- A new CHOICE review of 224 snack bars suggests what we’ve been saying all along – many of these bars are far from healthy.
- The bars contain up to 50 per cent free sugars and negligible amounts of real fruit.
- Yes, we may have also written about this a few times before!
CHOICE reviewed 224 bars and found most contain excess sugar and are not a healthy choice, despite their health-focused marketing.
The review plainly picks apart the “earth-toned packaging, images of fruit and claims of no artificial colours and flavours” to reveal some unsavoury truths about the sweets inside.
On average, the bars contain around 25 per cent sugar, with some reaching a whopping 50 per cent!
And while the lush fruity images on the packaging might indicate that the sugar is coming from real fruit, most of it falls under the World Health Organization’s definition of free sugars. This includes honey, juice and fruit concentrates as well as “refined sugar”.
So are they better for you than a Mars bar? Well, as CHOICE put it, this fruit “owes more to chemistry than agriculture”!
The Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) continues to evaluate whether free sugars should be specified in ingredients lists as we type. For the sake of consumers everywhere, we hope this goes through. It’ll certainly be one less loophole for Big Food to crawl through!
Are you shocked at how much sugar is in these bars?
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