Four'n'twenty but no pie!!

The elusive "Savoury Bite" stuffed pizza crust

You may have seen a pretty disturbing picture in the Guardian last Wednesday. A new takeaway pizza launched this week.. Pizza, pies, cheese - all in one meal.  Gross!!

I was going to do a nutritional review of the pizza, but upon visiting pizza hut's website I found that they didn't have any nutrition information on there. And so instead I'll let you know about my quest to find the ingredients in this new frankenfood.

There was actually some nutrition information and an allergy list on the Pizza Hut, but it was from 2014 so didn't include their new creation. Interestingly while I was on the website I noticed there was no ingredients list for any of their pizzas even though they are required to provide this under Australian food regulation. Makes you wonder... what don't they want us to know about their ingredients?

And so my mission to find the ingredients and nutrition information on this pizza pie began.

I phoned the customer service centre which turned out to be a voice recognition machine and wouldn't put me through to a person. So in desperation I said my suburb and was put through to my local store.

That was amusing. Me "Hello, I have a question about your new pie pizza. I'd like to know the ingredients and nutrition information".

The response "we can make any pizza you like. You tell me what you want and I will make it."

And so I clarified what I was looking for "if I ate a piece of your pizza, how many kilojoules would that be?".

"let me know what you'd like and I can make it".

And so it went on for several more rounds until I asked if there was a head office I could phone. There was and it was answered by a person. Hurrah!

I gave the same explanation to the friendly guy on the end of the phone and he eventually understood what I wanted. "Oh, I wouldn't think it would be very healthy" was his response. I agreed, and asked if his manager might be able to help me find the nutrient information and ingredients, he was happy to put me through.

I was now through to the supervisor, and for the third time I explained to her what I was looking for. "If I ate a piece of your new pie pizza how many kilojoules would that be and what are the ingredients?" She told me that head office didn't have 'that sort of information' but each store had a copy and she asked which was my closest store. After explaining my earlier conversation with my local store she offered to phone some other stores for me. After a time she came back and said she had phoned three other stores and they also we're unaware of what she was asking for. She couldn't help me further.

This left me with a final option ... drop in to a store and ask in person.

A day later I dropped into a store on my way to a friend's house. It all started out very promisingly. The server knew what I wanted and he had a copy. Yah! But after some digging around under the counter and bench tops he said he couldn't find it. I explained that I had already tried head office and they said the stores have it. He had one more idea and after walking away for a moment came back with an empty packet from the pies which he said I could take. Not exactly what I wanted, but it was a little nugget. I took it home for a closer look.

Any guesses on the kilojoules in a piece of Frankenpizzapie? I still couldn't tell either, but the bag was very interesting.

What a boring bag. No mention of four 'n' Twenty here. A quick internet search of Patties revealed they own Four 'n' Twenty. Ok, that's fine but what on earth are "savoury bites"? Are they pies or not? The Food Standards Australia website was very helpful. They mention kiwis eat more pies per person than Aussies each year (very interesting, but not what I was after). I did find a standard relating to meat pies. (Standard 2.2.1) Bingo! 

Standard 2.2.1 in the Food Standards Code governing meat and meat products which stipulates that a meat pie must contain a minimum of 25 per cent of meat flesh.

They then go on to tell us what 'meat flesh' means. So going back to the "savoury bites" this might be an explanation for the name.

On the back of the pack I found that beef makes up just a measly 18% of the 'bite' with about 1000 ingredients making up the rest. If that didn't just put you off I don't know what would. So with the shortfall of the required 25% meat to be called a pie, they have had to go with the less appetising name of 'savoury bite'.

So far I have learned that there aren't any ingredients lists for any of the pizzas, the pies aren't really pies at all and neither in-store of head office have any information to hand to let us know what we might be consuming.

The lesson from this is to start asking. If more people ask what is in their takeaway meals companies will start to understand that we want to know and are more likely to have the information to hand. In NSW all fast food chains with 50 or more stores are required to display the number of kilojoules in a serve of each food on the menu, so customers are informed at the time they are ordering. It would be great to see other states follow their example.

So at this point, we have the information on the 'pie', but I still don't know what is in the pizza. I will follow up with a visit to store number two…

Stay tuned for the update shortly