Speaker 1: Trail mix is something that we used to only take hiking,
Speaker 1: but now we see popping up in lunchboxes on road
Speaker 1: troops and even coming with us to the movies. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm leannlud and I'm cz Burrow, and it's two of
Speaker 1: Australia's leading dieticians. We bring the Nutrition Couch product review.
Speaker 1: We'll weekly chat on new products and old favorites that
Speaker 1: you can find right here in Aussie's supermarkets. And in
Speaker 1: today's episodes easy we chat through three different types of
Speaker 1: trail mixes available in our supermarkets. And while we do
Speaker 1: and don't recommend each one, so I thought we'd start
Speaker 1: with a nice home rand one. So the wool Wears
Speaker 1: trail Mix. It's the Hikers trail Mix four hundred grams.
Speaker 1: It's quite a big bag. It's seven dollars for the bag,
Speaker 1: which brings it down to about seventeen fifty per kilo.
Speaker 1: That'll make sense when we reference the other two that
Speaker 1: we've chosen as well. So when we look at the
Speaker 1: ingredients on the Willwors trail Mix, it is roasted and
Speaker 1: salted nuts with peanuts being nineteen percent of that mix,
Speaker 1: cashews almonds with a little bit of salt and peanut
Speaker 1: oil in the nut mix, followed by sultanas which the
Speaker 1: sultanas have sultanas and some flour oil. Followed by apricots,
Speaker 1: which are more like those they're not true dried apricots.
Speaker 1: I think they're more like those apricot pieces because they've
Speaker 1: got apricot rice flour, some preservatives, and some sugar in there.
Speaker 1: Banana chips, which are banana coconut oil, sugar, and some
Speaker 1: natural banana flavors. So I've actually added banana flavor into
Speaker 1: the banana chips, which is interesting, followed by pepitas, cranberries,
Speaker 1: milk chocolate, which is made up of sugar, hydrogenized palm,
Speaker 1: pernal oil, milk solids and a mulsifiers, cocoa powder and
Speaker 1: natural vanilla flavor. That's all within that milk chocolate mix.
Speaker 1: So it's quite a long ingredient list for a fruit
Speaker 1: and nut mixed sushi, which is quite interesting. And then
Speaker 1: of course the allergens in there are peanuts, trenuts, soy, milk,
Speaker 1: and sulfites as well, So not great from an allergy
Speaker 1: perspective for a lot of people. Maybe gonna give it
Speaker 1: about a four or five out of ten. I don't
Speaker 1: love it just because I look at the ingredient list
Speaker 1: and I just think there's a lot of additives in
Speaker 1: there for something that should be basically just fruit, nuts
Speaker 1: and seeds.
Speaker 2: Really well, it turns out a serve. A third of
Speaker 2: it ends up being sugar. So I think that because
Speaker 2: of the nature what it looks like, trail mix has
Speaker 2: traditionally always been thought of a very healthy snack, as
Speaker 2: has dried fruits. Now, the things that I'm looking for
Speaker 2: and the thing that turned me off this straight away,
Speaker 2: and I'm with you in terms of the rating. First
Speaker 2: of all, the first ingredient at nineteen percent is peanuts. Now,
Speaker 2: peanuts are nutritious, but they don't have the density of
Speaker 2: nutrition that nuts like almonds, walnuts, cashews do. So the
Speaker 2: fact that that's the bulk of it straightaway tells me
Speaker 2: that it's sort of using it as a filler. And
Speaker 2: then there's a fair whack of sultanas in there, which
Speaker 2: are concentrated fruits sugar as is their apricot, and yeah,
Speaker 2: there's about six or seven different types of sugars going
Speaker 2: through that product on top of it, which basically gives
Speaker 2: you per thirty grands and Let's be honestly, I'm like,
Speaker 2: thirty grams of trail mix is tiny. What would it
Speaker 2: be like two match box worth, Like we're talking a
Speaker 2: tiny handful.
Speaker 1: Not even a handble hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tiny because of the density of the nuts
Speaker 2: and then the dried fruit. So you're getting over one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty almost one hundred and fifty calories that
Speaker 2: tiny amount. You're only getting three grams of protein, which
Speaker 2: is really low for a product that should be higher
Speaker 2: in protein, particularly if it's got a nut or legume base.
