Huh?! This is how you’re misled with cayenne pepper at the supermarket
Misleading practices at the supermarket: we could write an entire book about them. About how you’re misled with free-range eggs, how you’re tricked by packaging… Type ‘misled’ into our search bar and you won’t be done reading until tomorrow. And yes, we can add yet another product to the list of misleading products (which also includes Roombeter by Blue Band and Knorr’s vegetable pastas): cayenne pepper.
In this case, we’re specifically talking about Verstegen cayenne pepper. So what’s going on? If you turn the packaging around, you’ll see that it’s a mix of paprika powder and chili powder. So it’s not 100% cayenne pepper, even though you would expect it to be, since that’s what it says in huge letters on the jar.
Cayenne pepper vs. chili powder vs. paprika powder
Cayenne pepper is a type of chili pepper. Officially, it’s a fruit vegetable from Capsicum annuum, a plant species in the nightshade family. Ground cayenne pepper is a powder made from the dried and ground fruits of the cayenne pepper plant. You can consider that a spice. Real cayenne pepper is quite hot. It scores between 30,000 and 50,000 on the Scoville scale. For comparison: a jalapeño scores between 2,500 and 8,000 on the same scale.
Chili powder, on the other hand, is a blend of all kinds of ground chili peppers, and sometimes other herbs or spices as well. This could include paprika powder, garlic powder and/or cumin, for example. But also cayenne pepper. And paprika powder? It’s made from dried and/or ground peppers. Not the blocky bell peppers we know from the supermarket, but a type of pointed pepper about 15 centimeters long. There are mild and hot varieties of paprika powder. The hot version also contains a small amount of ground dried chili peppers in the blend. You can see that on the packaging of Verstegen’s hot paprika powder too: it’s made up of 99% paprika and chili peppers.
Pure, not a blend
Yes, cayenne pepper is a type of chili pepper. It belongs to that family. But pure cayenne pepper is simply pure cayenne pepper. It isn’t the same as chili powder or chili pepper, because, once again… It’s a specific type within the chili pepper family. And cayenne pepper is certainly not a blend of chili powder and paprika powder, as stated on the packaging. It should be 100% ground cayenne pepper. Why are we being misled here?
We are often tricked by spice blends from the supermarket anyway, as research by the Consumers’ Association has shown before. Verstegen has also been exposed before because many of its spices contain extremely high amounts of salt (including the Cajun seasoning). So that’s going well…
Incredibly expensive
Also bear in mind that a jar of Verstegen cayenne pepper is incredibly expensive: €85.43 per kilo. Albert Heijn’s own-brand cayenne pepper—which lists only ground cayenne pepper among the ingredients—costs just €31.04 per kilo. Crazy difference, right? You’ll probably get an even better deal at an international grocery store. Sometimes you can find pure cayenne pepper there for around €20 per kilo. Do with that information what you will!
Also read:
