72% sugar lollies marketed as fruit – Uncle Tobys Fruit Nibbles & Fruit Fix

Simply Fruit Nibbles. Simply 72% sugar. Image: Uncle Tobys

What is it with otherwise intelligent people falling for marketing claims that just because lollies are made from fruit they  must be good for you? I had a feeling of  déjà vu yesterday at badminton when one of the players was eating new Uncle Tobys Simply Fruit Nibbles with pictures of fruit all over the front. I groaned and looked at the packet and sure enough the main ingredients are: concentrated apple puree (52%), concentrated apple juice (37%) (also: passionfruit juice (6%), concentrated lemon juice (2%), wheat fibre, gelling agent (pectin), flavour).

I pointed out to her that this meant it was mostly sugar, with lots of pictures of fruit to delude her into feeling good about it, but she argued that because it was made from fruit therefore it was better for you than other sweets. And why would concentrated apple juice be worse for you than eating an apple? I eventually managed to explain it to her, and I think she half believed me, but she stuck to saying that at least it was still better for you than other confectionery, like chocolate.

So let’s do some comparisons:

Cadbury milk chocolate nutrition information

Uncle Tobys Simply Fruit Nibbles nutrition information

Milk chocolate contains 56 g of sugar per 100 g. A Mars bar has 60 g of sugar per 100 g. The fruit nibbles contain 72 g of sugar per 100 g – a 35 g nibble serve contains almost 30% of an adult’s recommended daily intake of sugar.

But chocolate does have a lot more fat, so let’s make a more equivalent comparison to what a Mum might think of as a very sugary, artificial, bad for your kids’ lunchbox lolly. Pascall Jellies – Ingredients: Sugar, Wheat Glucose Syrup, Water, Gelatine, Food Acid (330), Flavours, Colours (102, 122, 133, 123, 110, 124).

Pascall jellies nutrition information

The wonderful real fruit nibbles have 72 g per 100 g of sugar, while the fruit-flavoured lollies only have 62 g per 100 g sugar. Even marshmallows have less: 66 g per 100 g sugar.

But they’re made from fruit – why are they 72% sugar?

Fruit, especially apples, do contain sugar, but the sugar is bulked out so you eat far less sugar in a serve of fruit. Whereas with these concentrated products if you eat a similar quantity you get several times the amount of sugar (and let’s face it – who sticks to a serving size of eg. 25 g = 5 squares of chocolate?).

Here’s a comparison from the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference per 100g:

	Apple	Apple juice (unsweetened)	Apple juice concentrate (unsweetened)
Sugars total	10.4	9.6	38.8
Sucrose	2.1	1.3	5.3 *
Glucose	2.4	2.6	10.5 *
Fructose	5.9	5.7	23.0 *
Energy (kJ)	191	191	695

Sugars are in grams (per 100 grams)
*Unfortunately it didn’t have the sugar breakdown for the AJ concentrate, so I’ve estimated it by assuming it’s the same as the AJ proportions.

The beauty of the concentrate is that rather than putting ‘sugar‘ on the ingredients list they can put ‘concentrated apple juice’ on the ingredients list. And people think it’s just like fruit.

1 tsp sugar ≈ 4 grams

Even after I point out that it’s been refined so it’s basically enormous amounts of sugar, people argue that it’s natural sugar from fruit so that makes it okay. Sugar is sugar is sugar. They’re the same chemicals. Plus sugar comes from a plant called sugarcane (sugarcane is a grass – shall I add it to your smoothie?), so how is it any less natural?

Except apple juice is notoriously high in the sugar fructose (thereby causing diarrhoea in kids ). [Background: sugar from sugarcane that you add to your cup of coffee is called sucrose - sucrose is made up of a glucose bound to a fructose.] There’s a whole health debate surrounding increasing addition of fructose to our food, which I’m not going to go into here. Consumers don’t realise how high these foods are in fructose, and can’t make an informed choice, because foods aren’t required to list the sucrose/glucose/fructose breakdown in their nutrition information.

Why déjà vu?

Fruit Fix: 99% 'fruit ingredients'; 72% sugar fix. Image: Uncle Tobys

I’ve been through this before with an RA in Gastro who showed me these wonderful new fruit bars she was eating – Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix. Groan. Turn over the packet and it says 59% concentrated apple juice puree and 72.7 g per 100 g sugar. I tried explaining to her that it was mostly sugar, but to no avail.

They’re even allowed to market it as being equivalent to fruit: it’s 99% fruit, contains a serve of fruit for your child’s lunchbox (the government lets it count towards their Go for 2&5 fruit and veg initiative – while it does state that fresh fruit is best, it can be eaten instead of one of those actual pesky pieces fruit), and it even has the Heart Foundation tick of approval.

You know the term greenwashing for products/companies that market themselves as all environmentally friendly, but aren’t really? Maybe this should be called fruitwashing? … healthwashing? lunchboxwashing?

Tagged: Apple juice, food, fructose, fruit, health, marketing, nutrition, science, sugar, uncle tobys

Posted in: health, marketing