Speaker 2: And the massive amount of sugars you know, as I said,
Speaker 2: a third of it ten grams of sugars. Now some
Speaker 2: is naturally occurring, but some is certainly added. And again
Speaker 2: two point two grams of fiber per serve is low
Speaker 2: for a whole food product. So the issue I generally
Speaker 2: have with trail mix and why don't generally prescribe it
Speaker 2: for my clients, But was excited to see some new
Speaker 2: sort of pro portion control varieties in supermarkets recently, was
Speaker 2: that it's just so easy to overeat and everyone thinks
Speaker 2: it's healthy. They just put it into a container in
Speaker 2: the kitchen and keep grabbing it, and it's literally hundreds
Speaker 2: of extra calories that slip in with no full factor
Speaker 2: because you can just munch through that all day. It's
Speaker 2: like Eminem's, you know, you just keep going pringles. Once
Speaker 2: you pop, you can't stop. So yeah, I would certainly
Speaker 2: not be recommending this one, especially with the.
Speaker 1: Chocolate in it, like it makes it very emorish, And
Speaker 1: just going back to the nutrition panel, I realized I
Speaker 1: forgot to do that, so thank you for running us
Speaker 1: through that. The fat title was seven point four grams
Speaker 1: or two point four being saturated, so it's not all
Speaker 1: the healthy, good fats from the nuts and seeds that
Speaker 1: we would like to see as well. There's a little
Speaker 1: bit of saturated fat in there as well. And the
Speaker 1: car portioned total was thirteen grams with ten of that
Speaker 1: being sugar, so quite a high sugar product, which is
Speaker 1: why it's so easy to overreach. So like, you're not
Speaker 1: the biggest fan of trail mix, and.
Speaker 2: It's expensively and seventeen bucks a kilo that is really expensive.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of it, particularly
Speaker 1: this mix itself. But you know, DRAMs absolutely has a
Speaker 1: time and place if you're going out and you're doing
Speaker 1: a six eight ten hour high cor you're on your
Speaker 1: bike and you're a bit of a trithlete, Like if
Speaker 1: you're an athlete with high energy needs, it's great. If
Speaker 1: you're a growing child or toddler, it's great, but for
Speaker 1: most adults. I actually can't remember the last time I
Speaker 1: wrote troumix into a meal plan, Susie, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're the same as me.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't remember the last time I knew someone
Speaker 2: who went for an eight or ten hour high either
Speaker 2: maybe one or two I have occasionally there's big bull
Speaker 2: day ones, but no, I do have some very active
Speaker 2: clients that absolutely were I would recommend something like this,
Speaker 2: but even I think I'd rather them go for it
Speaker 2: is a handful of normal nuts, a peanut, but a
Speaker 2: sandwich and a piece of fruit and amuseally, but that's
Speaker 2: generally what I'll get them to take with them because
Speaker 2: as you said, it's actually quite expensive, like it's not
Speaker 2: something that's very affordable at the moment. So anyway, we'll
Speaker 2: bang on about that a little bit later. But next
Speaker 2: one we've got, I just wanted to go the coal's
Speaker 2: brand in comparison, so that one was the wool worst
Speaker 2: Hyper's trail mix four hundred grams. The Coals one is
Speaker 2: the coal's fruit and nut trail mix at four hundred
Speaker 2: grams as well, So this one's four dollars for the bag,
Speaker 2: so the same amount compared to the woolworst one seven
Speaker 2: dollars a bag, so quite a difference per price points.
Speaker 2: It works out to be ten dollars per kilo. So
Speaker 2: I thought that was quite interesting considering they're both, you know,
Speaker 2: technically the home brand variety of that.
Speaker 1: We look at the ingredients. The top ingredient for the
Speaker 1: coals one is dried fruit forty six percent, so quite
Speaker 1: a lot of dried fruit. Nearly half that is dried fruit.
Speaker 1: And in the dried fruit, we've got raisins, cranberries, sugar oil,
Speaker 1: cottonseed oil, and granola oil, and quite a lot of
Speaker 1: different oals, plus seeds at thirty percent. We've got a
Speaker 1: mix of some flour and for pito seed, and we've
Speaker 1: got nuts at twenty four percent, almonds and cashews. I
Speaker 1: guess a cleaner ingredient list from this perspective, like it's
Speaker 1: basically just some dried fruits and nuts and some seeds,
Speaker 1: and then going through the nutrition panels, so serving size
Speaker 1: is thirty grams, so very the same size as a
Speaker 1: wool West one, very similar energy wise, just shy have
Speaker 1: six hundred kilodeeles, which is roughly about one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty five calories, four point five grams of protein, so
Speaker 1: higher protein than the wool West one, eight point six
Speaker 1: grams of fat with only less than one gram of
Speaker 1: that being saturated fat, so a much better fat profile
Speaker 1: in this one. Ten grams of carbohydrate with eight of
Speaker 1: that being sugar, two point four grams of fiber, and
Speaker 1: point seven to grams of sodium, so basically don't even
Speaker 1: more about the sodium in the product. So I think
Speaker 1: this for a traumic SUSI is a much better option.
