Product Review- Garden Gourmet plant based fillet pieces

 I am back with another product review, still continuing with consuming  meat/chicken alternatives at the moment, sticking with the new year resolutions as well as new changes. I came across this new product in my local supermarket, by the company Garden Gourmet, which I have not heard of before, and thought I would give this a try. 

I looked at the nutritional information at the back of the packet, and noticed that the main ingredient contained soya protein. Following that listed vegetable oils, water, spirit vinegar and sugar. I guessed that this would be low in saturated fat, and salt, as there was a low amount of this from the ingredients list. This was confirmed when I glanced at the label. Under  the heading of saturated fat was 0.8 grams per 100 grams, however the whole product contained 160 grams of the item, therefore we would have to work out the total amount of the whole product. The amount for the whole item contained 160 grams, (0.8x160)  so the amount of saturated fat for the whole of the product was 128 grams of saturated fat, which is still a small amount. The fibre amount was 4.8 grams per 100 grams, however to work out the fibre content for the whole of the product would be 768 grams (4.8x160)

768 grams is high in fibre, which is great, as a lifestyle consuming foods high in fibre, is beneficial for bowel movement, as well as reducing chances of dietary lifestyle diseases, like coronary heart disease. For the salt content, the label advised that this contained 0.78 grams. To work out the amount for the whole product the amount would be 124.8 grams of salt. I would say that this a medium amount of salt. Ideally we would like to keep the amount of salt a low as possible, but this can be really challenging, as we have no control into the amount of salt that is in food products, as well as adding salt to our own food, to increase the taste, especially if this is bland! One of the ways to control this is to use herbs and spices whilst cooking, and to choose items labelled as low salt on food products. 

Finally I had a quick look at the sugar content, and this was labelled as containing 1.2 grams , which for the whole product the amount would be 192 grams of sugar. This is a low amount of sugar personally. 

This was summarised looking at the traffic light labelling system on the front. It was labelled as green for sugar and saturated fat. It was labelled as medium for fat and salt. This is correct as going back to the label, for the amount of fat, it was shown as containing 8.4 grams per 100 grams, ideally for this to be labelled as the colour green, we would like this to be less than 5 grams per 100 grams. 

I made a chicken pasta meal from this, the chicken was sweet, however it provided great flavour towards the pasta meal. It also tastes similar to chicken, and influences me to think it is chicken when it is really not chicken at all, it is a plant based chicken alternative. This is great if you are looking at reducing your meat consumption. 

I am unable to remember the price of the product, as this was on offer, however the real price was around £4 which is expensive, especially as there is a small amount of the plant based item in this. I would still recommend as it is vegetarian, and it is a healthy item, based on my recommendation. 

Finally if you are looking for a vegan product, it was stated that this may contain egg, based on this information I would seek another alternative.