Many ready meals ‘contain more sugar than ice cream’

SAVOURY meals lick vanilla ice cream in terms of sugar content, a leading consumer organisation discovered.

British-based Which? found that savoury meals such as Tesco crispy beef with sweet chilli sauce and Asda sticky chilli chicken contain more sugar per gram than vanilla ice cream.

Tesco’s ready meal contains 23.1g sugar per 100g, or 57.6g per pack, while

Asda’s contains 19.2g sugar per 100g.

Vanilla ice cream can contain up to 23.5g sugar per 100g — about two scoops.

Dieticians recommend that food products should contain less than 10g per 100g — anything more than that is considered high.

The consumer survey also found high levels of sugar in other products like Weight Watchers oat digestive biscuits (a low-fat food) that contain 20.5g of sugar per 100g while an Alpen raspberry with yoghurt bar contains 36.1g sugar per 100g.

Margot Brennan from the Irish Nutrition and Dietetic Institute said a major problem was the absence of information on an acceptable level of sugar in food products. She pointed out that some products being sold as low fat “healthy” foods had a high sugar content.

“To make it more palatable, you have to put more stuff in and that is why more sugar and salt is added,” she said. “It is also why low fat foods may not always be the healthiest choice available.”

Ms Brennan was also critical of the guideline daily allowance (GDA) on Easter eggs that show nutritional value. Chocolate eggs typically contain 31.2g of sugar per 100g.

“The difficulty is that the GDA relates to adults and not children,” she stressed.

“Let’s face it, adult males do not tend to eat a lot of Easter eggs — these products are children’s products and manufacturers are trying to make them look good for them.”

The “traffic light” system of labelling products was not perfect either, she said. “A product like cheese could end up with a red light on it because of the fat and salt content and yet cheese is hugely nutritious.”