Posted to News on 1st Sep 2008, 00:00
Rising to the challenge of like-for-like comparison...
Being able to eat exactly what you want, when you want, is one of the best things about being an adult. Of course, all that changes once children come along, because then meal times suddenly become all about 'setting a good example'. If you want something that goes slightly against the accepted norm, then you have to be able to justify your strange preferences. And so it was that I found myself in Sainsbury's on a Saturday afternoon investigating strawberry jam. While the general concensus is that the greater a pot's whole strawberry count, the higher the quality, my personal preference is for jam sans fruit. Not the processed jelly that comes out of those plastic tubs served up in roadside cafés, mind. I want real jam - I just want it devoid of strawberry chunks. So what I needed to do was to prove that my choice was a the right choice. I would guess that in a sane and rational world none of this would be necessary, but when you live with a vegetarian wife and two daughters of impressionable age, words like 'sane' and 'rational' are largely redundant.
>I set about, therefore, conducting a few experiments on different brands of jam. Note, if you will, the small print that details how these experiments were purpose-designed by me and carried out under highly suspect test conditions with the sole aim of proving my position. And here's what I found. All strawberry jams quote a fruit content per 100g of product. That might be a vaguely interesting baseline from an overall quality point of view, but in terms of the practical application of the product it's meaningless. My next premise was that since a whole strawberry would be considerably less dense than a corresponding volume of strawberryless jam, then a similarly sized, similarly priced pot of jam with a high, whole-fruit content would weigh considerably less, representing poorer value. However, it proved remarkably difficult to make like for like comparisons on that basis, and the security guard was starting take an obvious dislike to the way I was loitering in the 'preserves and spreads' aisle, so I was forced to acquire a few jars at random and move on.
>The acid test was of course the 'hot buttered toast' experiment, and this was where my preference proved to be the best choice. You see, the more whole strawberries you have in your jar, the less able you are to spread the jam over your preferred medium, so you end up using a lot more jam to cover a given area. In terms of long-term cost efficiency, my preference wins hands down, every time.
>Now, bear with me, because this really is leading somewhere. It struck me that, whatever you happen to be purchasing, it's getting harder and harder to make a sound comparative judgement based on the available literature because the manufacturers will twist and skew the data to best meet their own needs. The common baseline data rarely provides a real basis for comparison, and if you're not oh-so-sure of the context of the manufacturer's own tests to various standards, then it's all too easy to be seduced by the lower cost of an alternative brand that seems to meet your needs until you use it in real world conditions.
Mark Simms, 1 September 2008
