Woolworths butter flavoured microwave popcorn | Chewsday Review

This product is a perennial favourite with kids and adults alike- microwave popcorn! I chose the Woolworths brand popcorn, because it was the cheapest on the market. You'll soon see why!

Ingredients

Positives

Negatives

And wow is this a big negative! The Woolworths popcorn contains a significant amount of trans fat (7% by weight). If you don’t know much about trans fat, I’ll give you a quick run down. It’s the worst of the fats by far. It does occur in small amounts naturally, but trans fat usually comes from heating cheap oils and changing their chemical structure. This is done to keep them solid at room temperature (in this case I assume it’s to adhere to the popcorn). This type of fat is particularly unhealthy for humans, and has been consistently linked with heart disease. In America, the government has ordered this type of trans fat to be removed from food products within the next few years. In other parts of the world, such as Denmark, the law states that a product can contain no more than 2% of the total fat as trans fat, and this law can be enforced with jail time. Yet, the Woolworths popcorn contains 32% of the total fat as trans fat. Certainly not good enough Woolworths.
As a side note, in Australia, we don’t even have a law to enforce companies to even tell us how much trans fat is in their products (they don’t even have to put it on the label. Health groups have been campaigning against this forever!)
This popcorn also has a very high saturated fat content (also not a good fat!)
One of the highest sodium/salt containing popcorns on the market (more than double most of the other brands!)

Marketing

Interestingly, the makers of this product chose to include the Health Star Rating on their packaging (also voluntary). The popcorn got 2 stars out of a possible 5, which clearly doesn’t make it a healthy choice. Other popcorns, however, would likely get a much higher rating because they tend to be high in fibre, low in sugar and some are lower in fat and sodium. Interesting marketing technique…
No artificial colours, flavours or preservatives

Alternatives

This product is NOT worth the dollar or two saving compared to the other brands.
Pop your own popcorn and add your own flavours (you can use kernels and a brown paper bag in the microwave for simple homemade popcorn- check out my Instagram video for instructions)
Choose a microwave or pre popped popcorn with less than 0.1g of trans fat per 100g
Choose a microwave or pre popped popcorn with less than 500mg of sodium per 100g

The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.

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