‘Healthy’ fruit bars with same sugar as doughnuts
‘HEALTHY’ fruit snacks packed into children’s lunchboxes can often contain as much sugar as an iced doughnut.
Campaigners say that manufacturers are trying to put ‘health halos’ on high sugar products by playing up the inclusion of fruit.
In reality, these items are high in sugar, which can rot teeth and lead to weight gain.
Campaign group Action on Sugar found that two in three of the snacks on the shelves had the equivalent of two teaspoons of sugars or more in just a portion – the same as one iced doughnut.
For example, Tesco Apple & Sultana Bars have 18.4g of sugar per portion, which is equivalent to 4.6 teaspoons. The Kiddylicious Apple Fruit Wiggles are 70 per cent sugar and one portion is equivalent to 2.1 teaspoons. Other high sugar fruit snacks include Organix Blackcurrant & Apple Stars, The Fruit Factory Strawberry, Apple, Orange Fruit Stars, and Fruit
Bowl Strawberry Peelers. The campaign group said 91 per cent of 56 products it examined had no front-of-pack traffic light label.
The group is calling for a ban on the use of misleading claims designed to promote the products as healthy, with phrases such as ‘one of your five a day’, ‘naturally occurring sugars’ or ‘made from real fruit’.
Processed dried fruit products are marketed as ‘healthy snacks’ due to their high fruit content. However, the sugars they contain, which can include added sugar plus purees, concentrates, juices and processed fruit, can contribute to obesity, Type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.
Chairman of the group, Graham MacGregor, Professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary,
University of London, said: ‘While the Government gets to grips with the current Covid-19 pandemic, it mustn’t ignore that the situation is fuelling the UK’s other pandemics – obesity, Type 2 Diabetes and tooth decay – all linked to high sugar intakes which the food industry is solely responsible for.’
But chief operating officer at the Food & Drink Federation, Tim Rycroft, said: ‘The products will all have an ingredients list, so a parent can identify if the product is just fruit or contains other ingredients. It will also have a nutrition declaration which will give the total sugar content...’