Speaker 1: With Christmas just around the corner, we thought we needed
Speaker 1: to cover some sweets for a change, and so there
Speaker 1: is no better timing than to choose some very yummy
Speaker 1: chocolate cake mixes. Hi, I'm Susie Burrow and I'm Lean Woo,
Speaker 1: and as two of us Jays leading dieticians, we bring
Speaker 1: you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on
Speaker 1: new products and old favorites that you can find in
Speaker 1: the supermarket. Now, on today's episode, we're specifically looking at
Speaker 1: chocolate cake. Now, Leanne, you've first had a little cheeky birthday?
Speaker 2: Were you?
Speaker 1: What cake did we have for miss me out? Turning one?
Speaker 2: We had a lovely vanilla sponge cake with fresh cream
Speaker 2: and strawberries, and I did not make it, but it
Speaker 2: was amazing. It tastes so good. Most of my friends
Speaker 2: had two slices. They were like raving about it, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, wish I could take the credit,
Speaker 2: but sadly I can't.
Speaker 1: Well, you're a busy working mum running the Nutrition Couch,
Speaker 1: who's got time to do that kind of baking land,
Speaker 1: So you're allowed to be off the hook. Now, I
Speaker 1: will be fully transparent that I never buy a cake
Speaker 1: mix because I will make from scratch. I am a
Speaker 1: bit of a baker, but I just am not a
Speaker 1: cake mix person. But I'm really loving these range. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Amy has helped us with this review, so
Speaker 1: thanks Amy, You've helped us amazingly this year and just
Speaker 1: graduated from Dietetech. So well done, and she sounds a
Speaker 1: really interesting one. So the first one we're going to
Speaker 1: have a look at, Leanne is the Greens forty percent
Speaker 1: less sugar chocolate cake mix, which I've never seen before
Speaker 1: and it retails for four dollars fifty at Woolli's and Coals.
Speaker 1: And what we're going to do is compare a cheeky
Speaker 1: thing cake people cake companies do is they put really
Speaker 1: tiny serving sizes, so there's a reference. A very small,
Speaker 1: slender slice of cake could be about one hundred grams. Now,
Speaker 1: this one recommended serves a sixty two gram so it's
Speaker 1: literally nothing.
Speaker 2: It's like twelve serves per cake. Who cuts the cake
Speaker 2: into twelve serves?
Speaker 1: No way, exactly. That's a very slim, slimver. So we
Speaker 1: are going to compare across one hundred grams to make
Speaker 1: it a little more realistic. And even that's a fairly
Speaker 1: small slice. So one hundred grams of cake is giving
Speaker 1: a six sixteen one hundred and sixty kilo dules or
Speaker 1: three hundred and ninety seven calories four hundred calories, so
Speaker 1: literally a meal in a size of cake six point
Speaker 1: four grams of protein, nineteen point two grams of that.
Speaker 1: Now that should we should say that's also as prepared,
Speaker 1: So it's going to include i'd say some eggs and butter,
Speaker 1: which we'll look at in a second, eleven point six
Speaker 1: of which is saturated and carbo hydrate forty seven point
Speaker 1: eight grams is a reference A slice of breads roughly fifteen,
Speaker 1: so you're looking at about three slices of bread in
Speaker 1: that that size of cake. And nineteen point nine grams
Speaker 1: of sugar, so almost five tea spoons in our reduced
Speaker 1: sugar cake mix, which is not insignificant, and six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty one milligrams of sodium, which is also not
Speaker 1: insignificant for a piece of cake. And I say, if
Speaker 1: we look at the cake mix, and this is an
Speaker 1: ic cake, so that's also adding some some serious sugar.
