I take a lot of pride in my abilities to thwart clever marketing tactics when at the shops. I am a seasoned label reader and will make most of my purchases in full knowledge of what I am buying.
But… we are all prone to impulse buys.
This happened last week. I was headed into the weekend and at the shops trying to find inspiration for dinner. I had decided on steamed dumplings with a starter of arancini balls when I was walking to the check out. I wafted by one of those end isle fridges when my eye caught a line up of pretty coloured bottles.
At this point I had to investigate as I now felt the need to add juice to my dinner ensemble. On closer inspection I was
surprised to see a new line of juice which was based on bush tucker!
Davidson plum and riberry by The Juice Lab. I love an interesting fruit, particularly a native Australian one, so I thought this would be great. I grabbed a bottle and set off.
Later that evening I sat down to my glass of juice (it was a wild evening) and thought it had an interesting flavour: not too sweet, a nice tang, but also strangely familiar. At this point I had the urge to inspect the ingredient list on the label to see if the bush tucker fruits had been watered down with something like grape juice (which often happens with exotic fruit juices), but I couldn’t be bothered going back to the kitchen.
However, the next day when I went to get another glass, I remembered the label reading impulse I had the night before… and this is what I saw.
I had been duped!
I had spent over $6 (more than I would usually spend on a refrigerated juice) on what is primarily pear juice…
Don't get me wrong, the fruits listed are a tasty concoction, but I would be very surprised if someone could even detect the flavour of 0.9% Davidson plum puree, and 0.1% riberry powder.
The label on the bottle even was bold enough to state that these bush tucker fruits were used for their health benefits by Indigenous Australians, implying you might get these same benefits from their juice. They must be working on the principle of homeopathy and dilution if they want people to believe they would be receiving similar benefits from drinking essence of bush tucker!
Hopefully next time I will think twice before I am “se-juiced” by attractive packaging.