Wendyl Nissen: Ticks the boxes for lunch

Birds Eye Corn Fritters. $8.84 for 500g. Photo / Supplied

Corn fritters are a food I loved as a child but in adulthood I've never been able to make them without producing a fritter that is too floury or too flat. So I was keen to try these when I saw them in the freezer as they seemed to be pretty close to a corn fritter I would make at home, if I could.

Birds Eye Corn Fritters. $8.84 for 500g.

Ingredients

Corn (55 per cent)

You can clearly see lots of pieces of corn in these fritters. I would think these would provide some good fibre in your diet but there is no fibre listing on the ingredients panel. This amount of corn would be what you would expect if you were making them at home.

Water

Wheat flour

A main ingredient in fritters, you would expect this to be in here.

Canola oil

Nice to know what oil is used in this product. Canola oil is extracted from rapeseeds and is high in polyunsaturated fats.

Thickeners (1422,461, 1404, xanthan gum, guar gum)

There are a lot of thickeners in here, which is a bit puzzling. But considering this is a frozen product, I'm guessing they are required to help the fritter hold its shape.

They are acetylated distarch adipate (1422) a treated starch, methyl-cellulose (461) which is made from wool and cotton; oxidised starch (1404), which is a starch oxidised by using sodium hypochlorite; xanthan gum, which is created out of fermented sucrose and glucose; and guar gum, which is made out of guar bean seeds.

Maize flour

This is cornflour, another thickener.

Sugar

Nice to see so little sugar in here. If you made these at home out of a can of creamed corn they would be much sweeter. You'll get just 1.9g of sugar per 55g fritter.

Salt

These are also not too salty. Just 149mg of sodium per 55g fritter.

Maize starch

Not sure how this is different to corn flour above but it will most likely be in here to thicken the fritter.

Rice flour

I think this is probably used in the outside coating to give the fritter a crisp finish.

Wheat bran

This is another high-fibre ingredient.

Yeast

This is unlikely to be in here for rising purposes, more likely in here for flavour.

Acidity regulators (450, sodium bicarbonate)

This is baking soda and diphosphates (450).

Pepper

Glucose

This is another form of sugar, but as the last ingredient would be in here in very tiny amounts.

My recommendations:

I expected these to by highly salted and sweet like so many other freezer products I have looked at. But these tasted just fine and much better than the corn fritters I have attempted to make in the past.

Two fritters will give you about 900kj or 225 calories, which is great for a light lunch with a green salad and chutney or in my case homemade tomato sauce. You are getting an unusually high number of thickeners in the mix but these don't generally cause any reactions in people.

These would be great for vegetarians and they also have the benefit of no added artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. I bought these for $8.42 at a Four Square so you may find them cheaper in larger supermarkets but either way with nine fritters per box that's four lunches and one extra for later.

Highlights

• No artificial colours, flavours or preservatives.

• An awful lot of thickeners.

• Low in sugar and salt.