Cereal offenders: why do sugar levels keep rising in our breakfast choices?
Despite the barrage of health warnings on the dangers of sugar, new breakfast products – such as drinks and biscuits – contain more of the white stuff than ever
The sugar on our collective breakfast tables is piling up at an alarming rate. Despite a barrage of health warnings on the white stuff, a report last month from Action on Sugar showed that one in five cereals now contains more sugar than three years ago, and some are 18% sweeter.
The Action on Sugar research is here (PDF). It looks at 49 breakfast cereals, of which 10 have a higher sugar content than they did in 2012. That's your "one in five cereals".
But it also found that 21 of the brands had a lower sugar content than it did in 2012. That's more than two in five. Levels were unchanged in the other 18.
Of the cereals that have the highest levels of sugar, more than half have less sugar in them than they did in 2012 while less than a quarter have more.
So the claim that "sugar levels keep rising" and that breakfast cereals contain "more of the white stuff than ever" doesn't really stack up, does it?
And if you don't want the ones that have more sugar, my advice is not to buy them.
