In MrConsumer’s mind, Stouffer’s is a respected name brand of frozen food. So it came as a big surprise when he learned that some of their meals like roast turkey, salisbury steak, and meatloaf all had the same first ingredient. How can that be?
Can you guess the first ingredient of all these meals?
*MOUSE PRINT:
How is that possible? We asked the company for an explanation, but they never responded.
So maybe the company should rename those products to various varieties of meat-flavored water:
Happy holidays. The next new Mouse Print* story will be published on Monday, January 5th.
They have some nerve calling it “Classic Meatloaf.” I’ve never seen a meatloaf receipe that requires adding water, or indeed many/most of the items on the ingredient list.
My uninformed assumption is that they’re merely infusing as much water as possible into the raw ingredients to pump up the net weight. Perhaps the fake-meat vehicle textured soy flour absorbs significant water (it “increases water binding” according to Archer-Daniels-Midland).
It should be called, “Classic Marketing”
As my former boss in a food manufacturing plant said about removing moisture from the product: “Don’t remove too much moisture; water is cheaper than (the product).”
It does seem odd, and off-putting, to have water listed first in a (ostensibly) solid food product. It also has me wondering what the measures are for the ranking of listed ingredients. The ingredients take many forms, which I guess are measured differently–water is obviously heavier than powders, salts, etc. It would be interesting to know a bit more.
For what it’s worth, Amy’s Mexican Casserole, which I tend to think is a relatively decent frozen food, also lists water first. Maybe Stouffer’s isn’t an outlier.