The No Nasties Project 50% Less Sugar Fruity Loops | Chewsday Review
Finding a high-quality breakfast cereal suitable for the whole family is a MISSION! ‘50% less sugar’ sounds like a good start… let’s take a closer look.
Ingredients
- Rice flour, wholemeal wheat flour, sugar, sweeteners (erythritol, stevia), salt, natural colours (turmeric, carmine, copper chlorophyll, vegetable carbon, annatto), natural flavour, food acid (330), emulsifier (471)
- These are sweetened with a mix of sugar and sweeteners. Stevia and erythritol are both natural sweeteners that come from plants. They’re unlikely to be harmful, but they do make foods taste extra sweet.
- Allergens: Wheat, Gluten
- May contain: Tree nuts
Positives
- The ‘50% less sugar’ claim is legit. Regular Fruit Loops contain 38g of sugar per 100g whereas these contain 16.8g per 100g. If your family eats Fruit Loops a lot, this is a win – but not a reason to start offering them.
- Low fat and saturated fat content, all within healthy guidelines
- All the colours come from natural sources, but this is expected for a breakfast cereal
Negatives
- Whilst these do have 50% less sugar than regular Fruit Loops, they still have 16.8g/100g, which is just above the upper limit of healthy guidelines. One serve of this cereal contains just over a teaspoon of added sugar.
- This cereal is pretty low in fibre, with only 1.1g of fibre per serve. In comparison, one serve of Weet-bix contains 4.1g per serve, which is 25% of your little one’s recommended daily fibre intake.
- This cereal doesn’t contain any added iron. It is quite common for iron to be added to breakfast cereals – even regular Fruit Loops contain 25% of your little ones recommended daily iron intake! As iron can be a tricky nutrient for kids to eat enough of, I tend to recommend fortified cereals (like Weet-Bix) as a way to boost your little one’s iron intake.
Marketing
- ‘50% less sugar’ – 50% less than normal Fruit Loops, yes… but the added sweeteners mean you still expose your little one to super sweet flavours. This can be a real issue for kiddos who just can’t learn to like normal foods.
- ‘No artificial colours or flavours’ – True
Alternatives
- If your little one regularly eats Fruit Loops (or similar!) this would be a good option for a swap that looks and tastes similar, but has less sugar. I’d still recommend mixing it with other cereals to bring down the sweet factor.
- This could be used as ‘special occasion’ or holiday cereal, but not something for everyday. There’s just not enough good stuff in it to be something to offer every morning.
- As a daily cereal, I always recommend oats or Weet-Bix, which are both low in sugar and high in fibre. I like to add ‘sprinkles’ of chia/sunflower/pumpkin/hemp seeds or LSA to mix it up.
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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