Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Cissy Burrow and I'm lean Orde, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Nutrition Couch, a biweekly podcast covering everything that
Speaker 1: is new in the world of diets and nutrition. In
Speaker 1: today's product review episodely and we are talking dips, because
Speaker 1: let's be honest, who does not like dip? And indeed,
Speaker 1: there are more and more of.
Speaker 2: Them in the supermarket every time I go. But the
Speaker 2: truth is.
Speaker 1: Not all dips are created equally. And today we are
Speaker 1: going to take a look at a couple of good
Speaker 1: examples of how there are some dips out there that
Speaker 1: are a whole lot healthier than others. So first of all,
Speaker 1: we will say Leanne that I am a massive fan
Speaker 1: of dips because I love a platter and I think
Speaker 1: a platter is not complete, really, is it without some beautiful,
Speaker 1: brightly colored dips to brighten it up? And I think
Speaker 1: because they look so healthy and colorful, and they're green
Speaker 1: and red and purple, they just look like they scream
Speaker 1: with health. But that's not always the case, now, is it?
Speaker 3: Definitely not? So we found a goody and a not
Speaker 3: so goodie for our listeners at home today, and I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people will be surprised at the
Speaker 3: not so great aversion SUSI. Because I do, I get
Speaker 3: a lot of class who say to me, oh, this
Speaker 3: is delicious. Can I have this, you know, with you know,
Speaker 3: some vegie sticks or some crackers or something like that.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, sure you can have that. But you
Speaker 3: know why is that? They're like, oh, because it's really healthy.
Speaker 3: So I think it'd be really interesting to take a
Speaker 3: look at some of the ingredient lists on ourtros and
Speaker 3: dips today.
Speaker 1: Indeed, so the first dip that I've chosen will be
Speaker 1: familiar to a number of our listeners. It's the pill
Speaker 1: pel homis. Now.
Speaker 2: The other thing is, everyone seems to spell homus.
Speaker 1: Differently, but this homos has spelled hu doublenous and it
Speaker 1: is available in most rate major supermarkets. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: I came across this dip because of a client who
Speaker 1: had said to me how good it was. And one
Speaker 1: of the key reasons that dieticians across the board love
Speaker 1: this is it's one of the very few dips that
Speaker 1: is made using extra virgin olive oil, because generally speaking,
Speaker 1: when you look at dips, the first ingredient is often
Speaker 1: vegetable oil or cream like a sort of cream cheese,
Speaker 1: and there's often very very few nutritious ingredients or low
Speaker 1: calorie ingredients like vegetables. But in the case of the
Speaker 1: pel pail hommice, which is a beautiful creamy dip, we
Speaker 1: must say the first ingredients is the chickpeas at fifty
Speaker 1: three percent, followed by taeni which is a base of
Speaker 1: sesame and salt water. Then extra virgin olive oil, acidity
Speaker 1: regulator which is citric acid, so that's to stop it
Speaker 1: turning salt, and preservative potassium sorbait, which again is going
Speaker 1: to give it a little bit of an extra shelf life.
Speaker 1: It does contain sesame, but is gluten free and dairy free,
Speaker 1: so appeals to people who are seeking out those requirements
Speaker 1: in their diet. Now, when we take a close look nutritionally,
Speaker 1: it's pretty strong. So the homice is in supermarket will
Speaker 1: range from I think as low as about eight percent
Speaker 1: up to about twenty five thirty percent fats. Case of
Speaker 1: this one hundred grams, it's about nineteen point seven. Now
Speaker 1: it's not a low fat food simply because homus. It
Speaker 1: does have a reasonable amount of oil in it to
Speaker 1: give it that taste and texture. So we would never
Speaker 1: expect it to be low in fat. It's relatively low
Speaker 1: and saturated fat though at three percent, which is good,
Speaker 1: and again that's coming from the use of the extra
Speaker 1: version olive oil eight point six grams per hundred of carbohydrate,
Speaker 1: less than one gram of sugars, a massive, well not massive,
Speaker 1: but a reasonable amount of dietary fiber again from the
Speaker 1: chickpeas at four point nine grams and sodium five hundred
Speaker 1: and four milligrams per hundred, which is pretty low in
Speaker 1: general for a dip. And you know, the issue one
Speaker 1: of them with dips is serving sizes. You know, of
Speaker 1: course it's pretty hard to stick to a tablespoon or so,
Speaker 1: which is generally a serve because they are high fat foods.
Speaker 1: But the reason in general that we love this so
Speaker 1: much is that, as I said, it's one of the
Speaker 1: few commercial dips out there that is using not only
Speaker 1: a better type of oil, but an extra virgin olive oil,
Speaker 1: which is going is giving it a superior fatfile. So
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorites. It's not inexpensive, it's about
Speaker 1: six dollars for the larger three hundred and fifty gram serve.
Speaker 1: It does even when it goes on sale, it's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty expensive compared to the much more process, but in
Speaker 1: this case, Lee and you really are paying for a
Speaker 1: better quality product, and I in this range itself, there's
Speaker 1: actually a couple of lower calorie vegetable options, their beetroot
Speaker 1: almond and their spicy capsicum. I think it is a
Speaker 1: really quite low in calorie, so I regularly recommend those two.
Speaker 1: But if you're one of the many nutrition couch listeners
Speaker 1: who like us, love nothing more than homae, this is
Speaker 1: a pretty tasty one, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, you really can't go past the better quality
Speaker 3: ingredients here. And I will make it about Homo susie
Speaker 3: because I actually ate it. I'd say probably till I
Speaker 3: was about twenty eight weeks pregnant and then realized that
Speaker 3: the newest food safety guidelines in Australia but pregnancy do
Speaker 3: not actually recommend commercial homice anymore because the tahini in
Speaker 3: it has become what are they sort of calling a
Speaker 3: food safety risk. So it's that the tahimi part of
Speaker 3: the homas that is not recommended for pregnancy. So I
Speaker 3: didn't get to enjoy it for the last couple of
Speaker 3: months of my pregnancy. But I am happily enjoying hommas
Speaker 3: at the moment now, SUSI, But yeah, I agree this one.
Speaker 3: It's a good brand, it's got great ingredients, and it
Speaker 3: actually tastes really good as well. How much is important.
Speaker 3: It's nice and it's smooth and it's creamy.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and as I would say, it's one of those
Speaker 1: foods that it is worth paying for better quality. Now,
Speaker 1: I think the thing with homos I will also say,
Speaker 1: is when I see those individual serves in supermarket where
Speaker 1: they sell it as a meal like a Lutch replacement.
Speaker 1: So it's quite a large pot, probably about one hundred
Speaker 1: grams of the dip or homice with rice crackers. Be
Speaker 1: very careful because those are about three four hundred calorie
Speaker 1: meals and quite a lot of fat per serve. So
Speaker 1: I think in the case of homice, I'm using it
Speaker 1: always as a side, a bit of a seasoning, so
Speaker 1: as a spread on a sound which or putting a
Speaker 1: tablespoon or two on your snack plate and then enjoying
Speaker 1: it with vegetables because it really is easy to overeat
Speaker 1: and people call it a protein. Now I'll just go
Speaker 1: back and have another look at the protein number on it.
Speaker 1: I never would call it a protein. I call it
Speaker 1: a fat. And in the case of this variety, it's
Speaker 1: a better fat, but it is still a fat. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the cerve it's up to nine point seven per
Speaker 1: hundred grams, but we would suggest twenty to forty. You're
Speaker 1: getting about four grams of protein. So it's certainly not
Speaker 1: a high protein food. It's definitely got more protein than
Speaker 1: some other dips, but it is not a high protein
Speaker 1: food and it shouldn't be thought of as that it's
Speaker 1: a high fat food.
Speaker 2: It needs to be consumed in moderation.
Speaker 1: As such, because I think we're sometimes led to believe
Speaker 1: that the legume base makes it a protein and so
Speaker 1: we can consume it in large amounts. But one of
Speaker 1: the things about homess is that it's made with oil
Speaker 1: to give it that flavor and taste and texture, so.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to overeat.
Speaker 1: And it's high fat, and in the case of this
Speaker 1: it's a better type of fat. And as we've mentioned before,
Speaker 1: you can eat too much fat, so do absolutely wash
Speaker 1: your portions because as delicious as it is, it is
Speaker 1: easy to over consume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it has protein in it, but we wouldn't
Speaker 3: necessarily say it's a wonderful source of protein.
Speaker 2: Put it that way.
