‘Healthy’ kids meals with more sugar than a donut
- Parents may believe that pasta bakes, cottage pies and mild curries are healthy
- But research shows that convenience meals may contain very high sugar levels
- Honey, fruit juices and agave syrup are high in sugar but are not labelled as such
- Some children’s readymeals had surprisingly high sugar content, research found
Harry Wallop For The Mail On Sunday
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Supermarket ready meals promoted as healthy for children often contain even more sugar than a McDonald’s Donut, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Parents buy dishes such as pasta bakes, cottage pies and mild curries for their children because they are quick and marketed as nutritionally balanced.
But research shows that many contain shocking amounts of hidden sugar.
Campaigners said last night that manufacturers risked contributing to Britain’s obesity crisis by adding sugar – or other sweeteners such as honey, fruit juices and agave syrup – to their products.
Among the worst culprits is Kirsty’s Kids’ Kitchen Chicken Korma With Brown Rice. It is promoted as a ‘nutritionally balanced’ meal with ‘no added sugar’.
But the small print reveals it has a total sugar content of 14.8g, almost four teaspoons, more than twice the 6.2g found in a McDonald’s Sugar Donut.
Although the korma meal does not contain added sugar, it does include agave syrup, an increasingly common sweetener. Kirsty’s Cottage Pie With Sweet Potato Mash has 12.8g total sugar per portion.
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Parent’s may believe that certain readymeals are healthy but the small print can reveal a different story. Campaigners believe that sugar is contributing to Britain’a obesity crisis
Another high-sugar meal comes from healthy-eating guru Annabel Karmel. Her Tomato Mascarpone Pasta With Hidden Veggies has 8.8g total sugar including from agave syrup, apple juice and sugar.
Other children’s meals causing concern include a small (205g) tin of Heinz Minions pasta shapes in tomato sauce and Heinz Little Kidz Juicy Apricot Chicken Rice, which both contain 8.9g of sugar.
Chloe Joyner, nutritionist at children’s food company Kiddyum, which helped compile the research, said parents needed to examine nutrition labels rather than accepting marketing claims.
‘It’s very easy for parents to look at the packaging and see “two of your five a day” or “organic” and feel confident that it’s healthy – and not see what’s in the ingredients,’ she added.
A Kirsty’s Kids’ Kitchen spokesman said: ‘Most of the sugars in our foods are a result of the natural sweetness found in sweet potato and other nutrient-rich vegetables.’
A spokesman for Annabel Karmel said that more than half of the sugar in the pasta dish came from vegetables, and that agave syrup was ‘a natural ingredient which is used in extremely small quantities to take away the acidity of the tomato sauce’.
Heinz said it had reduced the sugar in its children’s tinned pastas in recent years and would continue to ‘work on further reductions’.
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