The Not So Super Super-Market

I did a bit of supermarket catalogue comparing today, partially because a few years ago in France I did an exercise (for fun on the train to Nantes) where I added up pages given over to advertising “good foods” compared to rubbish foods.

I know that supermarkets are in the business of making money not looking after our health and that it’s our job to do that, but they certainly don’t makeit easy. Food companies use psychology to train us, the consumer, with something they call ‘the catalogue effect’ which essentially means we’ll read the catalogue, think everything in it is a bargain and go and buy it all.

The beautiful 70 page French supermarket catalogue contained only 12 pages that featured junk food. I was amazed, truly shocked. The front pages of the catalogue were dedicated to fruit and vegetables and other whole foods or minimally processed foods. One of the “bad” food pages was dedicated to one brand of dark chocolate, so I really shouldn’t even include that, as dark chocolate is terrific stuff.

So how does France compare to Australia? For interest’s sake I grabbed two local catalogues, from Aldi and Woolworths and assessed them against my totally brilliant and innovative “whole food plant based assessment tool” the P-BAT (ie is this food a plant and is it minimally processed?).

Assessing both catalogues against a pure whole food plant based approach was pretty sad. Aldi had a mere 18 items of the 68 advertised that passed the test. Woolworths fared even worse, there were only 23 out of 195 items that passed the test.

The Aldi cover page passed the P-BAT test. Of the five foods advertised three were vegetables (the other two were whole foods but of the meat variety). Page two was brilliant! Of the six foods advertised, all six were plants! The Woolies cover page didn’t quite make the grade with cherries as the only ticked item of the 13 advertised.

Jeepers, I thought to myself, Aldi is on a winner; the Germans are up there with the French. Unfortunately when I turned the page, it was clear I was wrong. Page three featured seven items, five were meat based offerings including a Class 1 carcinogen* – something called Schinkengriller (apparently it’s a type of bratwurst. And of the two other offerings, well one was sugar (sour patch lollies) and other was a transfat delight (Oreos).

Then pages 4 and 5 really disturbed me. Of the 41 items offered as Super Savers, there was not one real, fresh whole food. There were three items which we would consider okay in that they’re processed, but minimally so: mustard, tinned tomatoes and roasted, salted peanuts. So what was on the two pages? Something called Utopia which comes in almond, honeycomb or salted caramel and doesn’t describe what it actually is anywhere on the packet (that I could see); lime tart, banana bread slices, flavoured rice cakes, marinated pork ribs, ready made quiche, knackwurst, cheese kransky, cocktail franks, hot dog rolls, party pies, chick nuggets, pizza snacks, crackers, crinkle cut crackers, tomato sauce….and that’s just the first page!

Don’t let me even start on the “Gummies” multivitamins which are apparently fine for adults and children. People who eat lots of plants don’t need multivitamins. Ever. (except vitamin B12 – that’s very important). Is there a Vitamin B12 gummie???? (Jackie whizzes off from her thought bubble to do the research.)

Turns out that there are gummies that contain vitamin B12. Turns out they’re not very good. See https://health.clevelandclinic.org/do-gummy-vitamins-work-as-well-as-traditional-vitamins.

So back to Aldi’s catalogue. No surprises on pages 6 and 7 either. The one foodstuff that got a tick was the roasted and salted peanuts (and they’re been advertised elsewhere already).

On page 8, titled “The People Have Spoken” we have a win! Apparently, Aldi asked consumers to nominate foods they like. Apparently “the people” are smarter than the PR people because of the eight foods chosen, two got the P-BAT tick (maple syrup and chia seeds). I was fooled for a minute by the healthy looking package with vegetable batons on the front called “vegetable straws”. Gave it a tick until I was told that it’s a packet of chips. The words “Gourmet Snack Company” should have given it away really.

So what were the other “people’s picks” you ask? Blue vein cheese, Turkish style frozen gozleme, brioche buns, white wraps, caramel chocolate.

And what about the Woollie’s catalogue? Of the 34 pages of food advertising featuring 195 individual food items, barely 23 passed the P-BAT, including 10 fresh fruits and three pre-prepared vegetables. The other 10 foods that passed (and I used very loose parameters) were: Weetbix, honey, teabags (I was pushing, okay), desiccated coconut, slivered almonds, hummus, cashews and antipasto.

The catalogue also included 33 meat cuts (not including the processed things such as bacon) which are technically ‘whole foods’ but are not plant based. So 70 per cent of the items advertised in the Woolies catalogue are hyperprocessed and 17 per cent are meat (a Group 2A carcinogen).

*According to the Cancer Council of Australia, eating more than 700 grams (raw weight) of red meat a week increases your risk of bowel cancer; and the risk of developing bowel cancer goes up 1.18 times for every 50 grams of processed meat eaten per day.

The World Health Organization has classified processed meats including ham, bacon, salami and frankfurts as a Group 1 carcinogen (known to cause cancer) which means that there’s strong evidence that processed meats cause cancer. Eating processed meat increases your risk of bowel and stomach cancer. Red meat, such as beef, lamb and pork, has been classified as a Group 2A carcinogen which means it probably causes cancer.