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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?

Current Food labelling is misleading consumers with confusing information for the average person. By using a myriad of information, the product can appear to be healthy and within acceptable limits when in fact it is giving a different perception.

Research has shown that people do not fully understand what DI or daily intake represents or what a serving size should be based on there height or body weight.

Uncle Toby’s bars appear to be healthy with low levels of sugar when compared to the daily intake but contain a whopping 28.2% sugar based 28.2gms per 100gms.

By focusing on the serving size of 31.3gms, the sugar contained can be manipulated to appear low at 8.8gms or 10% of DI, rather than the true figure of 28.2gm/100gms.

Also using percentages captivates your interest. 20% of your daily wholegrain target, which is great if you’re not worried about consuming high levels of sugar (28.2%) and fat (17.3%) or more importantly 9.4% saturated fat, the stuff we should be avoiding.

Well to me a product that contains (8.8 grams/31.3grams) or 28% sugar is confectionery, so a 53 grams Mars bar has 31 grams of sugar so 2 Uncle Toby bars has 17.6 grams of sugar, only half that of a equivalent Mars bar.

It is interesting that the lines can be blurred when it comes to the language used to sell the product, things like “Goodness for greatness’.

I’m not sure what that you would consider vegetable fat, glucose, sugar, emulsifier (Soy Lecithin) & preservative 220 as being good for you, Goodness implies healthy which sounds a bit strange given this ingredients listing.

The BIG picture of the dripping stick of honey & an image of almonds implies that “Honey” and “almonds” constitutes a significant proportion of the ingredient listing, rather than a meagre 1% each.

A better system would be using the “Traffic light” system which has been introduced by the City Of Melbourne, which would mean that the Uncle Toby bars would be given a red for sugar & saturated fats, orange for general fats and green for salt.

Have you ever looked at food packaging and wondered what the word “fresh” really means?
According to the Australian Macquarie Dictionary, the word fresh means: newly made or obtained etc, not canned or frozen, not preserved by pickling, salting drying, etc

So when you see Orange juice called “Australian Fresh” or Olives in oil called “Always fresh”, is this a subtle way of getting the word “fresh” onto the packaging by having the word in the company name but not in the products description?

The Australian Fresh Orange juice has a used by date of 4th September 2010 (Used by 02 SEP 10L L3 18:43 on packaging), as I purchased the juice last night, the 17th so allowing for the manufacturing and distribution cycle of perhaps 2 days, and assuming the product was delivered yesterday, is a 20 day old product still considered fresh?

Foods Standards Australia and New Zealand doesn’t have guidelines in regards to food labeling, this is handled by the various state bodies. In Victoria this covered by Human Services under their Food Safety and Regulatory Activities Unit.

Ultimately it comes down to what a court deems the health claim or term to be true, funny enough it comes down to the definition in the Macquarie Dictionary and what a lay person would consider to be true.

A lot of orange juice that is blended from local and imported oranges or even reconstituted juice uses aseptic juice.

So what is aseptic juice anyway, well when the oranges are originally squeezed the juice is heated to kill any bacteria and then kept in cool rooms for anywhere up to 2 years.

Does this sound fresh to you??? As soon as you heat or expose the juice to UV light or oxygen it starts to deteriorate and lose all the nutrients. So the end result is that all that vitamin C needs to be replenished by adding “Vitamin C”. With the “Australian Fresh” Orange juice, vitamin C is added.

Aseptic processing removes most of the nutrients found in orange juice, reduces the taste of the juice and changes its colour.
The other part of the equation is the bulk buying of oranges from local growers when the price is the most attractive and processing the juice for consumption throughout the year.
I’ve never seen on the packaging, oranges have been squeezed on the 8/8/10.

When you buy bread, it usually says “Baked on the xx/xx/xx. I would like to see on the packaging “Oranges squeezed on 10/08/10″

Imagine if you went to a baker and you asked “is the bread fresh” and they said “yes, it was baked 2 days ago” or if you went to a takeaway that had pasta in a bain marie and the response was it was cooked 2 days ago, would you accept this as being fresh?

The other process is “reconstitition” whereby the water is original removed by evaporation from the juice for transportation or storage purposes and reconstituted by adding water back to the concentrate. This process doesn’t sound like the juice would be very fresh?

Getting back to the “Always fresh” “Deli Style Kalamata Olives” would you consider a product that has vegetable oil, salt and preservatives a fresh product? Although “Always Fresh” doesn’t necessarily imply it is fresh, it does confuse consumers when trying to make a decision when looking at a multitude of products.

It’s amazing what people are eating in the mornings, especially what they are feeding their children given the high levels of childhood obesity and increasing rates of Type II diabetes.

While I was in the Melbourne CBD, I was given this brochure and mini packet of Sultana Bran.

While kids are kids and getting them to eat a healthy breakfast is difficult enough, is giving them a sugary breakfast cereal the answer?
When I was a kid we had branded kids cereals which was ok given that we didn’t consume any more highly processed foods sugary foods during the day or evening. Fast forward a few years and the average kid is surrounded by a huge range of confectionery and other purported healthy muesli bars etc.

What is more disturbing is that the marketing is very cleverly pitched at parents by making the notion of connecting more with their teenage children amusing over a bowl of Sultana bran.

With an average serving based on 45grams, it contains 12.8grams of sugar or 28.4%, so with your average growing teenager need more than a teenee weenee pack, the amount of sugar consumed is quite high at 28% of the recommended daily intake if 90grams or 2 servings is consumed.

What is needed is a more coherent strategy with advertising standards and a simplified food labeling system. This will help to quickly identify those products that are high in salt, sugar and fats by removing any confusion and incorrect emphasis on fats and then neglecting the sugar or total energy content.

KFC has a pilot program to reduce salt by 10% in Tasmania but are the levels of Sodium in their products still at high levels?

With McDonalds and other large fast food conglomerates racing for the Healthy menu options is there enough being done to reduce the high levels of Sodium, fats and sugars on their menu’s.

FSANZ, or the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand has a voluntary code in reducing the salt content food products by 10%, an initiative introduced in 2006
in recommending a maximum alt intake of 2.3 grams is Sodium.

Exceeding the daily maximum intake of 2.3 grams of salt (Sodium), a recommendation from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council leads to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure and stroke.

So with a significant number of KFC’s products, especially when bundled together in a meal deal, the Sodium in their KFC’s products, for example a Crispy Twister (c) & chips gets close to the daily allowance.

So whether KFC reducing salt is a genuine move to improve the nutritional value of there products or more about changing public perceptions is up to you