CHOICE Editor Pru Engel with son Archie
Steggles Chicken Nuggets have earned a CHOICE Shonky Award for marketing their product as ‘boosted with veggies’, when in fact they contain only meagre amounts of vegetables.
“Although the packaging proclaims that these nuggets are ‘boosted with veggies’, the vegetable content in these Steggles nuggets is negligible,” says CHOICE editor and parent, Pru Engel.
“Steggles Chicken Nuggets Boosted with Veggies are just another example of a processed food marketed towards parents hoping to sneak more vegetables into their children’s diets.”
CHOICE found that these nuggets contain just 11 grams of potato and three grams of cauliflower per 100g serve – less than a fifth of one standard serving of vegetables.
“As all parents know, dinnertime can definitely be a battleground when it comes to getting your kids to eat their veggies but these nuggets really aren’t the answer,” says Engel.
“To get just one serving of vegetables from them you would have to eat the entire 400 grams pack of Steggles Chicken Nuggets Boosted with Veggies, plus part of a second pack.”
“If you could actually stomach the 26 nuggets needed to get a single serve of vegetables, you would also be getting double the sodium and more than half the kilojoules that the average adult needs to consume in a day.”
Those tiny amounts of cauliflower compared to potato are also a concern.
IMAGE: The amount of cauliflower and potato in one serving of Steggles Chicken Nuggets Boosted with Veggies
“Of all the vegetables, potato is probably not one that most parents struggle to get their kids to eat. Just 11 grams of potato and three grams of cauliflower per serve isn’t what you would expect from a product that boasts about its vegetable content,” says Engel.
The 2022 CHOICE Shonkys are:
Qantas – for being the Spirit of Disappointment
VetPay – for a finance product targeting distressed pet owners
Steggles Chicken Nuggets Boosted with Veggies – for hiding veggies so well that we could barely find them
Bloomex – for flowers that don’t deliver
Zega Digital cookware – for an expensive “self-cooking” smart pot that doesn’t properly cook