Speaker 1: Not only is it better price wise, like it's much
Speaker 1: more budget friendly. The nutrition analysis is far better as well,
Speaker 1: a little bit less sugar, less saturated fat, a little
Speaker 1: bit more protein, a little bit more dietary fiber as well,
Speaker 1: so nutritionally it's more superior. Budget wise, it's more superior,
Speaker 1: and the ingredient list is as far less than what
Speaker 1: the ingredient list is on the warl worst one, So
Speaker 1: for me, this definitely takes the price so far. I
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: It's clearly, and you know what I mean. It is
Speaker 2: what it is. You've got a certain amount of dried fruit,
Speaker 2: which is a trail mix in terms of energy requirements
Speaker 2: for people who are doing hikes or endurance rides, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So and they're stating what it is. I like the
Speaker 2: seed proportions amazing, Like thirty percent seeds is really good
Speaker 2: quality product. And nuts. I'd love the nuts to be
Speaker 2: a little bit higher at twenty four, but they're still
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 1: And they're just almonds and cashews. There's no peanuts in
Speaker 1: their ears, so they're using good quality nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. The five is still a
Speaker 2: bit lower, you know, two point four grams per thirty grams.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see it up around three to five sugars.
Speaker 2: You know you are going to get sugars at eight
Speaker 2: grams from dried fruit. But the saturated fat's very very low,
Speaker 2: which is as strong it's saying that the fat in
Speaker 2: that product is naturally occurring coming from the nuts. It's
Speaker 2: an energy dense food, absolutely, but for those who need
Speaker 2: it can be a very smart choice and for the
Speaker 2: pricely and that's always half what the Woolies one is
Speaker 2: being advertised or Thorry being start with a much cleaner,
Speaker 2: stronger ingredient list. So this is certainly far, fast superior
Speaker 2: to the Woolies.
Speaker 1: Well, absolutely yeah, we couldn't agree more. And then our
Speaker 1: final product, we thought, this is one of the new
Speaker 1: ones in the market, Susie. It's the Harvest box of
Speaker 1: the big big box power Mix, so it's Harvest Box
Speaker 1: is a brand and the Power Mix is the type
Speaker 1: that we've chosen. Now this one I didn't realize, Susie.
Speaker 1: I just picked one online. It's just the full box,
Speaker 1: so it's two hudred and twenty grams for the box.
Speaker 1: You said that they actually come in little portion size
Speaker 1: and mounts as well, which I'll let you discuss in
Speaker 1: a moment, But the two hundred and twenty gram boxes
Speaker 1: as so on Sourd this week. It coals for three
Speaker 1: p forty five. Normally it's about seven dollars for the
Speaker 1: two twenty grams, so definitely the most expensive out of
Speaker 1: all of them, sort of double the price point of
Speaker 1: the other two for sort of half of what you're getting.
Speaker 1: But let's go through the ingredients in the power mix.
Speaker 1: So it's almonds as a top ingredient, which we love
Speaker 1: to see a good quality nut as a first ingredient,
Speaker 1: followed by flame raisins, which have a little bit of
Speaker 1: vegetable oil in them, followed by Cranberry's milk chocolate which
Speaker 1: contains cane sugar, four cream, milk powder, cocoa butter and
Speaker 1: cocoa mass. So even just the quality of that milk
Speaker 1: chocolate is far better than the milk chocolate that was
Speaker 1: in the Woolworst blend with a little bit of a mulcivies.
Speaker 1: Followed by some macadamias, sunflower seeds, pistachios, and pepeitas. So
Speaker 1: pretty you know, pretty clean for an ingredient. Let's yes,
Speaker 1: we have the added milk chocolate in there. Some people
Speaker 1: would say that that makes the product. I would agree.
Speaker 1: It's always nice when you see a little bit chocolate
Speaker 1: and some choil mix, but you know, pretty good. You know,
Speaker 1: they've got some good quality nuts, and there's some almonds
Speaker 1: and macadamias, good quality seeds. We've got some flowers, pepeteras.
Speaker 1: We've also got some pistachios which are quite expensive as well,
Speaker 1: which might just explain the price point as well. So
Speaker 1: I like that mix.
Speaker 2: What I noticed actually and why we discussed or decided
Speaker 2: having this product in here today was that I had
Speaker 2: noticed in the I actually went to Woolies and found
Speaker 2: actually was a cold. Now Coals have got several new
Speaker 2: boxes of portion control trail mixes, and they're actually across
Speaker 2: the board quite strong, so have a look. They're in
Speaker 2: the baking section actually in a funny place we don't
Speaker 2: think of them, but really smart mix of product. And
Speaker 2: I also like this Harvest Box brand. So you can
Speaker 2: buy them in forty five gram bags liam which is
Speaker 2: a really decent serving size, so it comes in an
Speaker 2: over two hundred calories per serve, but forty five is
Speaker 2: quite significant, so that's a really decent kind of handful.
