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Mamia Mini Rice Cakes | Chewsday Review

Ah the humble rice cake… or not so humble? Let’s take a look. Today’s Chewsday review features the organic apple and raspberry mini rice cakes from the ‘Mamia’ baby range found at Aldi supermarkets.

Ingredients

Organic White Rice (83.8%), Organic Apple Juice Concentrate (13.1%), Organic Raspberry Juice Concentrate (3%), Mineral (Iron), Vitamin (Thiamin).
Organic Apple Juice Concentrate and Organic Raspberry Juice Concentrate come from fruit, but with all the good bits removed… so it’s still just another type of sugar making up 16% of the biscuit (no better or worse than regular sugar).
Common allergens include: none. May contain: milk, sesame seeds and soy.
All ingredients are certified organic. Remember, this tells us about how the ingredients are grown and has nothing to do with the nutrient content.

Positives

With added iron these provide 31% of a toddler’s daily iron requirements per serving (about 25% for 7-12 months) – this is pretty decent for a small 8g serve! Given that iron is the main nutritional reason we start solid foods at 6 months this gets a huge tick.
Very low sodium (salt) content with less than 5mg per 100g. This is similar to most plain rice cakes, but much lower than savoury flavoured rice cakes which often contain upwards of 800mg per 100g!
Fat and saturated fat content is almost negligible, which obviously fits within healthy guidelines.
The sugar content is within healthy guidelines (just).

Negatives

Marketing

Alternatives

Regular rice cakes that cost a fraction of the price and contain about 50% less sugar.
The redeeming factor of the added iron may be worth the price tag if you’ve got a resistant eater who likes plain, white and crunchy foods.
As far as mini rice cake varieties go these are almost identical to the ‘Only Organic’ brand found at Woolworths and Coles. I would select either of these over the ‘Little Quacker’ rice cakes because of the added iron and lower sodium content.
If you are feeling a bit creative, I would suggest topping plain rice cakes with a home-made fruit jam or vegetable puree.