Kettle Korn responds
Earlier this month Jill Nicholls, a New Zealand Registered Dietitian took a closer look at NZ Kettle Korns’s lightly salted, slightly sweet popcorn. In this instance New Zealand Kettle Korn directors Michael Howe and Trent Brock were granted a right of reply.
For New Zealand Kettle Korn, the goal has always been incredibly clear – to create a range of insanely delicious, gourmet snack options with simple, natural ingredients.
And that’s exactly what the Kiwi company has done, which is why it was surprising to see a recent story suggesting one of its products is ‘‘contributing to the obesity epidemic’’ and using ‘‘clever marketing to make claims that sound good but are often irrelevant’’.
New Zealand Kettle Korn directors Michael Howe and Trent Brock explain why they believe the claims are unfair and potentially misleading.
We’re really pleased to have the chance to share our side of the story and think the first important point is that we 100 per cent stand behind all of the information on our packaging as being transparent and true.
Everything we produce is 100 per cent NZ made with 100 per cent NZ sourced ingredients that are also lab certified gluten, soy, dairy and peanut free and vegan/vegetarian friendly.
There’s nothing tricky about that, it’s the truth and we’re proud of it.
Are we a high sugar snack? The short answer is ‘‘No’’. Does our original Lightly Salted, Slightly Sweet flavour contain sugar? Absolutely but when consumed responsibly we don’t think it’s excessive.
We suggest 25 grams as a serving size. Popcorn doesn’t weigh very much so it’s still a decent portion for a snack. At this quantity there’s about 1.5 teaspoons of sugar.
Jill Nicholls, the dietitian who wrote the original article, suggests it would be easy for people to overeat with popcorn. To help with this we offer convenient 17 gram snack bags, which are perfect for school lunches or for people wanting help to moderate portion sizes.
These have 4.2g of sugar or about one teaspoon, considerably less than many snacks that are thought to be healthier.
A popular brand of muesli bar we looked at has almost three times the amount of sugar in one bar - 11.8g or around three teaspoons. We’re not here to pull apart any other brands or snacks on the market, it’s just a comparison to give you an idea.
It wasn’t mentioned in the original story but for those wanting to avoid or reduce sugar we also have two savoury options which have no added sugar.
Our sea salt flavour has only three ingredients; popcorn, corn oil and sea salt and is available in 17 gram snack bags as well as our full size bag. The other is our brand new Mitey Cheese flavour, which was created by awardwinning chef Michael Meredith.
Another point raised is there must not be much fibre in our product because it’s not listed on the bag’s nutritional panel.
There’s nothing to hide here, in the 150g bag reviewed there is 20 grams of fibre. It’s recommended you get on average between 25 – 38grams a day depending on age and gender so as part of a balanced diet NZ Kettle Korn can definitely contribute to your fibre intake.
At the end of the day we love the products we make and we pride ourselves on being honest about what’s in them. We’re a small Kiwi company employing 15 hardworking people and when we’re not making the best Kettle Korn we can, we’re really passionate about giving back to kids in this country.
That’s why we’re an official partner of Eat My Lunch. Every month we donate thousands of bags of product which are used in their school lunch programme to feed Kiwi kids in low decile schools who would otherwise go without.
We’ve also donated $40,000 to the programme and every time someone buys a specially marked bag we give another to the programme.
You vote with your dollar every time you buy a product and if you do choose New Zealand Kettle Korn, we hope you love it as much as we do.