"This guacamole contains 13.6% avocado," Sylène Brianceau reads on the back of an Old El Paso brand sauce label.
There is not enough avocado to get a green color.
And yet, when this engineer opens the glass jar… it is very green.
In order to understand, the research manager at Agrotec, a technical center in the food industry in Agen, tried to reproduce the recipe. Be careful, the list of ingredients is long! With water, milk, wheat flour, corn starch and potato starch, the scientist creates a gel similar to a bechamel sauce. This white preparation makes up 50% of the guacamole recipe. "It serves to texture the sauce". Then she puts the avocado on. “We need 40 g of it,” explains Sylène Brianceau. That's a little less than half an avocado. But why are there so few of them?
The first reason is economic: avocado is expensive.
The less there is, the less expensive the product will be to manufacture.
The second reason is technological.
“Old El Paso guacamole is pasteurized so that it can be stored for at least six months,” explains Sylène Brianceau.
However, this heat treatment causes the avocado to lose its green color in favor of a brown color.
So if we put less avocado, we have less of this problem.
"
"An ultra-transformed product"
Sylène Brianceau adds tomato, onion, cheese preparation, lemon juice, sugar, rapeseed oil, spices and natural flavors… Then she mixes everything with her whisk.
“Without coloring, Old El Paso guacamole looks like this.
The mixture has an orange-beige color.
Nothing to do with what you would expect from a guacamole.
Then just add drops of yellow and then green dyes, mix again and - magic!
- we get a dough very similar to Old El Paso.
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By using less avocado, you get a product that keeps longer and also costs less.
This tip has an advantage: as we explained to you in another Food Checking report devoted to avocado, it takes a thousand liters of water, on average, to grow a kilo of avocados.
Result: we are witnessing many droughts in producing countries.
Read alsoBananas, kiwis, avocados ... eating exotic fruits, is it ecological?
But with such a long list of ingredients, should you be concerned about your health?
“We are in the presence of an ultra-processed product.
However, consumed frequently or in too large quantities, we know that ultra-processed products increase the risk of cancer and diabetes, among others, ”explains dietitian Charles Brumauld.
And the presence of avocado is too low to really benefit from the "good" fatty acids in the fruit.
What about the competition?
In the fresh section, the L'atelier blini brand product contains 90% avocado. “It's much better,” comments the health specialist. But there are still ultra-transformation markers since there are four additives in all: E300, E330, E415 and E202. Then he points to the use-by date, set at two weeks later. “Without all these additives, the product wouldn't keep that long. "Ditto for the neighboring product of the Monoprix private label:" There are four additives. Here too, we are dealing with an ultra-transformed product. "
And in terms of taste? Emmanuel Peña is the chef of the excellent taco restaurant El Nopal, in Paris. He has been living in France for ten years and has never tasted Old El Paso guacamole. We had him test this product as well as his two competitors in the fresh section. “It looks a bit faded,” he says of the Old El Paso cup, not knowing which brand it is. The color is not too green. »Once blindfolded, he tastes the sauces with a teaspoon. “I don't like it,” he said of Monoprix, which contains the most avocados. At the end, there is a taste of rotten avocado. "
The blini workshop?
" That's better.
»What about Old El Paso?
“It's very different.
Looks like they added flour ”.
Bingo!
In the ranking, it is all the same this last guacamole (9.34 € / kg) that the cook will prefer.
The next two are those of L'atelier blini (22.80 € / kg) and Monoprix (12.50 € / kg).
In short, for the environment, the best solution is to consume guacamole only for as long as possible.
And for health and taste, it is best to do it at home and consume it quickly.