PIE-LING ON THE POUNDS
THOSE looking to avoid piling on the pounds this Christmas should consider buying their mince pies from Tesco and their christmas pudding from Morrisons.
The findings come from a survey of the fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt content of pies and puddings from five major supermarkets Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose - to see the biggest offenders.
Tesco’s standard mince pies were some of the healthiest overall, despite not coming first for any individual measurement.
They contain 7.5 grams of fat (3.4 grams of which were saturated fats), 14.5 grams of sugar, and 0.1 grams of salt.
Joining Tesco in first place were the Essential Waitrose 6 Shortcrust Mince Pies, containing 7.6 grams of fat (2.4 grams saturated), 14.3 grams sugar, and 0.13 grams of salt.
Asda’s standard mince pies had the lowest saturated fat 2.3 grams per pie - so may be the choice to leave out for Santa.
By far the healthiest Christmas pudding in our sample was Morrison’s Eat Smart Fruited Christmas Pudding - though we could only find it at a size for one
person. A serving contains three grams of fat, 1.7 grams of saturated fat, 26.2 grams of sugar and 0.1 grams of salt. The only pudding with a lower level of saturated fat was Asda’s standard christmas pudding, containing 0.9 grams per serving. However the Asda pudding ranked 28th out of 28 for sugar content - containing a whopping 58 grams per serving (64 per cent of your reference intake).
Morrison’s The Best Sloe Gin Christmas Pudding was the second ‘healthiest’ in our sample, containing only
5.1 grams of fat per serving - of which 2.9 was saturated.
The overall most indulgent pud in our sample was Waitrose’s Christmas
6 Month Matured Christmas Pudding, which ranked 27th for fat (10.1 grams a serving), 25th for saturated fat (five grams), 23rd for sugar (49 grams) and last place for salt (0.37 grams).
Of course, no mince pie or christmas pudding is good for you. On average, a mince pie will provide you with more than a fifth of your daily sugar allowance while a serving of christmas pudding will contain 48 per cent of your recommended sugar intake.
But for many, Christmas simply wouldn’t be the same without indulging in these festive favourites.