Rafferty’s Garden Snack Bar | Chewsday Review
Today's Chewsday Review features a baby snack bar. As you’d know from previous reviews, baby snacks are a booming market. These Rafferty’s Garden Snack Bars in Blueberry, Banana and Apples are convenient, but are they also nutritious? Let’s have a closer look...
- Blueberry banana apple paste (40% see next point for the breakdown of this content), wheat flour, dextrose, water, oat flour, butter, sugar, whey powder, humectant, canola oil, raising agent (500, 450, 341, 541), whey protein concentrate, natural flavour, emulsifier, caramelised sugar.
- The ‘blueberry banana apple paste’ is made up of apple puree concentrate (39%), sugar, glucose, humectant, blueberry puree (6%), banana puree (4%), wheat fibre, elderberry juice concentrate, citrus fibre, natural flavour, citric acid.
- Common allergens include: wheat, milk and soy
- Saturated fat and total fat content within healthy guidelines.
- The snack bars are a source of fibre with one bar providing 4% of a young child’s daily fibre requirements (it’s not a huge positive though, is it?!).
- Sodium (salt) content is within healthy guidelines at 209mg/100g, however, that is still a bit higher than I’d hope for a sweet product.
- The sugar content of 35.5g/100g exceeds the healthy recommendations by more than double. When you look at the ingredient list there are five separate sources of sugar (not including the naturally occurring fruit sugar). Based on my calculations, added sugar makes up almost 30% of this product. That’s appalling for a baby food.
- This product contains trans fat (the very bad fat) and although it’s only 0.3g/100g, it’s definitely a negative.
- At $27 a kilo (44c a bar), they’re not particularly cheap.
- “Soft, easy to eat texture” “Individually wrapped for freshness” “Great for little hands” Hmmmm…. seeing a theme here? Nothing about the actual content of this bar is there?! Funny that…
- “A delicious snack to keep them going when out and about!” The convenience is about the only thing these bars have going for them!
- Fruit based products will always include some naturally occurring sugars (which are not a concern) but this product has a significant amount of added sugar, which is NOT necessary. Especially not in a baby food! I would not be recommending these foods as a regular option for your young one.
- Instead perhaps you could consider fresh or tinned fruit, or if you want a sweeter dry product then consider pikelets or a dry cereal like Cheerios.
The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.
Hungry for More? Related Reviews
Sorry, we couldn't find any Reviews that match that criteria.
