Staggering sugar content in healthy breakfast bars, research finds

New research by the campaign group Action on Sugar has found that almost half of breakfast bars claiming to be healthy were revealed as being high in sugar.
An analysis looking at 39 breakfast biscuits revealed 46 per cent of them contained the same or higher amounts of sugar compared to a 30g bowl of Kellogg’s Coco Pops.
The group estimated that these bars, sold in a number of UK supermarkets, each had up to four teaspoons of sugar.
The main offenders include the Sondey Envitas chocolate and hazelnut biscuits from Lidl as well as the Breakfast Cocoa with Choc Chip from Belvita.
None of the items had green labelling meaning low sugar content and more than 80 per cent contained more sugar per serving than a 30g bowl of Honey Monster Puffs cereal.
Jennifer Rosborough, from campaign manager at Action on Sugar, said: “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.
“While some sugar in breakfast biscuits is naturally occurring due to ingredients such as fruit, many contain sugar that has been added by the manufacturer. We now want the Government to tackle this issue head on by making sure all manufacturers reduce sugar, fat and salt and promote their products responsibly.”
Calls have been made for all food producers to use colour-coded nutrition labelling as part of the government’s childhood obesity strategy to be published this year.