Lots of waffling going on in sweet breakfast treat

Waffle On Choc Chip Waffles - $4.99 for six waffles or 300g. Photo / Wendyl Nissen

I saw these in Countdown over Queen's Birthday Weekend where they were conveniently placed next to the check-outs for those interested in a weekend breakfast treat.

Ingredients

Wheat flour
This is flour as you would use in making waffles at home.

Egg
Good to see real egg in here not a powdered version or a substitute.

Sugar
These are a high sugar item. Per 50g waffle you will get 14.4g of sugar or nearly 3.5 teaspoons of sugar.

Margarine [(vegetable oils, water, salt, emulsifier (471, soy lecithin), antioxidant (320), flavour, colour (160a), EDTA]
If only they had used butter which has just two ingredients, cream and salt.

Instead this margarine has the emulsifier mono and diglycerides of fatty acids (471) and the antioxidant butylated hydroxyl anisole or BHA (320). This additive is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" by the US Department of Toxicology and Health. However our Food Standards Authority permits it for use in food.

There is also artificial flavour and colour in here as well as EDTA which is a short way of saying ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid. This is often put in foods like margarine to keep them from spoiling and to preserve their flavour.

Compound chocolate (4.5%) [contains cocoa powder, milk solids, emulsifier (soy lecithin, 492)]
These are usual ingredients for chocolate but with the addition of the emulsifiers soy lecithin and sorbitan tristearate (492) which helps with fat absorption in processed foods.

Flavour
This will be an artificial flavour.

My recommendations

If you made your own waffles you would need seven basic ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, salt, baking powder and sugar. There would be no EDTA, or BHA or artificial flavour and colour.

So why not just do that? You will need a waffle maker but I found one at Briscoes for $52 so maybe the investment is worth it in terms of reducing the additive load in your family's diet and you can have some quality time in the kitchen cooking with the kids.

These are promoted as being great for a school lunch or "an easy food for trampers." I don't think so. A handful of nuts would be much more energy filled and nutritious for that tramp or day at school.

These also tasted very dry when toasted and not very nice at all and the sugar content is high, considering most people like to slather their waffles with maple syrup or similar.

I also noticed that I bought them on June 1 and their best before date was June 30 which is just scary.

Any baked good made at home is usually done and dusted after a few days because it has no preservatives in it.

Highlights

• Contains a reasonably anticipated human carcinogen BHA.

• Uses colour and artificial flavour.

• Uses additive filled margarine instead of butter.

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