to not understand food labels?

[HanHanHanHan]

I bought dd some flapjacks from Aldi. I understand flapjacks are not the healthiest things but it was an impulse buy at the checkout. The packaging implies they are a healthy choice at least.

Came home and checked them on the government's sugar app and its 7 cubes of sugar in each one. I know this app doesn't know the difference between refined and natural sugars so tried to work it out myself by looking at the box. I'lol be blowed if I can tell how much natural or refined sugar each bar has.

Can you?

it doesn't matter to your body.
sugar is sugar, added or naturally occuring in fruit for example.

I don't think it matters whether refined or natural tbh. They state 20g sugar per 100g, so one fifth of product is sugar. That is lower than sainsburys equivalent though (IIRC, 35% sugar).
Apricots, sultanas, papayas all dried fruit is high in sugar.

The honey and carob syrup are 'natural' sugars too, don't see any refined sugar as such, but sugars are sugars.

But I wouldn't stop dd eating 5 pieces of fruit a day so I guess I ignore natural sugars.

She wouldn't be able to eat 5 bars of chocolate a day so I do limit refined sugar.

There must be a difference. She won't become overweight eating 5 pieces of fruit but she will if she eats 5 chocolate bars?

The only reason to favour natural sugars is when they are consumed as a component of an apple, which offers health benefits over and above the sugar component.

Adding sugar to stuff to make it sweet? It doesn't matter.

Fat content of fruit v chocolate.

dried fruit is very concentrated.
it would be very easy to eat 10 (or more) dried apricots, but eating 10 fresh ones is more difficult.

"She won't become overweight eating 5 pieces of fruit but she will if she eats 5 chocolate bars?"

If she has an Aero chocolate bar, it has 221 calories, and 25g sugar. If she had 11 dates, she would have had 221 calories and 49g sugar.

It doesn't matter where the sugar comes from. Sugar=carbohydrates=4 calories per g.

These type of snacks are marketed at parents for there children and I think a lot of people don't understand the packaging etc, it should be clearer.
6.1g of sugar for a stick of flapjack the nhs website says no more than 19g a day of sugar for children aged 4-6 ( I'm not sure how old your dd is) so the 6g flapjack is a lot out of the daily allowance for sugar.

My ds is a 7 month old baby so only been on solids 5 weeks but I already dread him discovering sweet things when his older

why not just give fresh fruit as a snack? added benefits are the vitamins, fibre, water...

those dried fruit snacks are ok every now and then but I wouldn't let my dc have them every day.

She takes two pieces of fruit to school everyday.

I was trying to add variety.

Watch her fruit intake. It's high in sugar, causes sugar crashes (which can lead to overeating) and damages tooth enamel (sugar/acid). She should be eating lots of non-starchy veg and a little fruit.

There must be a difference. She won't become overweight eating 5 pieces of fruit but she will if she eats 5 chocolate bars?

You're not being U but you certainly don't seem to understand nutrition.

You'll get fat if you eat too much - be it fruit or chocolate.

Fruit is v high in sugar and is high in acid, aim for lots more veg than fruit.

Dried fruit should be an occasional thing.

Cereal bars and flapjack aren't exactly 'healthy' with all the honey/sugar/syrup that goes in and should be an occasional thing.

Anything that has bits stuck together and looks shiny - flapjacks, biscuits, cereal clusters - will be very high in fat and sugar. Dried fruit is about 90-95% sugar, then around 5% fibre/protein/water, so think of it as sweets rather than fruit. Lots of packaged foods imply they are healthy but don't actually stack up (so 1 of your 5 a day if you eat so many that you'd have eaten way more fat or sugar than you should in a day... and anything that says low fat or low sugar pretty much translates as high sugar or high fat!)

Fresh fruit is sweet, yes, but also has water, fibre and protein so overall it feels filling, in a way that sweets don't fill you up. Very sweet fruit that's easy to eat (berries, mostly) can be problematic like dried fruit if you eat too much as again it's not filling and you can eat loads really quickly without noticing (hence sugar crashes as noted above), but munching a couple of apples a day plus some extra fruit is unlikely to be a problem at all.

The packaging implies they are a healthy choice at least

Seriously? How's that then?

You're not actually asking what is the difference between fruit and chocolate bars are you?

OP to be fair to you, food manufacturers are very good at giving the "edited highlights".

My take is that in a manufactured or processed product (i.e. does not exist in that state naturally) all sugar is of equal nutritional status. You can start getting into the relative merits of sucrose vs fructose, but tbh, I don't have all day to think about these things, so I just assume agave, maple, table sugar, syrup, treacle, molasses, honey, fruit concentrates= sugar= try not to eat tonnes of it.

Has the app given you the right answer? I thought the way to work out how many teaspoons/cubes of sugar was in a product was to divide the sugars number by four. In this case, 6g divided by 4 gives you one and a half cubes per flapjack. The app might have worked out the number of sugar cubes in 100g (20g of sugar).

Once you've eaten the sugar, be it refined, processed or natural, your body deals with it the same way. Natural sugar is equally as bad for your teeth. Fruit has fibre and vitamins as well as sugar, but you can get those benefits from eating plenty of veg instead.

Fresh fruit is sweet, yes, but also has water, fibre and protein so overall it feels filling,

Name a fruit that's more than 3% protein. Vast majority are under 1%!