Speaker 3: Potentially, if you're you know, you're following completely vegan or
Speaker 3: plant based lifestyle, it probably is a It gives you
Speaker 3: a good amount of protein, but it also gives you
Speaker 3: a decent whack of fat, as Susie mentioned. But I
Speaker 3: think the portion size is this key because if you
Speaker 3: look at the nutritional panel on this brand, even though
Speaker 3: how good it is, there's seventeen point five servings per
Speaker 3: packet Susie and I don't know anybody that would take
Speaker 3: seventeen and a half servings to eat that small tuble
Speaker 3: of hommas, like nobody ever, I haven't quite a few
Speaker 3: clients su before working with me. They would happily have
Speaker 3: a couple of rows of rice crackers and an entire
Speaker 3: thing of homas for lunch. We could easily be in
Speaker 3: excess of like seven eight hundred calories, just because I
Speaker 3: think we have this health halo perception that all homice
Speaker 3: is healthy and rice crackers are healthy when they're low calorie.
Speaker 3: But when you're eating a few rows of rice crackers
Speaker 3: and a whole tup of homas, you're not necessarily doing
Speaker 3: yourself the best thing from a fat loss perspective.
Speaker 1: We've all been there. I'm laughing because we've all been
Speaker 1: there so absolutely. And the other trick actually I've learnt
Speaker 1: on platters now is rather than put the entire container
Speaker 1: of dip out, I spoon some of it out into
Speaker 1: an individual serving dish and just put that out. Because
Speaker 1: what we know about food behaviors is that we all
Speaker 1: will eat the foods that are served to us.
Speaker 2: So if you put the.
Speaker 1: Entire container of hommice out, you will eat the whole lot,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you spoot it out, I might get two
Speaker 1: or three different serves of entertaining out of that homics.
Speaker 1: So it's more cost effective as well, because it isn't inexpensive,
Speaker 1: and it just means it regulates everyone a little bit better.
Speaker 1: So that's another trick. If you love your dip, make
Speaker 1: it go a little bit further and put it into
Speaker 1: smaller containers to dip with, and it will be much
Speaker 1: better nutritionally and from a budget perspective.
Speaker 3: Let me do one last tip, Susie, making your homics
Speaker 3: go a little bit further. I sometimes use if I've
Speaker 3: got just a little bit of homus left in the container.
Speaker 3: I make a salad dressing out of it. So I
Speaker 3: take the little bit of hommics, dilute it up with
Speaker 3: some water and squeeze some lemon juice and a little
Speaker 3: bit of pepper and make a really sort of nice
Speaker 3: salad dressing out of it as well. So you can
Speaker 3: make quite a love that little bit.
Speaker 2: Further, I do love that.
Speaker 1: I love that, and it's really smart too, because we
Speaker 1: do know that we waste a lot of food, and
Speaker 1: if you've got a little bit of dip at the bottom,
Speaker 1: that's a very smart way, particularly when it's good quality
Speaker 1: stuff like the pillpl that we're investing in. But now
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about another one, because as I said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of dips out there, and this brand
Speaker 1: that we've chosen is not specifically bad at itself. It's
Speaker 1: just an example of where you can be a little
Speaker 1: bit misled when it comes to actually what's in your dip.
Speaker 1: So this is the Black Swan avocado and on the
Speaker 1: beautiful green label. What screams out to me is that
Speaker 1: it's so fresh, it's green, it looks very very healthy.
Speaker 1: But when I take a closer look at the ingredient, lesslie.
Speaker 1: And the first thing is cream cheese, which is milk, cream, salt,
Speaker 1: and stabilizers. So high fat ingredient avocado pulp is seven
Speaker 1: percent of the overall ingredients, which means that that's the
Speaker 1: next greatest percentage product. So we're probably looking at something
Speaker 1: like ninety two percent of cream cheese and a very
Speaker 1: small amount of avocado to give it that color and
Speaker 1: to be able to claim that it's avocado really should
Speaker 1: be avocado based.
Speaker 3: Dip or cream cheese with a touch of avocado.
Speaker 1: I like that, cream cheese with a touch of avocado.