Speaker 2: You certainly feel quite satisfied after that, and that will
Speaker 2: give you about five grams of protein. The fat is
Speaker 2: not low, almost fifteen grams per serve, so a third
Speaker 2: of it is fat, but the saturated is coming in
Speaker 2: very low at two point two, so it's not too bad.
Speaker 2: And then you're getting, of course some of the fat
Speaker 2: from the nut base, which i'll talk about in a second.
Speaker 2: Carbo hydrate's seventeen point three, but sugar's fourteen point four,
Speaker 2: so that's where the chocolate's coming through a little bit.
Speaker 2: It does have a decent amount of sugar perserve, and
Speaker 2: it's getting to the three grams of dietary fiber, which
Speaker 2: Leanne and I like. It's almond's first, followed by the
Speaker 2: raisins as you said, and then I think some of
Speaker 2: the fat is coming from those macadamia, sunflowercis, pistachios, per peter,
Speaker 2: so all really good profile of fats too. So I
Speaker 2: think this would sit for mean because it's not overly
Speaker 2: in it expensive is that? How much is it coming
Speaker 2: in at these about fifteen sixteen dollars a kilo, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so not inexpensive. But what I think the message is
Speaker 2: I would give this one. Say, I'd give the coals one,
Speaker 2: say eight maybe, and then I give this one a seven.
Speaker 2: But I think they're worth having a look at, and
Speaker 2: I think that they're really smart portion controlled snacks for
Speaker 2: the afternoon. They're fantastic when you add them to some
Speaker 2: protein yogurt as a hit of both portion control nuts
Speaker 2: and taste and crunch whole food. But really, I think
Speaker 2: the message from Leanna and I today is you want
Speaker 2: ones that have got at least three if not closer
Speaker 2: to five grams of protein per serve and at least
Speaker 2: three grams of dietary fiber per serve for us to
Speaker 2: really like it as a balanced, filling snack choice. And
Speaker 2: of course you've got to be really mindful of the portions,
Speaker 2: which is why I personally like the portion control individual packs,
Speaker 2: So check them out of coals in the baking section.
Speaker 1: Definitely, I agree with you. I would sort of give
Speaker 1: it around a six or seven. I think the ingredients
Speaker 1: are quite good that that profile, and some of those
Speaker 1: ingredients have chosen, like it's nice to see some maceadaemians
Speaker 1: in there, some pistachios and compitas. They're not typically thinks
Speaker 1: you see in a nut blend. They typically put a
Speaker 1: ton of peanuts because they're really cheap, and almonds typically
Speaker 1: as well, which yes, this one has almonds, but it's
Speaker 1: got a nice sort of more diversity of some nuts
Speaker 1: and seeds in there too. And let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: be real here, it does have added chocolate as well,
Speaker 1: so just being really conscious of that that that's sort
Speaker 1: of one of those discretionary foods that we're adding into
Speaker 1: our diet. So if you're going to have, you know,
Speaker 1: some chocolate and neutral mix regularly. Probably not a great
Speaker 1: idea to be having biscuits, cakes, cookies, ice cream on
Speaker 1: top of that as well. So just be conscious that
Speaker 1: some of these little things do sneak in sometimes masquerading
Speaker 1: as healthy products as well. And particularly be just conscious
Speaker 1: if you are giving these to kids regularly in their lunchboxes,
Speaker 1: you are regularly adding in a lot of added sugar
Speaker 1: into their diet as well. So not that that's a
Speaker 1: bad thing, but I think that the portion and the
Speaker 1: amount or the frequency of how often you do these
Speaker 1: things just needs to be sort of taken into consideration
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 1: True, all right, well, al Susy. That brings us to
Speaker 1: the end of another podcast product review where well over
Speaker 1: one hundred now what are we at one fifty two?
Speaker 1: We're kicking up to that two hundred markets crazy how
Speaker 1: many podcasts we've done. We're thoroughly enjoying it. So if
Speaker 1: you haven't subscribed to the Potty, if you knew listening,
Speaker 1: make sure you do give us a subscribe, make sure
Speaker 1: you leave us a positive review in the Purple Apple
Speaker 1: podcast app. And we also have our website at the
Speaker 1: nutritioncouch dot com. We've got a few products available on there,
Speaker 1: our Wonderful Supermarket Guard, our recording for our live events,
Speaker 1: and coming very soon as our brand new takeaway Guide,
Speaker 1: which we're very excited about. My hope we will launch
Speaker 1: to the next couple of weeks and we will catch
Speaker 1: you guys for the Sunday episode drop see you next
Speaker 1: week