Australia's most shonky nuggets

If ever there was a reason to read the fine print on packaged product labels, CHOICE, the consumer advocate, has provided it in this year’s Shonky Awards.

Every year CHOICE experts hand out awards to the products and services that have failed to deliver on expectations. The intention is to increase consumer awareness to look beyond the marketing and promotion to find the truth behind the product or service.

This year one of the five Shonky Award winning products is Steggles chicken breast nuggets "for hiding veggies so well we could barely find them". The claim on the packet is that they are “boosted with veggies”. This may seem appealing if you want to get your picky eater to get the goodness of vegetables while disguising them in their favourite food.

CHOICE editor Pru Engel says, “Although the packaging proclaims that these nuggets are ‘boosted with veggies’ each serving contains a tiny amount of vegetables.” In fact, there is just 11g of potato and 3g of cauliflower per 100g serve, meaning that to get just one serving of vegetables (75g or ½ cup) you would need to eat more than an entire pack.

There are other nutritional red flags in this product including the high levels of sodium (16% of daily intake per 100g) and fat (also 16% of daily intake per 100g). They are made with 25 ingredients, many identified with a number, e.g., thickeners, vegetable gum and mineral salts.

You can find out more about food additive code numbers on the Australian food standards website. The website also explains more about labelling, food additives and much more about the food we eat.

This simple recipe for home made chicken nuggets will reduce the ingredients list to three – chicken breast, breadcrumbs and egg.