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Sky News
2 days ago
- Business
- Sky News
£1 ketchup beats big brands and posh sauces in blind taste test
Online shopping and budget supermarkets mean traditional brands face more competition than ever for their products. In theory, having so much choice is great news for the consumer - but it does make it tricky working out where the best quality and value lies. In our new Our Verdict feature, Sky News' Money team will be blind-testing popular products to help you make informed decisions. Our six-strong team of expert tasters are starting with a staple that many people feel strongly about: ketchup. Children across the UK may refuse it unless it's their favourite brand - but when you peel off the label, which really comes out on top? We sampled 14 different ketchups - from own brands to high-end makers - marking for taste, balance and texture. With high scores across the board, M&S's own brand came out on top - and the good news is it costs just a fraction of the price of some traditional brands at £1. Of the "posh" brands we sampled, Wilkin and Sons blew away the rest and came in third overall. At the other end of our league table came Aldi, which is also the cheapest bottle at 89p - with Tesco's own and Daddies also judged poorly in the blind test. How did your favourite perform? Here are the results... A thick but still smooth sauce perfect for scooping with chips. It is rich in colour and has a natural taste of tomatoes. This sauce comes with a subtle kick but its overall balance makes it a strong choice for the entire family. Rich, smooth and good body. This is an all-rounder: a balanced flavour and likely to please everyone. Price: £3.14 Average score: 7.3 The highest scoring "disruptor". It has a deep colour, a discreet tang and thick, slightly bitty texture. The closest in our test to tasting homemade. A great choice if you're looking to impress with something different. Fourth place: Morrisons Good balance, with vinegar and smokiness coming through. Our testers noted a strong sweetness, while its texture and colour fared well compared with other own-brand ketchups. A decent everyday ketchup that lost marks due to its pale colour and thin texture. Our testers noted that sweet and acidic flavours were dominant over the tomato taste. Sixth place: Sainsbury's This divided out testers, with scores ranging from 10 to three. Those who loved it praised its thick texture, balance and deep colour - but the tangy, smoky notes weren't for everyone. An average scorer - but well ahead of its Aldi equivalent. Testers thought it lacked anything to make it stand out. This middle-class favourite scored disappointingly with the majority of our testers, who felt it lacked the balance of the sauces above. Its thick texture appeals, but you might expect more tomato flavour. This sauce was an all-rounder with a deep colour - but testers felt it was too sweet and sharp, evoking memories of takeaway ketchup eaten with chips in a park. A lighter sauce that lost marks for its runnier texture. Our testers felt it lacked flavour compared with many of the other sauces, but its balance of sweetness was a strong point. Eleventh place: Dr Wills Price: £3 Average score: 5.2 The least ketchup-like of the ketchups, this is a room splitter. The natural tomato flavours come through and it tastes homemade, but a notable fruitiness and zing might put off traditionalists. Several testers commented that it tasted like "café ketchup", with a dominant vinegar profile and too much sweetness. Joint twelfth: Daddies Price: £1.50 Average score: 4.3 Across the board, our testers felt this was too sweet, with an artificial and unbalanced flavour. While not eliciting some of the very low marks of its rivals, this scored poorly across the board, with testers noting a lack of tomato flavour and an inescapable sweetness. Here are the full results...
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
The jam jar grip test that shows how well you're ageing
The satisfaction to be had from removing a tough jam jar lid feels strangely British. Defeating a jar of a strawberry conserve requires determination little short of heroic. It's also, experts tell us, a superb way to gauge your overall health and even your potential longevity. Grip strength has been declared one of the key health markers as we age. Richard W Bohannon, an academic and physical therapist based in North Carolina, wrote Grip Strength: An Indispensable Biomarker for Older Adults. He was building on earlier studies, including one carried out in the UK in 2014, which tracked grip across the average lifetime and noted how it mapped onto general health. Bohannon says: 'Grip strength helps predict how long we may expect to live across an array of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and other diseases. One study found weak grip strength to be more predictive of mortality than blood pressure.' The jam jar moment usually requires about 16kg of twisting force. Scott Goodfellow, a joint managing director of Wilkin & Sons preserves, says: 'It's always a careful balance between creating a robust seal whilst keeping ease of opening.' Your ability to generate that force with your hands is a very reliable indicator of the strength you have and the lifestyle that's created that strength. Why is grip strength so important? Bohannon says: 'Strength is a generalised construct. So, apart from a specific disorder like a stroke, a patient weak in one part of the body will probably be weak elsewhere.' The grip is like a small sample of your overall strength and strength is powerful indicator of longevity. Peter Attia, a podcaster, author and medical researcher, is a huge advocate of grip as a measure. Speaking on a recent podcast, he said: 'If you take people with the highest grip strength compared with the lowest grip strength, the people with the highest have a 70 per cent lower chance of getting and dying from dementia.' How do you measure your grip strength? If you want to know where you are in the grip strength stakes, the professionals have a specific gadget that measures the power of your squeeze called a dynamometer. These can be bought online but most cost a few hundred pounds. A less precise, but still valid, approach is to pick up an old-fashioned (non-digital) weighing machine, hold it in front of your body and squeeze, one hand at a time. This will give you a number with which to chart your progress. A good score if you're a woman aged 50-59 is 55-58kg, combined left and right hands, for a man the same age 102-109kg. So how can we improve our grip strength? Exercises that engage the grip and your overall strength are an important part of your wellbeing regime but the grip itself has no magical ability to improve your health, as Attia says, 'if people say I'm going to buy a squeezer and sit at my desk all day, that's not what it means'. Unless you are a climber or a particularly vigorous concert pianist, there is no point developing grip in isolation. Brett Sizeland, the head of fitness programme Sustainable Strength, explains that just making simple changes such as carrying your shopping home can can be a game changer. 'Grip strength one of the most overlooked areas in training, yet it has huge functional carryover – especially when we think about longevity and staying strong for life,' he explains. 'That's why I program 'carry work' as standard across all client plans. It's simple, effective, and hits multiple areas at once – grip, core, legs, and lungs.' Plus you can start very gently at home with very little equipment. The other key exercise when building grip is the dead hang. This is literally just hanging from a bar (or safe door frame) and maintaining your position, using your hands and upper body. Sam Quinn, a personal training lead at Nuffield Health says: 'The dead hang is simple but very effective. This exercise has many benefits from improving grip strength, improving upper body strength, and improving shoulder mobility.' Quinn suggests two-to-four sets of hangs from 20 seconds to two minutes in duration. He says you could try starting with a feet-supported hang (this is with your feet resting in front of you, removing some of your body weight, using a bench). Quinn adds it's worth ensuring you have basic upper body conditioning before you attempt your first hang. Dead hangs are not way to go if you've never set foot in a gym. Exercises As we age it's a good idea to start by building upper body strength and grip with a less intense approach. Here Rosemary Mallace, 74, who runs StrongAfterSixty classes on Youtube for older people suggests three very simple exercises. Rotations with a book
