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Little Bellies Organic Gingerbread Men | Chewsday Review

Everyone loves a gingerbread man, but they’re not exactly known for being a healthy choice. Today’s Chewsday Review features Little Bellies gingerbread men marketed to toddlers. Let’s see how they stack up.

Ingredients

Organic Wholegrain Wheat Flour (31%), Organic Wheat Flour, Organic Grape Juice Concentrate (29%), Organic Sustainable Palm Oil, Organic Sunflower Oil, Organic Ginger (0.3%), Raising Agent (Sodium Bicarbonate).
Grape juice concentrate is basically just the sugar from grapes, without the nutrients and fibre (all the good stuff).
“Organic” means that the ingredients are grown in a non-toxic environment and dangerous fertilisers are not used for cultivation . This does NOT improve the nutrient content of the foods grown.
Common allergens: Gluten. The package says it might contain small traces of Egg, Milk, Soy, and Tree Nuts.

Positives

Negatives

Although wholegrain flour and wheat flour are the two major ingredients in the biscuits, the fibre content is low at only 1 gram for 5 biscuits
Saturated fat is higher than recommended (at 3.8 grams/100 g) but this is less than others on the market like “Little bellies organic animal biscuits” (4.4g/100g) and other sweet biscuits such as “Arnott’s family assorted” (8g/100g).
The sugar content is high. The grape juice concentrate (aka sugar) comprises almost 30% of the total ingredients!!! This is almost equal to the proportion of the wholegrain flour and wheat flour. Remember grape concentrate is sugar, NOT fruit. However, when compared to other sweet biscuit products on the supermarket shelf such as Arnott’s and whole kids, these biscuits are lower in terms of sugar content.
These are pretty pricey bickies. The price of a 130 g box is almost $4.80 which means a dollar for every 10 tiny biscuits
The texture of the biscuits isn’t the best. It’s pretty chewy and gets easily stuck on teeth.

Marketing

The marketing seems a little cheeky . The constant mentioning of “wholegrains” and “sweetened with grape juice” can be confused as high in fibre or low in sugar.
“Goodness from wholegrain”- with this kind of phrase you would expect a fibre rich snack. Nope!
“.. grape juice concentrate for a touch of sweetness..” Well, the biscuits don’t taste too sweet but definitely have a lot of sugar in them.
“Baby grade organic” This term does not have a specific industry definition.