What's in the Box: Frozen Toaster Waffles

What are all those ingredients, and what do they do?

Have you ever looked at the ingredient list on a food’s packaging and wondered how much of what you see is actual food?

This series, explaining what’s actually on the label of popularly-consumed, mass-produced foods, was one of the first that I began developing when the concept of this publication started taking shape for me. I know that not everyone cares about the minutia of these items, but I think that every bit of knowledge we can gain about the things we put in our body is important.

In this piece, we’ll be looking at frozen toaster waffles. Eggos. I don’t know why I’m not just saying the brand, because that’s the one that everyone really identifies this product with. We’re looking at Eggos. Specifically “Homestyle” Eggos, because pretty quickly here we’re going to make our own “Homestyle” toaster waffles in our actual “Home.”

Being a ready-to-eat product, these toaster waffles differ in a lot of ways from the pancake mix that we looked at in the first What’s in the Box? entry. For one, they don’t contain the same amount or type of preservatives, because they’re not meant to be shelf-stable. Freezing them, in and of itself, preserves them, therefore they don’t need as many artificial preservatives added.

This particular box also boasted of it’s added vitamins, which made me chuckle quite a bit.

Again, keeping in mind that ingredients listed on packaging are in order of their proportion, by weight, of the entire recipes, this box shows:

Enriched Flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, vitamin B1 (thiamin mononitrate), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), folic acid), Water, Vegetable Oil (soybean, palm, canola and/or cottonseed), Sugar, Leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), contains 2% or less of Salt, Dextrose, Spice, Whey, Eggs, Soy Lecithin. Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), Vitamin B12

Once again, let’s start from the top…

Enriched Flour: You’ll note that, in contrast to the boxed pancake mix, these toaster waffles use enriched flour that is unbleached. This is pure speculation, but if I had to guess why, it’d be because the ideal color of these waffles is an off-yellow, and using bleached flour would make them too white, and potentially less pleasing to the eye. That is pure speculation, though. If you know the exact reason, feel free to share. Outside of that, it’s a pretty standard-issue enriched flour, with niacin, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, and folic acid added.

Water: Well, we know what water is and why it’s used.

Vegetable Oil: I’m still contending that the USDA or FDA or EPA or whichever government agency is responsible for defining and monitoring labeling on these types of products should not allow companies’ marketing wings to call a bunch of oils from fruits and grains to be called vegetable oils. Not a hill I’m willing to die on, but still something I feel like doesn’t provide transparency to consumers, at the moment.

Sugar: We know what this one is used for, primarily, but keep in mind that sugar is also a preservative.

Leavening: We went through some common commercially-used leavening agents in the previous piece, which you can view by clicking the link towards the top. That said, these are the same agents used in that pancake mix, with the latter two flipped in their order, indicating which accounts for more, by weight, in the total recipe.

Contains 2% or Less of : Salt (we also know what this one is and why it’s used), Dextrose (a sweetener and a preservative commonly derived from wheat or corn), Spice (this is an interesting one, because it’s a blatantly generalized term. The FDA defines it as “aromatic vegetable substances, in the whole, broken, or ground form, whose significant function is seasoning rather than nutrition.” Think of it as “undefined flavoring ingredients.”), Whey (protein-rich liquid left over from the cheesemaking process), Eggs (unfertilized chicken embryos, likely with the shell removed… see our Essentials posts for info about eggs and their uses in baked gooods), Soy Lecithin (a stabilizer and emulsifier derived from soybeans. It’s also used to protect flavor in processed foods).

Now, the fun part: Added vitamins!

There has been a concerted effort since the 1970s to find ways to make otherwise-not-so-nutritious foods, particularly the type that are “convenience” foods which are pre-made and meant to re-heat quickly at home, more nutritious.  In the same way that so many kids grew up with Flinstones vitamins (oddly enough something that continues today, only kids don’t know that The Flinstones was an actual cartoon that you could watch, not just a vitamin brand), food companies particularly make this push on goods that are marketed to kids.  In this case, they’re adding Calcium, Iron, and A and B vitamins, likely because they’re the easiest to add to an item like this without drastically affecting the end flavor. Those also just happen to be the vitamins that are added to flour to make it “enriched.” 

Although adding vitamins sounds like a handy, if not considerate thing to do with toaster waffles, keep in mind the note on the box that states these are NOT a good source of vitamins or minerals.  You’d have to eat an entire box of ready-made toaster waffles to get your recommended daily intake of Calcium, Iron, and Vitamin A, and you’d have to eat two boxes to get your recommended intake of B vitamins.  Still, some vitamins are better than none, right?