Wednesday 7 January, BBC’s Working Lunch has just run an interview with Sahar Hashemi of Skinny Candy. It wasn’t the point of the interview but along the way, we were treated to some credulous acceptance of the claims being made for the company’s products and the assertion that eating these is “guilt-free” at several points. Now, “guilt” is an subjective experience and cultural artifact in many ways and its association with food is tiresome and has possibly led to personal discomfort relating food issues for too many people. However, looking at the ingredients list and the calorie count for Skinny Candy products, the claims not only border on the nonsensical but both Sahar Hashemi and the interviewers failed to give the standard, “Children have a low tolerance for polyols so they should eat these with caution. Even adults probably can’t eat more than a restricted amount of these without experiencing a laxative effect and we should remind you that sugar-free does not mean calorie-free or even particularly low-calorie or low-carbohydrate”. Plus, there was a heavy emphasis on how these ‘guilt-free products’ were free of artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. Working Lunch is a business programme but that is no excuse for promoting nutritional wibble.
Skinny Candy describes its wares in exciting terms:
Guiltfree Candy
Skinny Candy candy has all the greatness and taste of normal candy but is entirely guiltfree.Guiltfree Candy= sugar free, less calories and low fat or fat free.
Guiltfree Muffins
Skinny Candy muffins taste truly incredible and yet they are free of all those things that make you feel guilty about eating a muffin.Guiltfree muffins= sugarfree, wheatfree, organic and fatfree (except extra virgin olive oil in the carrot muffins).
Yes and no. Much of Skinny Candy‘s website is still incomplete so we’ve had to scout around for some nutritional information for their products. Skinny Candy Chocolate-Covered Nuts and Raisins.
Ingredients
Sweetener: maltitol, mannitol, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, peanuts (11%), raisins (7%), hazelnuts (5%), almonds (5%), cocoa mass, emsulsifier: soya lecithin, natural vanilla, thickener: gum arabic, glazing agent: vegetable fat. Milk chocolate contains milk solids 20% min and cocoa solids 35% min.
Nutritional Information
Per 100g:
Energy 2014kJ/486kcal, Protein 9g, Carbohydrates 39.6g (of which polyols 28.1g, of which sugars 11.5g), Fat 37.4g (of which saturates 11.58g), Fibre Nil, Sodium Nil.
It’s not sugar-free, it’s just free of added sugars for which people will recognise the name. Your mileage may vary as to the meaning of “all natural” (as used in the programme) but is the general public genuinely exercised about aspartame but insouciant as to the impact of the polyols, maltitol and mannitol? The latter may be naturally-occuring low-digestible carbohydrates but why is their processing so much more virtuous?
You may notice that the first ingredient is maltitol which indicates that there is more of this than any other ingredient. Who cares, it’s a sugar-free product and that must be lower in calories? Well, forgive us for caring and we object on the grounds that some of these claims range from disingenuous to misleading and because we strongly expect that the new diet season and renewed enthusiasm for the revamped Atkins Diet will re-awaken interest in so-called ‘sugar-free’ sweets. In addition, Skinny Candy‘s press release claims:
[A]fter looking without luck for sweets and muffins that are sugar-free and yet not loaded with fat or calories[,]
Hashemi decided to do it herself and start a range of sugar-free sweets and chocolates that have as little fat as possible and yet satisfy the sweet tooth like the real thing. Basically, guilt-free pleasures!! The range is in hip, cool packaging so has no element of denial or self-punishment.All Skinny Candy products taste sweet because instead of sugar they contain a substitute called Maltitol. It’s not an artificial sweetener like aspartame, or saccharin, but comes from Polyols which are carbohydrates occurring naturally in certain fruit and vegetables. It tastes almost as sweet as normal sugar and just as good but has low GI (it doesn’t cause a sugar rush), half the calories and they are kind to teeth.
If calories=guilt (the logical implication in this piece and from the website) then are these products really guilt-free? Sugar has 4 calories per gramme, maltitol has around 3 calories per gramme [1] and establishing an accurate calorie value is a contentious area and may even vary from one individual to another and depend on the amount ingested.
The 1990 European Council Directives set the energy value of all sugar alcohols, for the purpose of nutrition labeling, at 10 Id/g (2.4 kcal/g…Council believed that neither indirect nor direct methods provided enough reliable data to make firm conclusions about the energy value of sugar alcohols…The energy values obtained
by using this calculation are valid for ingestion of sugar alcohols in amounts < 20 g/d. The Dutch Nutrition Council assumed that larger intakes of sugar alcohols would lower the energy value.
