Wendyl Wants to Know: Still saucy but better for you

Wattie's Tomato Sauce. Photo / Wendyl Nissen

The war on sugar has started in the UK where the Government has been told by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver that they should introduce a 7p (16c) tax on sugary soft drinks.

Imposing a sugar tax is a start, but critics say such a small amount will not stop people buying a can of Coke.

In my opinion a better change would be if food producers would put some effort into lower sugar options for their popular products. I'm sure that most parents, if given a choice, would choose lower sugar products for their children if they were available and weren't full of artificial sweeteners.

Wattie's have done just this, producing a tomato sauce which has reduced the usual amount of sugar by 50 per cent and salt by 35 per cent. It costs the same as the regular product.

Wattie's Tomato Sauce 50 Less Sugar, 35 Less Salt.

Ingredients ( in order of greatest quantity first):

Concentrated tomatoes (contains 163g of tomatoes per 100g or 24g of tomatoes per 15g serve)
It's great that Wattie's are telling us exactly how many grams of tomatoes we are getting in our sauce. As with any tomato sauce you would expect the main ingredient to be tomato.

Sugar
So there is some sugar in here and you'll get 2.1g per 15g serve. This is down from Wattie's normal sauce which will give you 4.5g per 15g serve.

Food acids (acetic acid, citric acid)
These are both natural and will be in here as preservatives but also to help with taste.

Salt
Not very salty at just 85mg of sodium per 15g serve, compared to Wattie's normal sauce which is 145mg of sodium.

Natural flavours
Good to see natural flavours used in here.

Natural sweetener (steviol glycosides)
This is otherwise known as stevia, a plant which looks a bit like mint. The leaves produce a very sweet taste but also carry a little bitterness with them. That is why if you buy stevia sweetener for your coffee it will often be mixed with other ingredients to help get rid of it. I did notice a slight bitter aftertaste when I compared this to the normal tomato sauce but I think if it was smeared on a sausage I wouldn't notice it at all.

Spice

My recommendations

By all means buy this sauce this summer if you want to reduce sugar intake in your family. It isn't a huge amount - a matter of a couple of grams per serve, but sugar does add up. And if your kids are anything like mine they tend to pour it on in large quantities and on just about everything they eat. My advice is to just not mention the slightly bitter after-taste and I doubt they'll notice.

• This bottle of sauce was sent to me for review by Wattie's.

Highlights

• Uses the plant stevia to reduce sugar by 50 per cent.

• No artificial colour, flavour or sweetener in here.

• Slight bitter aftertaste but shouldn't be noticeable on a sausage.