Ginsters: play with portion size at your peril

09-May-2010 - Last updated on 10-May-2010 at 11:13 GMT

Related tags Cornwall

Attempts to tackle saturated fat levels by reducing portion sizes could backfire if consumers don’t understand what you are trying to achieve, Ginsters has warned.

Speaking at Food Manufacture’s round table debate on saturated fat last week, Ginsters technical manager David Ion said the Cornish pasty giant had done a lot of work exploring the different ways it could reduce saturated fat in its products without compromising taste.

One approach had been to reduce the portion size of some products from 227g to 180g, with a corresponding drop in price, to ensure they remained competitively and fairly priced, but contained less saturated fat, he said.

But the move had confused some customers, who suspected the firm was trying to rip them off by reducing the size of its products ‘by stealth’, he admitted.

He said: “We were just trying to offer people a choice, but almost immediately, we started getting feedback from people suggesting that we were trying to short change them in some way, so we took them off the market. It was a very costly experience.”

For more coverage of the round table debate, click here.