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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s in your mince pie?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Mince pies are shortbread pastries with spiced-fruit filling sold in the months leading up to Christmas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Woolworths and Pick n Pay use butter in their crust. Spar and Checkers use margarine. Food Lovers uses lipolyzed cream (dairy products where fat has been eliminated<\/a>, but the flavour remains).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spar\u2019s mince pies\u2019 packaging had a nutrition facts label. The other stores\u2019 mince pie packaging didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woolworths told The Outlier <\/em>that they did not supply this information for mince pies. While, Pick n Pay\u2019s spokesperson said \u201cProducts made specifically for seasonal celebrations like Easter and Christmas do not carry nutritional information as they are only on [the] shelf for a few months and the product recipes change every year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We reached out to Food Lovers and Checkers for their nutritional lists, but had not received them at the time of publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mince pies have several components to their packaging: aluminum cups, the plastic tray, the plastic sleeve and often a cardboard sleeve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can recycle most of the mince pie\u2019s packaging except for the plastic tray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We spoke to Woolworths about why you couldn\u2019t recycle the plastic tray, and they said at the time of production, you couldn\u2019t recycle PET [Polyethylene terephthalate] plastic trays, cups and punnets like the ones used for mince pies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll lightweight PET plastic packaging will in future carry the RECYCLE communication,\u201d a Woolworths spokesperson told us. \u201cHowever at the time of going to print we were not sure of the commissioning date of the ZIBO recycling plant <\/a>and therefore we had to communicate NOT RECYCLED.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe waste pickers now know that PET lightweight packaging is being recycled, it is being collected and transported to Cape Town for recycling at the Blackheath plant.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most retailers will tell you on their package recycling label with the words “recycle” or “not recycled”. Not recycled, according to the Woolworths\u2019 press office, means \u201cthe packaging is not being collected and recycled in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more tips on recycling, check out Treevolution\u2019s recycling guide<\/a> and newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The six-person Outlier team \u2013 after analysing the packaging, nutritional information and cost of the mince pies \u2013 did get to try them in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did a blind test where only one of us knew the brand of the mince pies; while the rest of the team had to pick their favourite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some retailers recommended warming up the mince pies before eating them, but we didn\u2019t do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mince pie E (from Spar) had more pastry than filling \u2013 leaving one of our team members feeling cheated. While some found it very sweet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then mince pie D (Pick n Pay) was super fruity with its raisins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another fruity-sweet mince pie was C (Food Lovers). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mince pie B (Woolworths) had no alcohol in it, but the selection of spices (clove, cinnamon and nutmeg) with the lemon zest and orange and lemon peels gave it a slightly boozy and somewhat nostalgic taste. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last mince pie \u2013 and winner for our team \u2013 was mince pie (A) from Checkers. It had a fruitcake-esque centre (apple, sultanas, raisins, candied fruit peel, cinnamon and cloves) and a perfect amount of pastry and filling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As one of our team said, \u201cI would actually buy it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The winning mince pie was also the cheapest with the third highest number of preservatives and ingredients listed in its filling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No. Some are cheaper, others have more recyclable packaging, and not all come with nutritional information. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,446,1387],"tags":[],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-83950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-news","category-the-outlier"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86576,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83950\/revisions\/86576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83950"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=83950"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=83950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/editor.mediahack.co.za\/theoutlier\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/12\/7iyPE-what-s-in-your-mince-pie-s-fruit-mix-2-600x785.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/editor.mediahack.co.za\/theoutlier\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/12\/97eSD-does-a-mince-pie-have-preservatives-artificial-flavouring-3-600x376.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow much of the packaging can you recycle?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/editor.mediahack.co.za\/theoutlier\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/12\/F0biW-which-parts-of-mince-pie-packaging-can-you-recycle-2-600x367.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nHow do you know what you can recycle?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What did our team think about the mince pies?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/20221205_141924-600x338.jpg\")