you.com/pie.gif