Consumer conned by calorie counts

Many food manufacturers are now significantly altering the calorie count on their products to promote sales.

There appears to be significant revision of nutritional information on food products that lower calorie counts to a size that will not deter the buyer. This is especially true of quasi-food products like confectionery, where stark adjustment is taking place. These products have a high calorie count because they are laced with sugar, but may register very little on calories when nutritional information is examined.

Some major soft drink companies have also been adjusting nutritional information. That information may be shockingly low for, say 1.5 litres of a drink that may be bitter-sweet, such is the amount of sugar in it.

Fruit juices are also loaded with calories, and this is where the hardest evidence of all is for calorie statements or revisions. One can compare two individual litres of orange juice with the same specification by different producers and get very different calorie counts. People also need to be careful about the way calories (Kcals) are now been presented on packaging.

More and more manufacturers are presenting two columns of information on products. One is the overall calorie count and the other is the calorie count per 100 grams or 100 millilitres. This means that very often you have to look at both columns very carefully before you understand the figures quoted — notwithstanding downward adjustments. In value packs, the entire calorie count is not given at all and only the calorie count per unit in the pack is given.

This will make it more difficult for those who want to lose weight. The subtle and progressive downsizing of calorie counts by manufactures must come to an end.

Maurice Fitzgerald

Shanbally

Co Cork