Speaker 1: The cake mix itself is wheat flour, sugar, cocoa powder
Speaker 1: at nine percent smultedextron sorce of sugar, vegetable fat, some
Speaker 1: mulsified antioxidants, raising agents, salt, natural fire, is thickener, rice
Speaker 1: starts and multipliers, vegetable gum, and then the icing multiext
Speaker 1: from wheat, starch, sugar, so three forms of sugar, Cocoa
Speaker 1: powder at ten percent, non fat, milk solids, tapioca, starch,
Speaker 1: and salt. Now, the first thing I would say is
Speaker 1: if you're getting twenty grams of sugars from a forty
Speaker 1: percent reduce, that means you're clocking in at thirty to
Speaker 1: forty grams of sugar per slice of cake, which is massive.
Speaker 1: Am I reckon that most cake recipes and mixes overdo
Speaker 1: the sugar by at least a third. You can always
Speaker 1: cut it right back, and I think Annabel Krab, the
Speaker 1: media commentator, has mentioned that before in her baking. I
Speaker 1: never add salt to a cake mix ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, six hundred milligrams per serves massive.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. That's like a quarter of your daily
Speaker 1: intake in your chocolate cake of one hundred grams, which
Speaker 1: is nothing. Aligin wheat, gluten, milk and soy maybe present
Speaker 1: egg made in Australia from seventy percent austrained ingredients. You
Speaker 1: have to also add two eggs, two thirds of a
Speaker 1: cup of milk, and sixty grams of margarine. Shocking at
Speaker 1: least do butter. Would I buy no is chocolate cake
Speaker 1: very high in sugar? Yes, and I'd probably say you
Speaker 1: try and make your own some healthier ingredients like a
Speaker 1: low fat milk, some plain butter, or even olive oil,
Speaker 1: maybe grate some beet treat in there, which makes a
Speaker 1: great chocolate cake, and ditch that salt, and you can
Speaker 1: probably use a sugar replacement and get a much better
Speaker 1: nutritionals for a cake that still tastes pretty good. What
Speaker 1: do you reckon?
Speaker 2: Lyanna?
Speaker 1: You ripping that up when MEA goes to school?
Speaker 2: Probably not definitely not mindus, and I have I must
Speaker 2: an't better. I have occasionally bought a box cake mix
Speaker 2: or a box cookie mix or something if I'm very,
Speaker 2: very time poor and I'm cooking for something else, or
Speaker 2: someone's told me to bring a cake somewhere and I
Speaker 2: just think, oh God, I don't have time, or just
Speaker 2: you know, like this just because I'm not a baker,
Speaker 2: so I don't have my cocoa powder and my baking flour,
Speaker 2: my sugar and stuff in my pantry, Like I don't
Speaker 2: add your good to make tea and coffee. I don't
Speaker 2: have that sort of stuff in my pantry. I may
Speaker 2: do when I get into my new house, but at
Speaker 2: the moment we're pretty space poor, so I don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of that stuff. So if someone said to me, Heyley,
Speaker 2: and can you bring a chocolate cake for afternoon tea?
Speaker 2: Or can you bring some biscuits for the kids for
Speaker 2: afternoon tea, I would probably, for time poor sake, just
Speaker 2: buy a box. But this would definitely not be the
Speaker 2: one I'm choosing. It is pretty shocking the amount of
Speaker 2: sodium in there, and this is a forty percent less
Speaker 2: sugar cake, as you said, At twenty grams per hundred grams,
Speaker 2: it's quite a lot. So yeah, if this was me,
Speaker 2: even if I was a wirebox mix, what I would
Speaker 2: do is I would use two thousands of a cup
Speaker 2: of skim milk. Take calories down a little bit. I
Speaker 2: would use sixty grams of extraversion olive oil. Often when
Speaker 2: I bake, I actually interchangeably sub the butter or the
Speaker 2: marge for extraversion olive oil. And then if I was
Speaker 2: making from scratch like you, I would one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I always have, if not a little bit less the
Speaker 2: sugar amount as like you, I feel like the sugar
Speaker 2: amount is way too high and it doesn't really influence
Speaker 2: the texture or the taste to me personally at all.
