Health

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Fish Fillets Plumped Up With Water

MrConsumer was always suspicious that store brand frozen, unbreaded fish fillets were somehow plumped up with water to add to the package weight because after pan frying they would shrink to a fraction of their original size.

Now, in a lawsuit just filed by consumers from three states, food giant, Conagra, is accused of doing just that to two big brands of breaded fish fillets — Van de Kamp’s and Mrs. Paul’s.

fish fillets

While the package says “100% whole fish filtets,” the ingredients statement tells a different story.

*MOUSE PRINT:

ingredients

According to the lawsuit:

The truth is, Defendant pumps up those fish with an industrial filler called sodium tripolyphosphate (“STPP”) and extra water to artificially add weight, which may then ooze out as a white goo when the fish is cooked. STPP, a suspected neurotoxin, is typically used to manufacture things like rubber, paint, and antifreeze. STPP also is used by unscrupulous businesses in the seafood industry to engage in short weighting.

The disclosure in tiny print on the back of the products’ labels about the presence of STPP does not dispel or disclaim to reasonable consumers the bold, prominent statements on the front and back of the products suggesting that the products are composed of ‘100% whole fish

The consumers’ lawyers say the fish is soaked in a solution of STPP which encourages the absorption of water. On average, they say, this adds 13-percent of extra weight to the fish.

Here is a video demonstration of how much a fish fillet shrinks when pan fried by exuding the water it had been plumped up with.

In the lawsuit, the lawyers allege a variety of unfair and deceptive practices under various consumer laws and seek a stop to the practices charged. Conagra has not commented on the pending litigation. And a consumer lawyer told MrConsumer that using STPP may be legal.

What do you think of the practice of bulking up the weight of fish products with water and chemicals?

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Kettle Chips: When Cutting the Fat Doesn’t Cut the Calories

When a product is air fried, one expects it to have fewer calories. Such doesn’t seem to be the case, however, with Kettle Chips.

Here is the regular variety of Kettle chips. It has 140 calories per ounce and nine grams of fat.

Regular Kettle Chips

Now here is the “air fried” Kettle chips.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Air Fried Kettle Chips

This variety says “air fried” in huge letters, but in small type that some people might miss, it says “kettle cooked, air finished.” What? The chips are really deep-fat fried, but then blown dry, so to speak?

That alone could be misleading, and so the company was just sued in March by a consumer.

But look closer, comparing the two nutrition labels. The air-fried product says 30% less fat than the regular version, and sure enough, it has six grams of fat per ounce versus nine grams of fat. But how is it possible that the bag with less fat has the exact same amount of calories per ounce? The ingredients in both products seem to be in the same order of predominance.

We asked Campbell’s Soup, the maker of Kettle chips, for an explanation. They did not reply.

Now it is your turn. What could explain that there is no change in calories in the air-fried product despite having one-third less fat?

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Presidential Election Campaign Fund Pays for Medical Research Too

A funny thing happened when Ken E. was filing his taxes using H&R Block software. When he got to the screen asking if he would like to give $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, he clicked the “learn more” link and got an unexpected explanation in the fine print.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Election finance

Say what?

Apparently in 2014, Congress decided to no longer allow political parties to use taxpayer money from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund to finance their party conventions. Instead, it redirected that money to the “10-Year Pediatric Research Initiative Fund” designed to fund projects related to childhood diseases. The law was named after Gabriella Miller, who, while battling a rare form of brain cancer herself, helped raise money to fund pediatric cancer research. She died at age 10.

Our consumer said, “Even in my wildest dreams I would not have connected giving to the campaign fund to mean that I am donating to pediatric medical research.”

For once, the fine print revealed a great positive surprise.