It is not implausible that the ‘guilt-free’, ‘sugar-free’ labelling of Skinny Candy‘s products might encourage the unwary to eat more of these without noticing that there is a hefty 486 calories per 100g which is in line with the calorie count of other confectionery products that contain a different nut. In fact, BBC Watchdog recently broadcast an item about a number of complaints that it had received from consumers who felt deceived by the marketing around diabetic chocolates, chocolates that contain similar polyols, in similar quantities as Skinny Candy products. Children may not be able to tolerate more than a small amount of polyols and several adults experienced gastro-intestinal symptoms after eating a few.
Most of the people Julia spoke to on the streets of central London had different of responses to how much chocolate they would eat – but what they all agreed on was that three chocolates are not excessive.
Azmina Govindji, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association explained that the cause of the laxative effect was largely due to an ingredient in diabetic chocolate called polyols….When Azmina saw that Thorntons line of diabetic chocolates contained 6.2 grams of polyols each she was shocked. Considering that you shouldn’t have more than 20g of polyols per day that means you can eat no more than three chocolates.
We draw your attention to the fact that the ingredients above that indicate that 100g of a product that is mostly fruit and nut contains >28g of polyols. It is not completely unreasonable to think that somebody might eat the whole of that bag despite the laconic website caution (that may also be on the bag – we don’t know as we haven’t seen it) “Excessive consumption can have a laxative effecr” (sic). There is no attempt to quantify “excessive consumption”. Sadly, we can’t comment on any other product in the range because we couldn’t find any nutritional information but we are disappointed to see the claim “fat-free” on the bag of Skinny Candy Sugar Free Fruit Gums. To claim that this product is fat-free is disingenuous at best as fruit gums contain negligible fat: e.g., Rowntrees report 0.2g of fat per 100g of their fruit gums.
Alert readers will know that the Food Standards Agency define high fat as >20g of fat in 100g of product and high in saturated fat if there are >5g of saturated fat per 100g of product. Skinny Candy Chocolate-Covered Nuts and Raisins list 37.4g of fat of which 11.58g saturated fat, so that would be high in both. It can be difficult for consumers to switch contextual frames between products to accept that a company that promotes itself as offering “guiltfree” indulgences, sugar-free, “as little fat as possible” or no-fat treats may be selling products that are both high in fat and high in saturated fat.
People who might now be nodding and saying, “OK, some of that is true but it still has a negligible blood sugar impact” should prepare to abandon that thought. Livesey reports that polyols do have a glycaemic index[2]: maltitol syrup has a higher glycaemic index than powdered maltitol (52 v. 36, for comparison, the GI of table sugar is 60) but there is still a measurable impact.[a] It is difficult to estimate the glycaemic index or load of the Skinny Candy Chocolate-Covered Nuts and Raisins because we don’t know the relative amounts of maltitol and mannitol although we know that there is more of the former than the latter.
In a fruit and nut mix, the sweetness of the dried fruit allows the use of less maltitol because, otherwise, maltitol is at the heart of some controversy when it comes to estimating sweetness. Estimates vary from 75-90% of the sweetness of sugar which may mean that, in some recipes, the recipe might call for more volume/weight of maltitol than sugar which reduces the benefit of any caloric reduction gained from not eating sugar. It is unfortunate that we can’t see the ingredients for other products such as the Skinny Candy Sugar Free Fruit Gums or Skinny Candy Cola Bottles but it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that they contain a substantial amount of maltitol unless the fruit flavourings contain a lot of instrinsic sugars. In a worse case scenario, if maltitol has:
- 75% of the sweetness of sugar
- 75% of the calories of sugar
- 75% of the glycemic index of sugar
then, on a straight substitution, you might have only an 25% reduction in calories etc. (whether the risk of a gastro-intestinal impact is worth it is a personal choice for the consumer) but, if the manufacturer has to use more to achieve the correct mouth-feel and sweetness, then there may be very little nutritional difference. There may be a substantial price difference (maltitol is costly, as are products that contain it) but it is true that there is less of an association with dental caries (the actual impact will depend on the rest of an individual’s diet, dental hygiene and other matters).
