When you look at the the amount of sugar in the so called “Health bars’ are they healthy or really just confectionery marketed to look like a healthier alternative to chocolate bars?

From this selection of snack bars that are marketed to give the appearance of being healthy, are they really that much better than confectionery.

Is the packaging misleading consumers?

If you look at a lot of confectionery bars such as a 55gm Cadbury Cherry Ripe, it contains 27.9gms of sugar or just on 50% so lets compare this with the Nice & Natural, Carmans and Uncle Toby bars.

You will see from Nice and Natural that they contain 25.7% sugar while Carman’s contains 19.9% sugar.

So from Uncle Tobys there is also a high level of sugar at 28.2% which gets buried by showing the amount of sugar per serving size.

This gives a misleading indication and many people will rely on the the information on the front of the packaging that says “Total Sugars 8.8g DI 10%”

Don’t forget the high saturated fat content as well at 7.4%, 1.6% (good) or 9.4% respectively.

This leads to whether a product that contains 20-30% sugar is really not that far behind a chocolate confectionery bar at 50% sugar. Like any product that is high in energy or sugar, it should be consumed in moderation however these bars are often given to kids in there daily lunch boxes as the appearance of a healthy box ticks all the boxes.
Unfortunately with the childhood obesity issue, should these types of products be given to kids.

For a product to be appealing to kids or adults for that matter, it needs to have lots of sugar, salt or fats, so all 3 products score high in the sugar rating while only Carman’s has a low level of Saturated fat while Nice & Natural and Uncle Toby’s are at unacceptable levels (7.4% & 9.4% respectively) if these bars are construed as being healthy.

The most disturbing fact is the omission of “trans fats” that are the really nasty fats, or known as Hydronised vegetable oil, it’s intersting that Carman’s is the only bar that includes this at 0% while Uncle Toby’s and Nice & Natural have no listings.

Given that the later 2 products contain vegetable oi or vegetable fat, and the processes involved in the manufacturing process involves lots of heat, there is a good chance that these products would contain “trans fats”

So I’II let you decide whether you think these health bars are just confectionery?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 30th, 2010 at 10:44 am by Andrew Talati and is filed under Nutrition.

Tags: Food Labelling, Health Claims, Healthy Food, Nutritional labels

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