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Peppa Pig Yoghurt Coated Sultanas | Chewsday Review

It’s got Peppa Pig on the packaging so this product is likely to be a big hit with the toddler market. But are they suitable toddler snacks? Let’s see in today’s Chewsday Review…

Ingredients

Yoghurt coating 64% (sugar, vegetable oil, whey powder, yoghurt powder (6%), emulsifiers (soy lecithin, 492, 476), sultanas (36%) (sultanas 99%, vegetable oil), rice flour, glazing agent 904.
Glazing agent 904 is shellac (but not the nail polish!) that comes from insects, and provides the shiny texture.
The emulsifiers keep the texture consistent in the balls and are generally well-tolerated.
Common allergens include: milk, soy. May be present (according to the label): tree nuts, peanuts and gluten.

Positives

Negatives

Fat content exceeds healthy guidelines with fat making up 26.2% of the product (recommended to be less than 10%). The saturated fat in particular is 25.5%, which is MUCH higher than the recommended less than 3%! This is actually outrageous.
The sugar content (67%) is also well above the recommended guidelines (less than 15%). Usually, if this were a dried fruit product, I’d expect about 40-50% sugar (as naturally occurring sugars). The packet is only 35% sultanas (the rest is the yoghurt coating) so I’d actually expect the overall sugar number to be about 15-20% in this product. Obviously 67% is well above that, and comes from the added sugar in the ‘yoghurt’ (see below).
You’d expect a yoghurt-based food to be a source of calcium, but it’s not declared on this packet so I’m guessing the calcium content is minimal at best.
I’d be hard pressed to consider this ‘yoghurt coating’ as yoghurt, with only 6% powdered yogurt included. The first two ingredients (in the greatest amount in the product) are sugar and oil, which are not key components of yoghurt! This would account for the high fat and sugar contents!

Marketing

What’s really interesting is that these boxes have no nutritional info on the individual packet, or on the website. It’s only on the outer plastic layer which means once it’s ripped you can’t read it.
There really isn’t any other advertising on the pack, so these guys are really relying on Peppa and George to do their jobs!
On a side note, I’d just like to clarify a couple of things about dried fruit. I often hear people say ‘oh, dried fruit is full of sugar’. Essentially, dried fruit is just normal fruit that has had all of the water removed. No extra sugar is added. But, because the fruit is much smaller than fresh fruit (think of a sultana compared to a grape), you tend to eat more dried fruit (and therefore eat more sugar). This is not a bad sugar, and it does contain fibre, but it’s just easy to overdo it. It also gets stuck in kids’ teeth much more easily than fresh fruit. However, this product is only 1/3 dried fruit.

Alternatives