It is with some interest and amusement that we draw readers’ attention to the fact that the glycaemic index and insulanaemic impact (II) of foodstuffs may be lowered by fat content, [2] so the overall GI and II of Skinny Candy Chocolate-Covered Nuts and Raisins may owe more to the fat content of the chocolate and nuts than to the choice of sweetener.
We would like to comment on the “guiltfree muffins” if only because we wonder when “sugarfree, wheatfree, organic and fatfree” became synonymous with “guiltfree” but we couldn’t find an ingredients list. If anyone has any information, then please send it along. We also wondered at what point something lacks so many of the ingredients typically associated with baked goods such as muffins that the name becomes meaningless.
Now, this may seem rather cheerless and spoilsport and we should state that Sahar Hashemi is a gifted entrepreneur but that is no reason for Working Lunch to contribute to consumer confusion about the meaning of “sugar-free” or to permit the description of products as “guiltfree” when they have a substantial calorie count (there are women for whom a bag of the fruit and nut would be approximately 20-25% of their recommended daily calorie intake). The health halo of a nutritional claim [3] (pdf) offers an intriguing explanation as to why consumers may develop nutritional information blindness in the face of an attractive claim.
Four studies show that people are more likely to underestimate the caloric content of main dishes and to choose higher-calorie side dishes, drinks, or desserts when fast-food restaurants claim to be healthy (e.g., Subway) compared to when they do not (e.g., McDonald’s)…These studies help explain why the success of fastfood restaurants serving lower-calorie foods has not led to the expected reduction in total calorie intake and in obesity rates.
Working Lunch is not a food programme but that is no reason for its presenters to allow the promotion of nutritional wibble on air as it is confusing for consumers and the claim that something is “sugar-free” and “guilt free” is delivered under the BBC aegis of respectability and authority. These products are not “sugar-free” for the reasons that we have explained and such claims are a logical absurdity when it comes to what most people would recognise as candy. It would be elegant and gracious of Working Lunch to ask the British Dietetic Assocation to provide a quick correction. As Dr John Crippen so memorably said of similar wibble – such nutritional claims in support of marketing is no better than the “eclectic concatenation of cod science”.
Updates
We should, of course, have mentioned that Working Lunch of all people should have noticed that this Skinny Candy company website deserves more than a slap of the wrist for failing to provide their company number and their address on their website and their contact page doesn’t work. Is this really the sort of entrepreneurial excellence that Working Lunch wishes to promote? Providing such details is a business requirement for a limited company even if they are now engaged in a joint venture with Glisten.
Notes
| Polyol | Glycaemic Index (glucose=100) | Calories/g | |||
| Maltitol syrup (intermediate) | 53 | 3 | |||
| Maltitol syrup (intermediate) | 53 | 3 | |||
| Maltitol syrup (regular) | 52 | 3 | |||
| Maltitol syrup (high) | 48 | 3 | |||
| Polyglycitol (hydrogenated starch hydrolysate) | 39 | 2.8 | |||
| Maltitol | 36 | 3 | |||
| Xylitol | 13 | 3 | |||
| Isomalt | 9 | 2.1 | |||
| Sorbitol | 9 | 2.5 | |||
| Lactitol | 6 | 2 | |||
| Erythritol | 0 | 0.2 | |||
| Mannitol | 0 | 1.5 | |||
References
[1] Ellwood KC. Methods available to estimate the energy values of sugar alcohols. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995 Nov;62(5 Suppl):1169S-1174S.
[2] Chandon P, Wansink B. The Biasing Health Halos of Fast-Food Restaurant Health Claims: Lower Calorie Estimates and Higher Side-Dish Consumption Intentions (pdf) Jnl of Consumer Research. 2007 34:3, 301-314.
[3] Livesey G. Health potential of polyols as sugar replacers, with emphasis on low glycaemic properties. Nutr Res Rev. 2003 Dec;16(2):163-91.
Hm, fatfree nuts? Sounds unusual…
It seems that guilt would be better applied to those promoting wibble than to something as innocent as sweets. High sugar foods can be a useful part of some diets (for example, if people are very physically active); I don’t think wibble has any such utility, though.
I can’t stand the automatic association of guilt with food although it seems like most of the women I know do this and lots of advertisers and women’s magazines exploit this. Guilt, naughty, “Oh, I shouldn’t” etc. etc.
I would like to hear Dara O’Briain deliver that line or something like it :-)
I didn’t know all that about the polyols. I agree that this whole thing will kick off again with the All New Singing Dancing Atkins hype and there will now be endless conversations about the carb count of watercress.
I’m not too sure that you will get much of a response from Working Lunch but then you were far more successful with The Economist than I would have thought so who knows?
The absence of the company no., place of registration etc. is very annoying. I bet Working Lunch regularly remind people to keep checking details on websites etc. because companies are legally obliged to tell you if they are in administration, being wound up etc.
What is up with the BBC and their fact-checking – don’t they do any?
I have a bar of Cadbury’s Turkish Delight in my fridge – it has fewer calories than that guiltfree, sugar free, low fat chocolate covered fruit and nuts (465 c/100g compared to 486 c/100g). I know that it doesn’t have nuts in but even so it makes a mockery of those claims.
I get the point that you make about the polyols. I’m failing to understand how they calculated the calorie content from that list of ingredients.
Can someone explain it – please?
Admin edit: to include link to nutritional label for Turkish Delight, as per request.
We should also acknowledge that Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut reports 490 kcal/100g and therefore 4 kcal more than Skinny Candy although the latter’s product has a smaller amount of raisins but a greater amount of nuts.
From the information above:
Protein 36 kcal (9×4)
Fat 336.6 kcal (37.4×9)
Carbohydrates must (by subtraction) amount to 113.4 kcal or thereabouts (486-372.6).
The sugars (from the raisins, intrinsic milk sugars etc. in the dried milk powder) make up around 46 kcal (4×11.5) so the 28.1g of polyols contribute 67.4 kcal. It looks like they used the European Council Directive value of 2.4 kcal/g to calculate the contribution from the polyols (28.1×2.4).
However, it is a little strange. According to USDA, seedless raisins have 79.8g of carbs/100g (by difference) of which 59.19g are sugars and 2.7g are starch. So, of the total of 11.5g of sugars, approx 4g of them are from the raisins. The whole milk powder probably kicked in another 4g but I’m not entirely confident about that because I can’t lay my hands on a decent analysis of whole milk powder.
HTH
@Wulfstan – agree on the constant guilt-trip about food that is encouraged by advertisers who are also encouraging us to indulge ourselves and forget our woes by being ‘naughty’ and ‘indulgent’.
The thing about the lack of company details is annoying as one expects better than that from Working Lunch and you’re quite right that their consumer expert is usually very hot on checking credentials and doing due diligence (to be fair, Gillian Lacey-Solymar was not one of the interviewers).
@Jon – again, agreed on the wider point that there are people for whom a higher intake of calories is a necessity. However, the whole thrust of that part of the interview was about guilt=calories.
The programme’s on the BBC iplayer here, for about a week.
Excellent work, HW.
From memory, the kCal content you give for the chocolate covered nuts and raisins is the same as e.g. a standard chocolate bar.
This is naughty marketing, IMHO.
I get that it is more convenient to buy a bag of something and that the packaging is probably pretty and designed with encouraging and empowering statements like “guiltfree”, “no added sugars” and such.
I don’t understand why it’s OK to claim “no added sugar” when you are adding malititol etc. to the confectionery or is this a weasel way of ensuring that this doesn’t count because the polyols are in the chocolate coating rather than an addition to the recipe?
For the difference in the number of calories involved, wouldn’t you be better off if you bought a bar of 70% chocolate and ate 60g of that with your own mix of nuts and fruit? It might also be cheaper but that’s not the point.
I’d rather my children ate sweets in moderation than picked up the impression that they could eat stuff like this or the ‘sugar free’ gummi bears ad libitum.
I’m with Dr*T, this is deceptive marketing. The BBC shouldn’t be giving it even tacit endorsement.
Funny how no-one ever feels guilty about watching TV instead of going jogging, say, although that would do much more for their health than not eating a chocolate bar would.
There’s no money in jogging is the problem. Maybe we need to encourage gym companies to advertise more aggressively?
Neuroskeptic – some women do feel guilty about watching TV. It’s one of the reasons that so many women take up knitting or crochet work and the marketing guilt behind the idea of various naff chair exercisers.
I’m with Jimmy L on allowing children moderate amounts of ‘real’ sweets rather than these products with polyols.
I like the idea of putting together my own chocolate, fruit and nut because I usually don’t like the combinations that are available commercially.
If they don’t suit you then sugar free candy causes the worst gas and cramping. Anyone should know that before eating several pieces. I had heard that the BBC was high quality so what where they thinking?
Admin edit: this was shoddy preparation by the BBC and we are very disappointed by their lack of response to our comments.