- The Guardian Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019
(^50) Money
▲ A Mini Cheddars bag contains twice
the fat indicated in the nutrition boxes
Money talks
Patrick Collinson
M
ost people in
the UK eat too
much saturated
fats. That’s not
my opinion –
it’s on the NHS
website. It raises your cholesterol
and increases the risk of heart
attacks. But as consumers are we
being deluded by manufacturers
and supermarkets who (entirely
legally) camoufl age the shocking
level of these fats in everyday
foods? Let’s stop shaming fat
people and start shaming the
companies that push these foods.Jacob’s Mini Cheddars The small
50g snack bags are sold as part
of the £3 lunchtime meal deal at
Tesco. The at-a-glance nutritionalStop shaming fat people and
start shaming the companies
that push such unhealthy food
information says they are 15% of
your daily recommended intake
of saturated fats. But they are not.
The fat information on the bag
says it is for a 25g serving, which
is only half of the Mini Cheddars
in the pack. Eat the whole pack- which nearly everyone will
do because, after all, it’s sold
as a single person’s lunchtime
deal – and you will be taking in
30% of your total fats for the day.
And that’s after you’ve probably
noshed through a cheese and ham
sandwich, using up another 30%
to 40% of your allowance.
Jacob’s does not even bother
to use the red/amber/green
colour-code warning system for
the fats, sugar and salt content
in this product. It just uses white
for everything. It turns out that
colour-coding is not compulsory,
it’s just a voluntary thing that some
use, some don’t. Jacob’s tell me it
has made great strides in reducing
the saturated fat content of its
product, and that it “voluntarily
provides nutrition information on
the front of our Jacob’s packaging”.
It insists the 50g pack is indeed
two servings, not one.Pizza Express supermarket pizzas
They sell around 35m a year, and the
nine-inch, 275g, boxed Margherita
pizza is the sort of thing that is
aimed at a single person, priced
at around £2.50. Pizza Express, to
its credit, uses the colour warning
system, but states that the pizza is
“amber” because it’s 30% of your
saturates intake for the day. Look
more closely and it says the fi gure is
“per half pizza”. Many, if not most,
adults will eat the whole pizza, so
it’s much more likely to be 60%.
That said, nearly all supermarket
own-brand pizzas take the same
line, presuming we all have
sparrow-like appetites.Houmous/tzatziki/garlic and onion
dips The celery or carrot sticks may
be healthy, but the savoury dips
are “salt and fat traps”. A £1, 230g,
“essential” hummus dip at Waitrose
has an amber warning that itcontains 6% of your recommended
daily intake of saturates. But along
the side of the pot is a separate line
that reveals the amber warning is
if you eat one-fi fth of a pot.
At Tesco, the slightly smaller pots
say they are shared between four
people. Really? It’s probably true
that most people will share a pot
of that size, but eating just one-fi fth
or one-quarter? Somewhat unlikely.Meanwhile, across the board in
supermarkets, chocolate barsare labelled as if you eat just one
square or two of a standard-sized
bar. And with biscuits it is assumed
you daintily eat one or two before
resealing the pack. Who are these
consumers? Certainly not the
averagely overweight Brit.
Action on Salt focus es on the
harmful eff ects of salt rather
than saturated fats but it agrees
that the portion sizes used by
retailers and manufacturers to
calculate fat and salt content are
“misleading” and “unrealistic”.
Manufacturers should either
sell the item in the portion size
recommended on the front, it
argues, or make the portion size
more realistic and refl ect that
in colour-coded warnings.
Personally, I’d prefer
manufacturers to put a note on
the front of products warning:
“If you eat all of this, you will be
consuming x% fat” etc. That may
make us rather more cautious
about stuffi ng our faces with
pizza, dips and chocolate.
Maybe products that exceed
100% of our salt or fat in one go
should be sold in plain packaging,
like cigarettes. And, ultimately,
the lesson is that vast amounts
of processed foods are just not
good for us.[email protected]RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws