The Famous 2p Sausages
Here they are - this pack of eight bangers cost me 16 pence.
The first - and probably most important - thing to note, is that these are not sausages that have been specially manufactured to be sold at 16 pence a pack - they are in fact just Tesco's own 'value' brand sausages - that have always been available in this form and recipe.
So what we're seeing here is not a sausage phenomenon - it's merely a promotional one.
Examining The Pack
Before we get to the sausages themselves, let's take a good, close look at the information provided on the pack...
The Front label
454g of sausages - 56g per sausage (I tested this and the declared weight was true), or 28g of sausage per penny.
There's an at-a-glance nutrition information panel on there - pointing out that two of these sausages contributes one-third of your RDA of salt, and one-fifth of your RDA of saturated fat
Livestock Standards
The front label also informs us that the pork in the sausages is produced according to Tesco's livestock standards - which, on its own, means nothing much at all (its not as if they would sell them something that fell short of their standards - that's what standards are for - isn't it?)
Tesco's policies on livestock can be perused here - they seem fairly reasonable, although I'm sure animal welfare campaigners would probably pick them up on lack of quantitative data. Take a look and make up your own mind...
The Ingredients And Nutrition Panels
Crikey, that's a lot of text. Let's try to summarise the composition:
40% Pork, supplemented with a stabilised mix of water, fat and wheat starch, protein and flour, plus some other stuff for flavouring and preservation, plus rusks.
That's not a particularly large amount of meat (around 60% is typical for standard bangers - 'butcher' sausages typically contain more still), but at the same time, it's not astonishingly low either - I've seen other brands - even those not specifically marketed as low budget foods - with a smaller percentage.
Nutrition
This is where I got a bit confused - because I can't make the figures add up. The chart below is taken from the stated breakdown per 100g of raw product:
If anyone reading this can suggest a plausible identity for the missing matter, please let me know...
Anyway, I guess that's enough waffle - on the next page, we'll take our first look at the sausages themselves.
