Britain’s food industry has today been urged to stamp out the excessive use of sugar in so-called health foods.
It comes as researchers from the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) found that products such as Fruit Bowl Strawberry Fruit Flakes, which are sold in many UK supermarkets, are 69 per cent sugar-based.
Kellogg’s Special K Fruits of the Forest bars were also found to be high in sugar, with around 39 per cent of the product consisting of the ingredient.
Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the FPH, said: "Sugar is cheap and is used in bulk.
"There needs to be pressure on the industry to produce foods with lower sugar content."
Put into context, Haagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream contains only 20 per cent sugar content, far less than the ‘healthy’ alternatives of snacking fruit.
It follows proposals from the Food Standards Agency which earlier this year called for manufacturers to greatly reduce the amount of salt and sugar in readymade packaged goods, as well as offering smaller, single size portions.
Typical Guttridge equipment used in the food manufacturing and processing industry includes; feeders – metering screw feeders – weighing systems.
