The well-known supermarket chain Mercadona has launched a sausage for sale which, according to some digital media, is the definitive solution to consume this type of meat derivatives in a healthy way.
“If you are on a diet or want to be able to incorporate sausages without making you fat or giving you too much fat and calories, you have the best solution of all in Mercadona”, blurts out a renowned digital newspaper. We analyze whether this sausage can be considered a valid alternative to other supermarket sausages in nutritional terms.
what is a sausage
The sausage is the colloquial designation that consumers give to a type of meat derivative that is found stuffed inside a gut, either natural or a synthetic material. The label, that is, must tell us if the packaging is not suitable for consumption, as required by law. The nature of the raw materials that we find in a sausage are varied, but one animal species always predominates over the rest: the pig.
Despite the efforts of certain advertising campaigns led by the meat industry, the truth is that the Pork Meat It does not cease to be classified within red meat. That is, a type of meat with a higher proportion of Saturated fatsingredients that are related to certain types of metabolic problems, such as cardiovascular diseases.
Healthy sausage from Mercadona? 🍖
It’s going to be not ❌
The “healthy sausage” does not exist, neither in Mercadona nor anywhere else.
Here I explain why in detail: https://t.co/Ge0a97UzcZ pic.twitter.com/TljRVqmoF0
— Mario Sánchez Rosagro (@SefiFood) March 19, 2023
Additionally, sausages have high amounts of salt, an ingredient that has been linked to hypertension and cardiovascular diseases for many years. It should not come as a great surprise that sausages such as chorizo, salchichón or sobrasada contain huge proportions of saturated fat and salt. Just take a quick look at any food label to find out.
What is in the “healthy” sausage from Mercadona
That said, if we analyze the nutritional composition of Mercadona’s supposedly healthy sausage, we can see a striking difference in its first ingredients. The most striking is the meat derivative from which it is made, which it’s turkey and not pork.
In this case, turkey is an animal species classified within white meat, since its proportion of saturated fat is not so high. In general, chicken and turkey are postulated as the healthiest meats within this family of foods, so in this sense it is preferable that the sausage has turkey meat to pork. A positive point without a doubt.
Specifically, we are dealing with a turkey sausage that uses 137 grams of turkey to make 100 grams of product. We are not directly indicated a percentage, which makes it difficult to have a practical understanding of the actual amount of turkey in the sausage. However, we must know that this type of mention is completely legal, as stated in the Regulation 1169/2011 of the European Union intended to provide food information to consumers. In fact, this type of mention is also frequently used in sauces such as fried tomato, where the food undergoes a dehydration process that reduces its weight. Therefore, the original amount of feed used to make the feed will always be higher: it is not practical to use a percentage.
Where do the proteins in the product come from?
We can also conclude that the amount of turkey included in the product is quite high. Although we are not able to know the percentage of the ingredient with a quick glance, we can see that the total protein content is 31 grams per 100 grams. But there is a problem. Turkey sausage has added milk proteins, so we have no way of knowing, a priori, what amount of protein corresponds exclusively to turkey and what to milk. In short, we are facing a food labeling puzzle which, while not in breach of the law, certainly does not clearly inform the consumer of its genuine nutritional value.
It is also important to note that the sausage behaves legally just like a sausageas indicated by the Royal Decree 474/2014, of June 13, which approves the quality standard for meat derivatives in Spain. Right here we are told that for a chorizo to have the “extra” label —like the one on Mercadona’s sausage— the product must have less than 57% fat, more than 30% total protein and less than 1% added proteins. You could also use the “light” claim, as the product claims to have 30% less fat than other pork sausages. Here we would enter the field of nutritional declarations regulated by the Regulation 1924/2006 of the European Union.
Returning to the subject of proteins, we can estimate that the added milk proteins will be at most 1%. So the protein from the turkey in the Mercadona sausage will be approximately 30 grams. According to the Spanish food composition database (BEDCA), we see that turkey has about 22 grams of protein per 100 grams. So, after a bizarre gymkhana math, we confirm that 136 grams of fresh turkey are necessary to make this controversial sausage. Adjusting decimals, we see that the figures coincide with what the label indicates: 137 grams of turkey.
No sausage is healthy
As we have seen, the food labeling of this sausage does not make it much easier for an average user to understand the nutritional information. It is a product that adheres to various regulations to show striking claims that extol some benefits of the product, but that does not mean that the food is healthier necessarily.
Despite the fact that its main raw material is turkey, the product has insulting amounts of salt. Think that from 1.25% salt, it is already considered that the food is high in this ingredient. Do you know how much salt the Mercadona sausage has? We are talking about 4.5% salt, an absolute barbarity which, on the other hand, is totally understandable in the case of a sausage. During the process of making sausages, in stages such as salting and curing, it is inevitable to resort to high concentrations of salt. It is something that is implicit in the nature of the product.
For this reason, saying that a sausage is “healthy” is completely contradictory and impossible: it is a perfect example of an oxymoron. In short, eat sausage if you like it, but don’t fool yourself —or let yourself be fooled— into thinking that sausage can become a healthy alternative in your diet. As much as you read it in digital media of doubtful credibility.
Photo | Sigmund on Unsplash
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