Speaker 2: So I think there's definitely a few healthier things you
Speaker 2: can do yourself, but this definitely wouldn't be one that
Speaker 2: I'm recommending. I still think for the nutritionals, even though
Speaker 2: it's better than some of the other boxes, it's still
Speaker 2: just not quite there for me. True.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's have a look at the next one. Naturally
Speaker 1: good gluten free chocolate mudcake. Oh I love mudcake. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna have chocolate cake, you gotta have mud, don't you.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the time of the Cheesecake Shop.
Speaker 1: You know they had those mudcakes, like caramel mudcakes. They
Speaker 1: do do a good mudcake, all right, four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty grams six dollars, call them blies. I think this
Speaker 1: is in the health food section. I've seen this brand there.
Speaker 1: They're serving size is ninety grams, so pretty close to
Speaker 1: one hundred. But we will go back to the one
Speaker 1: hundred grams very similar. At eighteen is that sixteen commas
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty sixteen sixty kilodels, so again about four hundred
Speaker 1: calories three point nine grams of protein. So I'm just saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is cake prepared again, eighteen point one grams are fat,
Speaker 1: only two point one grams saturated. That's nice. I have
Speaker 1: to look at that fifty five point six grams of carbs,
Speaker 1: almost four slices of bread, and thirty six grams point
Speaker 1: two of sugars, which is what eighteen spoons slice, and
Speaker 1: two hundred and twelve milligrams of sodium, so a lot
Speaker 1: less the third of what's in the others. So what's
Speaker 1: in this cheeky mix? Sugar is the first ingredient, Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, followed by tapioca flour, cocoa powder at nine
Speaker 1: point seven, potato starch, trice far modified tapiocre starch, raising
Speaker 1: agents i'd i salt, zample and gum, natural chocolate, favor, cilium,
Speaker 1: husk okay leanne's gonna put her my allergies, thinking cap on,
Speaker 1: why is it said? Oh, so they're doing only water
Speaker 1: to mix oil and eggs, so no butter or marge.
Speaker 2: I think they're assuming it's vegetable oil, which is why
Speaker 2: they saturated fat's very low, so you'd add like a
Speaker 2: vegetable locker to mix it. Yeah, so saturated fat's very low,
Speaker 2: but the total fat's relatively high.
Speaker 1: So it's a cake with oil and just sugar and
Speaker 1: a bit of tapiocre refined starch.
Speaker 2: So really why we went with this one. It is
Speaker 2: an allergy friendly cake, so it's gluten free. It's celiac,
Speaker 2: so it's safe for all of our celiacs. It's nut free,
Speaker 2: it's wheat free, it's it's free from everything basically beside sugar.
Speaker 2: And suddenly enough it's a mud cake because when you
Speaker 2: take out the wheat from something like a cake, it
Speaker 2: takes out that aeration and the light sponginess of a cake.
Speaker 2: So any you know people who have to have gluten
Speaker 2: freel or are cilia, they would understand that most gluten
Speaker 2: free cakes are dense. Therefore, a mudcake is a really
Speaker 2: good option to have if you need something that is
Speaker 2: gluten free, because the wheat actually adds the airiness and
Speaker 2: the lightness. You couldn't ever make a gluten free airy
Speaker 2: light sponge cake like you could if you were using
Speaker 2: you know, normal wheat flour, So I don't mind this.
Speaker 2: I just wish that sugar wasn't the first ingredient. And
Speaker 2: it does look to have a little bit of added
Speaker 2: fiber in there because there is a little bit of
Speaker 2: cilium husk. Granted it's a last ingredient, but they haven't
Speaker 2: reported it on the label, so it can't be too high.
Speaker 2: I just really like it because you know, Australia is
Speaker 2: the allergy capital of the world. My little girl's got
Speaker 2: six allergies herself. She's got sesmi peanut and four tree nuts.
