A row has broken out between the manufacturer of Porky Lights sausages and a Slimming World over the fat content of its products.
Porky Lights are manufactured by G White & Co, and are marketed as containing 3% fat and 78 calories per sausage. Up until this week, Slimming World advised members Porky Lights counted as just 0.5 of their daily allowable ‘syns’ compared to 4.5 ‘syns’ for regular sausages.
However, during a tasting session of Slimming World leaders, some testers became concerned with how fatty Porky Lights tasted, and sent some samples for testing in a professional laboratory. According to Slimming World, the sausages were found to contain more fat than claimed between 14.2% and 19.1%. G White & Co strongly disputes this claim.
“We have faced criticism from Porky Lights’ manufacturers for using a third party to do this work – however, we have no reason whatsoever to doubt the accuracy of the tests,” said a Slimming World spokesperson.
Now Slimming World has withdrawn the product from its database because it can’t verify how fatty the sausages are. “After serious consideration – faced with such a heavy weight of conflicting evidence about the fat content of the sausages – we decided that by far the safest option – to protect our members’ weight losses – was to withdraw the sausages from the database, until we had a chance to investigate further,” the spokesperson said.
G White & Co issued a statement strongly refuting Porky Lights has been mislabelled. “The current claims about the nutritional content of Porky Lights sausages are grossly misleading,” said Chris Price, managing director. “G White & Co have a stringent and regular testing process, which can be entirely substantiated by independent UKAS accredited laboratories. The most recent UKAS accredited tests confirm that Porky Lights are indeed 3% fat and 78 calories per sausage.
“We understand that Slimming World’s statement about our Porky Light sausages is based on analysis undertaken by another manufacturer, rather than the result of Slimming World’s own independent research.
“G White & Co’s Porky Whites products are built on a reputation, forged by making the most delicious products possible for our customers to enjoy. Our uncompromising approach means that we strive to find the very best ingredients for all of our products. Our recipes are created with one objective in mind — to make the most delicious pork and beef products we can for our loyal, appreciated customers.
“Porky Lights have benefitted from this stringent process and have been embraced and enjoyed by the UK’s slimming public. Porky Lights sausages are the first product offered to the market from a developed range of low fat, low calorie meat based products that include burgers and flavoured sausages. This range has been created to satisfy the needs of the British public who are more conscious than ever of the quality and health credentials of the food they eat.”