The product survey, which analysed 39 breakfast biscuits sold in leading UK supermarkets, found that 46 per cent of the breakfast biscuits surveyed contained the same amount or more sugars than a bowl of Kellog’s Coco Pops (30g serving).
The survey revealed the four products with the highest sugar content per serving are Lidl Sondey Envitas Breakfast Biscuits Chocolate & Hazelnut Flavour and Lidl Sondey Envitas Breakfast Biscuit Chocolate, followed by BelVita Breakfast Yogurt Crunch Creamy Live Yogurt Cocoa Biscuits(two biscuits in a pouch) and BelVita Breakfast Cocoa with Choc Chip(four biscuits in a pouch)– containing the equivalent of approximately four teaspoons of sugar.
Worryingly, 38 per cent of products would have a red warning colour for front of pack labelling for high sugars content (15 out of 39), 41 per cent of products would have an amber colour for front of pack labelling (16 out of 39) and not one single product featured agreen frontof pack labelling for low sugars. Every single one of these products contained one or more teaspoons of sugar per serving.
When it comes to serving size, misleading labelling continues to baffle consumers. For example, BelVita labels the nutrition information of one biscuit on the front of pack nutrition labelling even though each pouch contains two to four biscuits, which most people assume is one serving.
Following recent reports from Euromonitor confirming Britons consume more than twice as much sugar in a day as the global average, Action on Sugar is calling on the Government to urgently set regulated targets for food manufacturers when it comes to reformulation with enforcement of consistent colour coded front of pack labelling.
Jennifer Rosborough, registered nutritionist and campaign manager at Action on Sugar, commented,“It is important that breakfast substitutes offer the healthiest alternative, rather than a worse option. Sadly, we could not recommend any of the products we examined which are laden with excess sugar.