Speaker 2: So I'm very conscious of my nutrition labels and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So I think to have a really nice,
Speaker 2: safe product out there for those that need it is
Speaker 2: a good one. I don't mind the ingredients in there.
Speaker 2: I just think it is overly high in sugar. But
Speaker 2: it is a cake, let's be honest. It's not like
Speaker 2: we're you know, we're not chomping down on celery here.
Speaker 2: So as long as you're aware of that and this
Speaker 2: is an occasional thing and you keep your portion size small,
Speaker 2: I really don't see a problem with it. I think
Speaker 2: it's a great option for a lot of our allergy
Speaker 2: families that need it, of course is better to make
Speaker 2: it yourself. But again, those ingredients singly are very expensive. Tapioca, flower,
Speaker 2: potato starch, riceler, modified tabiyoga starch. You have to buy
Speaker 2: big bags of them. You can't just buy like a
Speaker 2: couple of tablespoons of that to make yourself at home.
Speaker 2: So where you need something like an allergy friendly cake,
Speaker 2: I would suggest getting it in a box mix if
Speaker 2: you're not a regular baker, because to buy all of
Speaker 2: those ingredients separately would actually be pretty expensive. That's sort
Speaker 2: of my take on it. What do you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think it's a good you know, one
Speaker 1: for allergy people because the thing with gluten free cakes
Speaker 1: that you often find in cafes and you know, the
Speaker 1: coffee shop, it's often almond meal and that tastes amazing,
Speaker 1: but it's not suiting for those who need nut free.
Speaker 1: So I guess this is that middle ground for that
Speaker 1: group of people who really struggle with options, and it's
Speaker 1: like anything, you know what I mean, Occasionally it's no
Speaker 1: big deal, you know, particularly for sal like it's so
Speaker 1: difficult all the time. So it sits in that very
Speaker 1: special category and it's just good for people to be
Speaker 1: aware that brand is out there. It's in Coles and
Speaker 1: Woolies actually, so that's good to know. And I think
Speaker 1: they've got quite a few different ones, so I'll pay
Speaker 1: a bit more attention actually too. And if we can
Speaker 1: pull that sugar down a bit, we'd be happy. That
Speaker 1: leads into our third product, which is really interesting because
Speaker 1: I actually have not made this and I wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: giving it a go. So this is the La Canto
Speaker 1: chocolate cake mix with the Monk Fruit sweet.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Now I like these sugar replacements. There's Whole Earth and
Speaker 1: La Canto, and I use both at times because usually
Speaker 1: if I'm baking, i'll do half regular sugar for a
Speaker 1: bit of sort of texture, and i'll do half a
Speaker 1: replacement and they bake really well. So I'll be interested
Speaker 1: to know the actual cake mix itself. So this is
Speaker 1: five point fifty for three hundred grams. The surfing size
Speaker 1: listed is sixty three, which is miniskill, so one hundred
Speaker 1: grams will confer is eight nine twenty five kilodes so
Speaker 1: just over what two twenty calories two thirty calories per serve,
Speaker 1: so almost half the comparable cakes. Eight point one grams
Speaker 1: of protein so quite high. Seven point seven grams are
Speaker 1: fat and only three point nine saturated. It's pretty low,
Speaker 1: almost a low saturated fat products. Almost twenty seven point
Speaker 1: one grams are carbohydrogen, only one point nine grams of sugar,
Speaker 1: so that's fundamentally different formulation. Three point five grams are fiber,
Speaker 1: not insignificant, and a decent two seventy one milligram sodiums
Speaker 1: are not too bad. First ingredient is strain wheat flour,
Speaker 1: which is nice to see it's not sugar, followed by
Speaker 1: lecanto monk fruit, then golden sweetener a se erythrotole. From that.
