the times | Thursday July 30 2020 1GT 9

times

De la Hunty explains. As for the total

amount of all types of sugars — free

or otherwise — that we can safely eat,

she says there are European agreed

recommendations.

“On food labels, where you may see

a percentage against a sugar value —

eg 20 per cent RI — this is based on

the European ‘reference intake’ for

total sugars, which is 90g per day.”

Glucose syrup, fructose etc

Calorific sugars may also hide under

bewilderingly industrial titles. Glucose

syrup is a sweetener developed by

breaking down starchy food through

chemical processing. Fructose is

a fruit sugar that is also made from

corn and maize. Others have label

names such as high-fructose corn

syrup (HFCS), isoglucose and

maize syrup.

In the UK the products have widely

replaced beet and cane sugar because

they are cheap and extend shelf life

by keeping foods moist. They add

texture, thicken and turn baked

products brown. They are also used in

frozen food to reduce crystallisation.

Although they contain about the

same number of calories as sugar,

their energy-dense chemistry means

that the body cannot metabolise them

as easily as it does sugar. This has led

to serious concern that they accelerate

weight gain and all its woes.

Order of appearance

Rather than trying to wade through

lists of ingredient proportions by

serving, portion size or “per 100g”, or

whatever, there’s an easy quick first

reference. Government regulations

stipulate that ingredients must be

listed by order of weight, with the

main ingredient first. If sugar (or any

Can Amazon’s food shop get me to

break up with Ocado? By Esther Walker

The Amazon Fresh algorithm

doesn’t know what a massive snob

I am about food yet, unlike Ocado

(which knows me so well I get offers

of organic chocolate and expensive

white wine when I’ve got PMT), so

I am first offered things I don’t want:

torpedoes of Coca-Cola, Doritos and

Cravendale milk.

There are brands that I don’t

understand — is “Russell’s” a decent

fishmonger? What about the

vegetables from “Grower’s Pride?”

Are the chickens that laid the

“Liberty Farm” eggs happy? None

of it makes any sense to me.

Then I stumble upon seams of the

good stuff. There is meat from the

west London butcher Lidgate, cheese

from the Queen’s deli Partridges,

sourdough from Gail’s (I don’t rate

Gail’s, but still, it’s Gail’s), and

smoked salmon from H Forman &

Son. There is kombucha, Charlie

Bigham pies, Ecover, Burford Brown

eggs and Mattarello pasta sauces.

There is Beavertown IPA and Lindt

Chocolate in Dark Orange. Alas, the

white wine is uninspiring and there’s

no Kingsmill bread — what?! — but

it has the cat food my cat likes.

OK, well, let’s check this basket

out, then. Oh. No slots today.

And tomorrow there are slots, but

the stuff I was most excited about

(the beer, the Bigham pies) is

unavailable — with no suggestions

of alternatives.

And, wait, who is going to deliver

all this? And how? Anecdotal

evidence reveals it’s a bit hit and

miss. Sometimes in a van, sometimes

in just a random car “a bit like an

Uber” with your chilled groceries

in a cool bag.

Someone else says: “I’ve had more

than one broken egg.” Er, hang on

a sec — you expect me to order raw

meat and fish and have it delivered

in a taxi? Maybe not. Thanks all the

same, Amazon, but I’ll happily pay

the £74.99 a year just to see that

lemon or raspberry van trundling

up the road.

I

t’s war. Amazon Fresh, the

grocery wing of the online

marketplace megalith, has

declared that it will not charge

customers for delivery. Sure,

you still have to be a Prime

member (£79 per year), but

your grocery delivery will not

be added on top as long as you spend

more than £40.

This is a grenade in the underpants

of other online supermarkets, who

must charge for delivery or go bust.

The boss of Waitrose, James

Bailey, is openly scared. “It feels

like the nuclear button has been

pressed,” he says.

My Ocado Anytime Smartpass

costs me £74.99 a year and allows me

unlimited deliveries at no extra cost

(except at Christmas). I’m also a

member of Amazon Prime. Would I

swap from Ocado to Amazon Fresh

to save £74.99 a year?

I’m one of those slavishly loyal

Ocado customers who, despite being

denied a delivery during lockdown,

went crawling back as soon as it

would deign to take my money.

I know others who say they feel

betrayed by the whole thing and

will never shop there again. This

makes me feel very slightly like

a collaborator in Occupied France.

Perhaps I, too, ought to punish it

for not prioritising loyal customers

during lockdown. Ocado is also

trying to build a warehouse next to

a school in Tufnell Park, north

London, where I live, to expand its

60-minute delivery “Zoom” network.

Everyone I know is absolutely

furious about this.

But food? On Amazon? That’s

where I get the random bits of junk

my children demand and drunken

impulse purchases (adult colouring

book? Cool! *hiccup*). I have a vision

of groceries jammed into a brown

box, wedged into the letterbox,

broken eggs oozing out of the sides.

Then I think about all the

colouring books I could buy with

that £74.99 saving on the Smartpass.

times

of sugar’s many aliases) is in the top

three ingredients, the product

probably has no place in your larder.

“Free-from” fandango

When a manufacturer wants to

distract you from the nasties inside the

packaging, it will often put great effort

into pointing out what’s actually not

contained in the product — it’s a trick

worthy of Derren Brown.

For example, GÜ Hazelnut and

Chocolate Crunchy Spread doesn’t

just sound wholesomely natural. Its

label repeatedly proclaims the product

to be “palm oil-free” and “gluten-free”.

Only in a thin typeface among

the nutritional information do we

learn that it is 36 per cent made

up of sugars.

“No or low” virtue signalling should

be a red flag. Manufacturers often

replace fat with sugar, which is just as

calorific. Similarly, “low fat” or “low

sugar” options are often high in salt

instead. Why? Because decades ago

food manufacturers discovered the

“bliss point” where salt, fat and sugar

combine to make even the most

flavourless foods fool our brains into

saying “yum”. They can alter the ratios

of sugar, fat and salt in countless

different combinations.

On top of this, “no or low” promises

spark something that consumer

psychologists call the “gratitude

effect”. When a brand seems to go to

that little bit of extra effort for us, we

subliminally want to reciprocate by

buying its products.

The trust trick

Dimbleby’s anger at M&S is fuelled

partly by the company’s reputation

for honesty. “If they are guilty of such

trickery, you can be sure the practice is

ubiquitous,” he fumes.

M&S has said: “All our products

have clear labelling so that customers

can make informed choices about

what they buy. All our Percy Pigs are

made with natural fruit juices and no

artificial colours or flavourings, and

last year we also introduced a range of

Percy Pigs with one third less sugar.”

How about a company called

Innocent? They must be nice people.

Not necessarily, says Dimbleby’s

report, which shames Innocent’s Juicy

Water. The label, according to his

report, says it has “no added sugar”,

but his investigations found it contains

eight teaspoons of natural sugar.

Deceitful descriptors

Wholesome, natural, artisanal

adjectives on labels should be taken

as yet another red flag. “Natural cane

sugar”. It’s sugar. “Hand-fried”. It’s

fried. As Dimbleby says: “One of the

most egregious sins of the modern

food industry is its habit of clothing

its products in false virtue.”

Yet as con tricks go, these are so

pathetically shallow that they work

only with our connivance. As any

con artist knows, it’s all about telling

people what they want to hear, even

if it’s patently too good to be true.

We want to believe the dream of

sweet, fatty, saltily delicious industrial

junk that isn’t just non-lethal, but

actually good for us. We all want to

believe in Percy Pig, the same as any

other religious improbability. The food

industry is delighted to sate our need.

healthy’ sugar

Müller Corner

strawberry yoghurt

What they say: Source of

protein; no artificial

preservatives, sweeteners,

or colours.

Sugar: 11.9g per 143g yoghurt

The yoghurt

13%

Daily

intake

Trek Peanut Power

protein energy bar

What they say: 100 per cent

natural ingredients with no

added sugar or syrups;

Trek energy bars only

contain naturally

occurring sugars; one

of your five a day;

gluten, wheat and

dairy-free

Sugar: 21.1g per

55g bar

The bar

You expect

me to have

my me at

and fish

delivered

in a taxi?

TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE

23%

Daily

intake