What mooncake flavors are trending this year? Freshly baked mooncakes and low-sugar mooncakes have to be mentioned. Recently, the news that Shanghai citizens lined up to buy mooncakes in the rain on typhoon days made the freshly baked mooncakes fire out of the circle, and enterprises such as Master Bao, Beijing Daoxiangcun, and Shanghai First Food all appeared in the Mid-Autumn Festival this year to attract diners. With the wind of sugar reduction blowing from the field of beverages and yogurt to the entire food industry, low-sugar mooncakes are also popular this year, and are expected to become another innovative category after the flow of heart mooncakes and ice skin mooncakes.
However, the actual visit of the Beijing News reporter found that many mooncakes under the banner of "low sugar" and "0 sugar" are only low in sugar content, and the carbohydrate content of the product far exceeds the "sugar-free" or "low sugar" claimed limit of the national standard "General Rules for Nutrition Labels of Prepackaged Food" GB28050-2011.
According to the China Consumer Association, the so-called "sucrose-free" mooncake is not completely sugar-free, but uses substitutes such as sugar alcohols. The flour, oil, etc. in the ingredients of the mooncake have not changed, and they are still high-sugar and high-calorie foods.
Sales of freshly baked mooncakes heat up
With the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, fresh and hot baked mooncakes have "comeback" in the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, and not long ago, the report that Shanghai citizens lined up to buy long-established freshly baked mooncakes in the typhoon day has attracted much attention.
"Freshly baked mooncakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival every year are a delicacy that many diners remember." According to the relevant person in charge of Beijing DaoxiangCun, this year Beijing Daoxiangcun will continue to promote baked mooncakes in some stores, such as crispy fresh meat mooncakes, sweet and salty cloud leg mooncakes, classic retro hairy mooncakes, etc. In order to meet the needs of customers for handmade mooncakes, Beijing Daoxiangcun also launched the first frozen mooncakes, each bag contains fresh meat, turned hair five kernels, turned hair rose 3 flavors, customers only need to bake slightly after returning home, you can enjoy the same freshly baked delicious as the store.
Baking net red brand Master Bao also pushed the appearance of baked mooncakes this year, the relevant person in charge said, "The baking industry because of the dining process and stay time is small, the core of the competition is not the environment and service, but whether the product is good or not." Master Bao's products are sold in stores, and the cost of raw materials will be about 10% higher than the industry average. ”
"Shanghainese eat mooncakes, and fresh meat mooncakes are eternal gods!" According to the official micro-information of Bright Food Group, the "First Food" on Nanjing East Road in Shanghai has a long queue every year, and the secret of delicious food lies in the production process. This year, First Foods baked mooncakes offer a total of 10 flavors, each with a different baking time and temperature. In addition to the 360-degree oven for uniform heating, the operator also needs to determine the baking time according to the composition of the filling, the moisture content and even the temperature and humidity on the baking day.
"First Food" believes that the market for freshly baked mooncakes is highly homogenized, and if you want to stand out, you must dare to innovate. The trend of rejuvenation in the consumption of freshly baked mooncakes is obvious, and the "first food" is new in raw materials and tastes, and the sales of new flavors are in the forefront of the bursting durian flavor and cheese beef flavor.
The "2021 China Mooncake Industry Development Trend" report released by the China Baked Food Sugar Products Industry Association in August this year shows that with the gradual improvement of the food cold chain, as well as the increasing degree of industrial industrialization and production concentration, frozen semi-finished mooncake products have developed rapidly. This kind of mooncake is produced by the factory to produce unripe quick-frozen semi-finished products, distributed to stores and outlets and baked. The association expects that freshly baked mooncakes will continue to expand market share and enhance industry competitiveness.
"Low-sugar" mooncakes are not really low-sugar
This year's Mid-Autumn Festival, the sugar reduction wind blew from beverages, yogurt and other foods to the mooncake industry. Search for "sugar-free mooncakes" on the e-commerce platform, you can see a variety of low-sugar mooncakes, low-calorie mooncakes, sugar-alcohol mooncakes, whole wheat mooncakes, sugar-free mooncakes, and ketogenic mooncakes. Related products include well-known brands such as Hong Kong Maxim's, Beijing Daoxiangcun, Suzhou Daoxiangcun, Zhiweiguan, rice flag, etc., as well as new brands such as "Sweet Master Brother", "Sugar Xueyou" and "Low Card Doctor".
Are these mooncakes really low-sugar or sugar-free? According to the Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake consumption tips released by the Zunyi Municipal Market Supervision Bureau a few days ago, for people who need to control energy and sugar intake, they should pay more attention to the ingredient list and nutrient composition table when purchasing mooncakes. Gb28050-2011, the national standard "General Principles for Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods", stipulates that "sugar-free" refers to the carbohydrate content of ≤ 0.5g/100g in the nutrition ingredient list, and "low sugar" refers to the carbohydrate content of the nutrition ingredient table ≤5g/100g. The sweetness in the sugar-free mooncake comes from the addition of substances such as oligosaccharides or sweeteners, and most of them will not cause blood sugar to rise too quickly. However, it is necessary to pay attention to the distinction between "sugar-free" and "sucrose-free", "sucrose-free" means that the ingredients do not contain sucrose, white sugar, cotton sugar, etc., but it does not mean that no other sugars (glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose, etc.) are added. For "sucrose-free" mooncakes, people who need to control blood sugar still need to buy with caution.
Based on this, the Beijing News reporter noted that although the low-sugar mooncake products currently on the market do not add sugar or have a low sugar content, the carbohydrate content of the product is not low. For example, the Hong Kong Maxim's low-sugar egg yolk white lotus mooncake, its packaging is nominally "less than 5%sugar content", the ingredient list does not add sugar, but uses maltitol, isomaltitol and other sugar substitutes. However, due to the inclusion of raw materials such as white lotus seed paste, salted egg yolk, wheat flour, peanut oil, etc., the total carbohydrate of its products is 47.7g/100g, but the sugar content is 4.9g/100g, which is not a low-sugar food by definition.
The same is true of other sugar alcohol mooncakes and low-sugar mooncakes. Two types of carbohydrates sold by an e-commerce company are as high as 47.6g/100g and 30.1g/100g; the "Low-calorie Dr. Low- Doctor" whole-wheat mooncakes that claim to be unsweetened, non-refueling, and half the calories of traditional mooncakes have carbohydrate content of 40.1g/100g-41.7g/100g, which do not meet the requirements of "low sugar" and "no sugar" claims.
In the Tmall flagship store of Sweet Master Brother Food, its sugar-free ice cream cheese mooncake declares "0 sucrose 0 flour 0 burden", and the self-developed patented sugar substitute "tastes indistinguishable from sucrose, no calories, no sugar", and the test report shows that the total sugar content is 0. However, the nutrition ingredient list issued by the store's customer service shows that the carbohydrates of the three French cheese mooncakes of "Sweet Master Brother" are 17.7g/100g, 19.1g/100g, and 18g/100g, which neither meets the "low sugar" claim in the national standard "General Rules for The Nutrition Label of Prepackaged Food", nor does it meet the "sugar-free" claim.
On September 14, the China Consumer Association issued a pre-holiday consumption tip that the so-called "sucrose-free" mooncake is not completely sugar-free, but uses substitutes such as sugar alcohol. The flour, oil, etc. in the ingredients of the mooncake have not changed, and they are still high-sugar and high-calorie foods.
Sugar-substituted mooncakes have triggered diarrhea
In the process of pursuing sugar reduction and sugar-free, some mooncake production enterprises are too late. On September 8, in response to some users reporting that eating Zhihu mooncake diarrhea, Zhihu apologized that the relevant mooncakes met food quality standards, but ignored the maltitol used to replace sucrose, which may cause some people to become intolerant and cause physical discomfort.
On September 9, COFCO Fengtong (Beijing) Food Co., Ltd., a holding company of COFCO Group, the producer of the mooncakes involved, responded to the Beijing News reporter that the sugar alcohol mooncakes produced more than 50,000 boxes, of which 18,000 boxes were provided to Zhihu. The relevant person in charge of the company said that the current addition of maltitol in bread, pastries, biscuits and other foods is "appropriate use according to production needs", there is no specific addition limit, and it is hoped that this event can promote the establishment of relevant limit standards.
A person in charge of a mooncake production enterprise told the Beijing News reporter that sugar-reducing mooncakes are expected to become another major innovative category after the flow of heart mooncakes and ice skin mooncakes, but compared with sucrose, xylitol, erythritol and other sugar substitute raw materials are higher, which has become a major obstacle to the development of sugar-reducing mooncakes.
Beijing News reporter Guo Tie photography Guo Tie image source e-commerce screenshot
Edited by Li Yan Proofread by Lucy