Freedom Foods Maple Crunch | Chewsday Review

Today's Chewsday Review features Freedom Foods' version of Nutri-Grain, known as Maple Crunch. Both foods have 4 stars in the health star rating, so which is the better option?

Ingredients

Gluten free flour mix (76%) including rice, sorghum and corn flour, sugar, psyllium husks, maple syrup (2%), canola oil, salt emulsifier and flavours. Just FYI- Nutri-Grain contains similar ingredients, but use gluten-containing flours and have added protein and added vitamins and minerals.
The two sources of sugar in this product are regular sugar and maple syrup. Maple syrup has almost the exact same nutritional content as regular sugar, so please don’t be fooled into thinking this is a ‘healthier’ sugar. In comparison, Nutri-Grain contains sugar and molasses.
Psyllium husk is a type of soluble fibre, which is useful for preventing constipation. In comparison, Nutri-Grain contains oat fibre.

Positives

If you have a child with confirmed food allergies, you’ll know how hard it is to find suitable cereal options. This one is free from gluten, nuts, wheat, dairy, eggs and soy. Having said that- if your child is not allergic to these ingredients, please don’t avoid them! Gluten, nuts, wheat, dairy, eggs and soy are all nutritious ingredients and provide protein, fats and carbohydrates for growth, as well as a host of vitamins and minerals. Lots of people think that gluten free means healthier, but this is rarely the case.
Good fibre content with 3.5g per serve. In comparison, Nutri-Grain offers 2g of fibre per serve.
Generally low fat and saturated fat content (within healthy guidelines), although not as low as Nutri-Grain.
Not a super high sodium (salt) content at 255mg/100g (but also not super low!). Nutri-Grain has 30% more sodium, which isn’t so good.

Negatives

Generally we aim for less than 15% sugar in a food product. This cereal contains 15.7% sugar, tipping it just over the recommended level for foods. However, all of this sugar is added sugar (cane sugar and maple syrup) which isn’t ideal. In comparison, Nutri-Grain comprises 26.7% sugar.
Half the total protein of Nutri-Grain, but remember that most Australian kids have plenty of protein in their diets. This isn’t a true negative.
Not a source of iron, calcium or folate like Nutri-Grain is. I’m only really interested in the added iron though. A cup of Nutri-Grain provides 1/3 of a young child’s daily iron requirements, whilst Maple Crunch doesn’t.

Marketing

I find the marketing of Maple Crunch almost nauseating. There are so many ‘claims’ all over the box, but most of them are pretty vague. E.g. “Good food karma” “Nourishing food that loves your body back” Blah Blah Blah .
The “Free From Allergens” is also a big selling point. For kids with allergies, this company guarantees a cereal manufactured in an Australian factory that has absolutely no risk of contamination from gluten or nuts. For those anaphylactic kiddies and parents, this is very reassuring. Again though, if neither you nor your child actually have a confirmed allergy, then this fact shouldn’t convince you to buy the product.
Naturally sweetened with maple syrup. Ok this is just downright ridiculous. Maple syrup is no more ‘natural’ than regular sugar. Sure, maple sap comes from a tree, but you can’t just hold your container underneath and fill it up. There is a production process including heating and filtering and packaging. I love maple syrup as much as the next person, but ‘natural’ is purely an emotional term, and highly misleading at that. Additionally, there’s more cane sugar (ie/ regular sugar) added to this product than there is maple syrup. So I’d argue it’s sweetened with sugar. Not such a great selling point I’m guessing…
Maple Crunch: $1.66 per 100g vs Nutri-Grain $1.59 per 100g. This is based on the 300g packets- bigger packets of Nutri-Grain are obviously cheaper. Same same.

Alternatives

Maple Crunch has a lower sugar content and higher fibre content, but Nutri-Grain has a lower fat content and higher protein and iron content. I think they’re probably much of a muchness overall, and to be honest I wouldn’t recommend either of them.
Realistically, both of these products are sources of sugar, which isn’t a necessity at breakfast time. If you’ve got other options then I’d choose Weetbix, oats or porridge and add your own toppings.

The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.

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