Wendyl Nissen: Tasty fish curry earns all health ticks

Sealord New Zealand Hoki Malay Coconut Curry. Photo / Wendyl Nissen

We're used to seeing packets of crumbed fish by Sealord in the freezer at our supermarket. But this is a new product which takes hoki and puts it in a curry sauce.

What a good idea for a quick lunch or dinner. We should all aim to eat more fish as it provides a lot of good protein and vitamin D. It is also the best source of omega-3 fatty acids which are good for your body and brain.

Sealord New Zealand Hoki Malay Coconut Curry. $10.99 for 400g.

Ingredients (in order of greatest quantity first):

Hoki fillets (54%)

Hoki is a deep sea fish which is trawled all around New Zealand. Greenpeace and NZ Forest and Bird will tell you that their stocks are endangered and that the method of catching hoki is damaging to other marine life.

The Seafood Industry will tell you that since numbers declined a quota system was introduced in 1986 and now hoki are the best-managed trawl fish in the world. "Stocks are currently assessed as being at or above target levels, and catch limits have been increased as a result."

Malay Coconut Sauce (46%)

Water

Coconut Cream (15%)

This is a common ingredient in a curry and you can clearly taste it in this sauce.

Sugar

Not high in sugar at 5.3g per 200g serving

Onion

Lemon juice

Herbs

Stabilisers (carrageenan, guar gum, xantham gum, 1442)

The sauce is actually more the consistency of a soup, but these additives will be in here to keep it nice and smooth. The first three are all natural and the last one is a treated starch hydroxyl-propyl distarch phosphate.

Vegetable oil

Not sure what oil is in here.

Lime juice

Soy sauce (contains wheat)

This soy sauce is not made exclusively from soy bean.

Garlic

Spices

Chilli

This is quite hot, if you don't like spicy foods then this will probably be too much for you.

Salt

Not too high in salt at 210mg of sodium per 200g serve.

Emulsifiers (433,471)

These are polysorbate 80 (433) which is a synthetic compound and mono and diglycerides of fatty acids (471) which is produced primarily from hydrogenated soya bean oil.

Natural flavour

Good to see natural flavour used in here.

Preservative (202)

Potassium sorbate is a common preservative made from neutralised sorbic acid

Colour (paprika)

This is a natural colour.

My recommendations:

As a snack this looks great. You get the nutrition of a meal of fish and the taste of a curry. It is also low fat, low sugar and uses natural colouring and flavouring.

But when I got my husband to eat it he found that there was really only enough in here for one serving not two. So for a main meal you could eat the lot and consume 1780 kj or 445 calories, and add some cooked rice and veges on the side. Or for a snack two of you could have a little bit each, or 200g at 890 kj or just more than 200 calories.

Either way it tastes great, and is easy to prepare. You might want to take the longer option of heating in the oven for 30 minutes rather than the microwave as the fish felt a little overcooked from the microwave. If you are using it for one meal, at $10.99 it's quite expensive.

Highlights:

• Low fat, low sugar.
• No artificial colours or flavours.
• Healthy serving of fish.