Speaker 1: Coco powder at seven percent are not low, it's quite
Speaker 1: a good amount. Obviously. The higher the coca well, not obviously,
Speaker 1: but the higher the cocoa powder that you'd say is
Speaker 1: generally reflective of the quality I guess of the food
Speaker 1: cornstarch inulin, which is the fiber where that's coming from,
Speaker 1: and it's got chickory roots, so you might mention that
Speaker 1: in terms of people who are sensitive to that. Along
Speaker 1: with baking powder does contain gluten made from at least
Speaker 1: fifty six percent of os the ingredients. There is no
Speaker 1: icing included, which is interestingly, and you'll just need some milk,
Speaker 1: three eggs and forty grams of butter. So again those amounts,
Speaker 1: it's sort of got an extra egg in there and
Speaker 1: less butter than you'd normally make with a cake that
Speaker 1: you might put one hundred grams of butter in. So
Speaker 1: I think that's a bit cheeky because it doesn't have icing.
Speaker 1: So is it really a chocolate cake without icing? It's like,
Speaker 1: what is it there? And it's a muffin? Is it
Speaker 1: a cake? Icing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I think it's cheeky because you can't really
Speaker 2: compare like to like, like, we can't really say that
Speaker 2: one hundred grams is equivalent to one hundred grams when
Speaker 2: the other one does have, you know, it significantly more sugar.
Speaker 2: But it's also you know, icing is basically mostly sugar.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, as icing sugar, it's mostly sugar. So
Speaker 2: I would like to see a comparison with this one
Speaker 2: did have icing sugar on it or a nice icing
Speaker 2: on it, and really see But I do definitely think
Speaker 2: it's probably the standout for us today. It's significantly less sugar.
Speaker 2: It's great ingredients, Like the ingredients are pretty clean, wheat, flour,
Speaker 2: mong fruits, sweetener, cocoa powder, corn such an inuland you
Speaker 2: can't really go wrong there, can you. And I do
Speaker 2: just kind of like that. It's a little bit higher
Speaker 2: in protein because of the wheat flour and the three eggs,
Speaker 2: and it's a lot less spotial, like forty grams are
Speaker 2: butter for a cake mix is actually quite a lower
Speaker 2: amount as well, so there are definitely some positives in there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not confident with that amount. Three eggs will give
Speaker 2: you a good mix through, but forty grams is small.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get a cake good under sort of eighty,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean as a baker myself. Like,
Speaker 2: you have to try this one out, Susie and report back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to try it out. It's quite a
Speaker 1: small amount, like even fifty back forty that's a bit
Speaker 1: cheeky to bring the numbers down because I'm thinking dense wise,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't look as light and airy and fluffy
Speaker 2: on the front of package photo, does it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm a bit little bit, sus But certainly
Speaker 1: if it does taste good, and we'll do the taste
Speaker 1: taste in the holidays, it's a it's a pretty good choice.
Speaker 1: And as I said, I'm a big fan of those
Speaker 1: sugar replacements, even though they're reasonably expensive. But that cake
Speaker 1: mix is actually not too bad. It's comparable to the others,
Speaker 1: which is good to see. It's like ten dollars compared
Speaker 1: to five for a regular one, so that's quite good too.
Speaker 2: We're done for the year.
Speaker 1: Done, We're done. This is our last episode for the year.
Speaker 1: It is. It brings us to the end of the
Speaker 1: Nutrition Couch Product Review for another year. If you haven't
Speaker 1: done so already, please go to our website and have
Speaker 1: a look at our latest publication which is the Nutrition
Speaker 1: Couch Product Guide, where you can see firsthand all of
Speaker 1: the products Lean and I use and recommend for our
Speaker 1: own families and for our clients, as well as the
Speaker 1: reasons we like them. And we are going to see
Speaker 1: you after a fantastic year. Thank you for listening to us,
Speaker 1: and we will be right back so you can kick
Speaker 1: start twenty twenty three on the right foot nutrition ly,
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening.