tomatoes on the vine

The NEW original FLORA - different

I am just back from shopping, and got a pack of FLORA – ‘NEW’ – more senior packaging – gone is the colorful ‘omega 3 and 6′ oil droplet – replaced by a proud ’80% less saturated fats’ label – the sunshine orange-yellow is partly replaced with some golden hue …

The real changes however are in the small print – and in the spread.

The ‘NEW’ original FLORA Vegetable Fat Spread now contains only 45g fats per 100g of spread – instead of 59g before.

With the remaining content being more or less water, this is a reduction of nearly a quarter of the costly ingredients, the saturated and unsaturated plant oils and fats.

Let’s compare (per 100g of FLORA Vegetable Fat Spread):

	The ‘NEW’ FLORA	The ‘original’ FLORA
			relative change	absolute change
total fats	45g	59g	-23.7%	-14.0g
of which saturates	10.0g	12.0g	-17%	-2.0g
mono-unsaturates	11.0g	17.0g	-35%	-6.0g
poly-unsaturates	23.0g	29.5g	-22%	-6.5g
omega-3	4.5g	3.5g	+28%	+1.0g
omega-6	19.0g	26.0g	-26%	-7.0g
less saturated than butter	80%	78%	2.5% change
ratio saturated to unsaturated fats	.294	.258	+14%
saturated fats / total fats	22.2%	20.3%	+9.3%
un-saturated fats / total fats	75.5%	78.8%	-4.2%

So, there is now less total fat in 100g of the ‘NEW’ FLORA Vegetable Fat Spread, but if there would be the same total amount of what fat in the spread, there is now actually (relative) more saturated fats than in the product before.
With other words, the relative amount of saturated fats as a percentage of total fats has gone up by more than 9% in the NEW FLORA.
The graph makes it easier to see that there are now more saturates within the fats and oils of the spread, although there are less within the final product:

Of course, the advertising text on the package does not state anything false – the ‘NEW’ FLORA has 80% less saturated fat than butter (this was 78% before – not a big change considered that the total fat is reduced by over 23%).

Who is more happy now?
- the customer who pays the same for less?
- or Unilever, the maker of FLORA, who is packing less of unsaturated fats and oils into the product?

I am off to buy butter …