I discovered yesterday a clever scam that one of the producers of dried mangoes is pulling on unsuspecting buyers – and probably making a lot of extra profit from.
Dried mangoes are a popular snack item here in the Philippines. Every supermarket and many smaller shops stock them in 100g or 200g packets and sometimes larger boxes. I prefer dried green mangoes to the orange-coloured dried ripe mangoes because they are not so sweet, but when I do eat the dried ripe variety (which is more popular with Filipinos, most of whom have a sweet tooth) I usually buy the 7D brand because it is slightly tarter than other brands.
7D is one of the original brands, and is exported overseas, and many competing brands have copied their familiar green and yellow packaging.
Yesterday when I was shopping in Robinson’s supermarket I looked for 7D but there was no stock. There were three other brands in similar packaging – ‘Cebu’s Lucky’, ‘Royal’ and ‘Joanna’ – all of which were labelled ‘export quality’.
So I bought one of each to see which one I liked best for future reference if there was no stock of 7D.
I opened the Cebu’s Lucky branded packet first, and it did not taste nice. It tasted like candy. And that indeed is what it is. When I checked the ingredients on the packet, I saw that it was made of mango puree, stabiliser and sugar. It was candy made to look like dried mango slices – not a healthy snack at all.
Now if the manufacturer labelled the product as ‘mango flavoured candy’ then I would have no issue with them. But the only indication that this product is different to other dried mango products on the shelves is that they have added the word ‘Chew’ in a small font under the words ‘Premium Dried Mangoes’. Premium dried mangoes they are certainly not!
Clearly by making the packet to look the same as all the real dried mango slices in the supermarket, they’ve deliberately set out to con customers.
If they were selling their product at half the price of real dried mangoes, then that would give consumers a clue that they weren’t buying the real thing, but they are not. They are selling their fake dried mango slices at exactly the same price as the real thing (I paid 82 pesos for each 100g packet).
I noticed today that several stall owners in another shopping mall were selling Cebu’s Lucky branded fake dried mangoes for 100 pesos per 100g packet, so I suspect that the manufacturer involved, M Lhuillier Food Products Inc. may be pushing that product out to stall owners at higher discounts because it is likely they are making a lot more profit on this candy product than one made with the real fruit (given that the ripe Carabao mangoes from which the dried mango slices are made retail from between 150 to 350 pesos per kg, depending on the time of year). Mango puree could be made from any type of mango.
Unfortunately consumer protection laws are almost non-existent in the Philippines, so here it is a matter of “buyer beware”. So please feel free to share this blog post to help others avoid this brand.