Speaker 1: Thicknut vegetable oil, potato which will be being used to
Speaker 1: thiket it. A little bit lemon juice to stop it
Speaker 1: from going brown, some spring onion and garlic, ure salt
Speaker 1: spice the city regulator's color, so they are also coloring
Speaker 1: it up water preservatives. Now, the reason I'm reading you
Speaker 1: that is not to say, oh my goodness, look how
Speaker 1: many preservatives and additudes are in this dip. Because it
Speaker 1: is a process food, you will have that. Admittedly, the
Speaker 1: ingredient list is quite long compared to the previous dip,
Speaker 1: which was pretty clean. But most importantly I'm just pointing
Speaker 1: out that the most powerful ingredient on that list is
Speaker 1: cream cheese, which is a high saturated fat product. So
Speaker 1: if we look at the nutritionals of this per hundred grams,
Speaker 1: it's almost thirty percent fat and almost over fifteen percent
Speaker 1: saturated fat. So it's got five times the amount of
Speaker 1: saturated fat is the previous hummus we've looked at, and
Speaker 1: so it's not only much higher in fat, but it's
Speaker 1: much higher in the worst type of fat. It does
Speaker 1: have added sugars, So this would be a food I
Speaker 1: would never recommend or suggest people have. If people want
Speaker 1: to ad avocado dipley and I would say, get your avocado,
Speaker 1: mash it up, add a little bit of chili and
Speaker 1: lemon tree, then.
Speaker 2: You're good to go.
Speaker 1: So it does really pay to have a quick look
Speaker 1: at the ingredient list of dips and see actually what
Speaker 1: you're actually getting. If you want a vegetable based dip,
Speaker 1: like a beetroot dip, like a capsicn dip, you want
Speaker 1: that to be the first ingredient on that label. I
Speaker 1: think one of my favorite Egyptian beetroot dips is like
Speaker 1: ninety percent or more beetroot and that fat, you know,
Speaker 1: high saturated fat food. And it's really easy to overeat because,
Speaker 1: as we've spoken about dips, you don't just have a tablespoon.
Speaker 2: You're going through the whole amount, so be careful.
Speaker 1: Most I would say, out of say the top fifty
Speaker 1: dips in supermarket, forty five of them are made of
Speaker 1: a vegetable oil or cream cheese based, and then there's
Speaker 1: a small handful of ones that have a vegetable base
Speaker 1: or it is a better quality product like the homus
Speaker 1: we've spoken about, and that's why it's, you know, a
Speaker 1: quick and easy filler for supermarkets.
Speaker 2: They're relatively cheap.
Speaker 1: They're often on sale for three dollars for the big tub,
Speaker 1: but often, as I said, you're just paying for process
Speaker 1: vegetable oil, and I wouldn't ever spend money on that.
Speaker 3: And this was still because it is predominantly cream cheese.
Speaker 3: You're just eating cream cheese. And I laugh at the
Speaker 3: per serving because if you look at the perserving, it
Speaker 3: actually doesn't look too bad from an energy and a
Speaker 3: calorie perspective because the serving size is ten gram Susie like,
Speaker 3: that's miniscule. It's like what the tea spoon and a half.
Speaker 3: Nobody's going to eat that it's crazy, and the fact
Speaker 3: that they add color in there to add more greenness
Speaker 3: to it to make it look more avocado like, but
Speaker 3: the reality is that there's only seven percent avocado in
Speaker 3: this dip. So if you guys actually like a good
Speaker 3: quality avocado dip, and sometimes you're a bit lazy like myself,
Speaker 3: you bit time poor. My favorite recommendation from an avocado
Speaker 3: dip perspective is the Abella brand Susie that's like ninety
Speaker 3: five percent avocado and it's just got a little bit
Speaker 3: of lemon and a little bit of garlic in it,
Speaker 3: So that one's probably the only one that I would
Speaker 3: actually call an avocado dip. The rest of the avocado
Speaker 3: dips on the market are basically cream cheese with a
Speaker 3: touch of avocado in them.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, and really, let's be honest, cream cheese is misleading
Speaker 1: in itself. There's not much that's cheesy in cream cheese.
Speaker 1: Cream cheese is a massive cream like yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: also keep that in mind. I often have clients ask
Speaker 1: me about cream cheese as an alternative to chetta cheese,
Speaker 1: and I'll say, really, it's not nutritionally like a cheese
Speaker 1: at all. It's acting as a fat so we do
Speaker 1: need to watch it. And it's thick and gluggy. You
Speaker 1: can't get a small portion of it, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the issues. It's really really easy to over eat
Speaker 1: large volumes of saturated fat when that is one of
Speaker 1: the key ingredients that are going in.
Speaker 2: All right, well, leanne.
Speaker 1: That brings us to the end of another Nutrition Couch
Speaker 1: product wrap up for this week. I mean, if you
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Speaker 1: ideas for product reviews, and we will see you for
Speaker 1: our next product review next Wednesday morning.
Speaker 3: Catch you guys next week.