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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...

Ingredients

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

Positives

Negatives

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.

Marketing

Alternatives

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.