Why Grandad has to go to Thailand to get Quids in on his grandchildren's favourite cereals
'We have tackled labelling.' So exclaimed Dawn Primarola, Minister for Public Health, as, at the very beginning of last year, she introduced the biggest Government campaign ever (so at least it was alleged), Change4Life. She promised a lifestyle revolution on a grand scale. Again and again in press reports, the importance of adequate labelling was highlighted.
We might have gone even further back. In 2008, a mammouth conference was organised by the National Obesity Forum, first set up in May 2000. Janet Street-Porter, in The Independent newspaper, remarked sardonically that the Conference may have been manipulated by pharmaceutical companies eager to popularise their own weight-control remedies. Puppeteers carefully choreographing learned lectures and sales pitches. If only obesity were not such a growth industry, she concluded, we might get back to basics - eat less, exercise more. But the puppeteers making such a killing in the obesity obsession (a flyer, 'Private and highly confidential', in my post this morning promises 96 pounds weight loss, for tablets costing L50) are matched by others on the opposite side, determined to ensure that we continue to eat too much, without knowing just what it is that we are eating.
Two distinguished women, famous commentators: Dawn Primarola and Janet Street-Porter. (My own contribution is that of a grandparent, with grandchildren living nearby; my sources - labels, and correspondence with manufacturers.) But let us continue where we first began. 'We have tackled labelling.' Well, maybe. The present paper attempts to assess the reality of this claim, taking as our example, Sugar in the advertising on breakfast cereal packaging. A small instance, but easy to grasp, and well illustrating wider issues. There is a huge range of choices, most cereals coming neatly packaged, carrying more information about themselves than could fit on that Blair legacy, the suspect (and apparently now to be abandoned) ID card - though still not quite all we might like to know about Sugar content.
Cereal companies are well aware of the challenge of Sugar. Sometimes, there is a positive tone. Kellogg's, sidestepping my specific questions about Sugar in Special K, did offer a spirited defence of Sugar, enhancing flavour, contributing to colour, and creating a distinctive texture. This in a letter to me, certainly not on pack. And my correspondent quickly adopted a gentler mode: a helping of Special K contains less than a teaspoon of Sugar, compared to five teaspoons in a medium-size banana. Generally such apologia predominates. Quaker Sugar Puffs clearly have an image problem. The box does its best: 'new lower sugar', 'now less than 2 teaspoons of sugar per serving', or per bowl. (Do servings, or bowls, include milk? we shall return to this tantalising question later.)
All this is argumentative generalisation. Let us look at some of the hard ID-style data on pack. Every cereal must carry an Ingredients list, neatly arranged by descending weight, given in percentages, usually the principal grain first, then Sugar in second, or at least third place. Particularly important are any Ingredients highlighted in pack advertising - such distinctive Ingredients are said to characterise the cereal. QUID (Quantity Ingredient Declaration) regulations apply, often requiring such declaration. These 'Ingredients' lists are the obvious starting point for any comparative cereals survey. Perhaps they are part of Minister Primarola's tackling policy.
Almost at once, two curious features catch the eye. The first is the chaotic circus of sometimes extremely fragmentary percentages, attached to seemingly random Ingredients. It may be that no percentage at all is given (as with Special K). Or, one Ingredient only may be quantified, and that one perhaps quite minuscule (Jordans Country Crisp: Real Strawberries, for example, in a list of nine distinct Ingredients, quantifies only dried strawberries, no. 8, at 2.2%). Or, there may be several, even many, Ingredients quantified. The Co-op's Fruit and Fibre quantifies 98% of its Ingredients, down to 1% each for dried apple pieces, and mixed chopped nuts. The Co-op justifies this all-embracing approach by meticulously defining practically everything as either fruit, or fibre.
But why such concentration on the tiniest elements? The cut-off point, below which QUID imperatives do not apply, is 2%. Kellogg's Just Right, by going further (almonds 1%), demonstrates how conscientiously its manufacturer is obeying, and more than obeying, the rules - and entering into competition. Other similarly pernikety manufacturers include: Morrison's Maple and Pecan Crispy Clusters (maple flavour, 0.9%), which do, to be fair, have 3% maple syrup as well; Sainsbury's Honey (0.6% - the lowest figure I have encountered) Nut Corn Flakes; and the Co-op's Fruit and Fibre, with 1% each for apples and nuts.
The ostensible theory behind the QUID is that comparative detail will help discerning parents (and grandparents?) select the most appropriate cereals for their family needs, directly comparing apparently similar products. Multiplicity in such detail is the free market in full flood, and we are entitled to expect some telling contrasts to emerge. But it is difficult to imagine even the most perspicacious shopper being swayed by honey in Honey Hoops racing ahead with 3.6%, while Sugar Puffs' honey languishes at 3% only. (In both these cases, honey is the only quantified Ingredient.) Oat Crunchy, from Waitrose, another 3%er, is in with a chance, and has three other percentages. Golden Grahams, at 2.8%, hardly figure in the honey stakes, but their Ingredients list does give two other percentages. The wooden spoon for honey must go to Sainsbury's Honey Nut Corn Flakes, 0.6%, already mentioned just above. Competition on this scale is pure chimera: but do not set it aside, for we shall see later a quite different, and more significant, role for alleged competition amongst cereals.
Thus far, QUID has acted as a kind of proclamation, no matter how sporadic, or severely curtailed. It does tell us something about the cereal. The second eye-catching feature of the Ingredients lists, however, is not proclamation, but rather obfuscation. Look in such lists for the percentage of Sugar: you will not find it. There is certainly a lot of Sugar there, usually the second or at least the third largest Ingredient, but no exact quantification. Even when Sugar is a crucial, explicit part of the cereal's name, brazenly highlighted on pack, QUID regulations seem not to apply.
Not quite redaction, the blacking out of crucial information, as in the Commons, which does at least tell you that something has been excised. Rather, just empty space.
What about the Co-op Fruit and Fibre, with 98% of Ingredients specified? Surely Sugar must be quantified separately, somewhere here. But the first entry, Wheat Flakes (72%), lumps together Wheat, Sugar and ten more-or-less statistically insignificant trace elements, followed by Raisins (15%) and other oddments (11%). Sugar must be somewhere between 16% (to keep ahead of Raisins) and 36% (to stay behind the Wheat in Wheat flakes) Not a very tidy fit.
What about Sainsbury's Frosted flakes: explicitly 'sugar frosted'? Certainly a candidate for quidding. But there are no percentages at all given under Ingredients. There is one peculiarity: the top items are maize, sugar, salt, dextrose. I wonder why dextrose is separated out: the quantity, less than salt, must be minuscule, but is it just conceivable that sugar and dextrose together might push maize into second place, if only by a whisker? There seems such a lot of sugar about.
Another chance for quidding Sugar was heralded hopefully by a new box, Quaker Oats Chocolate Crisp, under the banner: 30% less sugar. At last, Sugar statistics. Less than what, is not quite clear: 'than the leading diet cereal brand'. An asterisk leads to a tiny, almost illegible, note: 'based on 100g.' Admirable precision: percentages based on 50g., or 200, might be very different. Under Ingredients, oats and wheat are 76.5%, then chocolate curls at 12%, then sugar. Naturally no percentage for sugar. We have used up 88.5%, so sugar might still be above 10%. Indeed, sugar is also item no. 2 within those curls. So, despite that promising beginning, '30% less sugar', we really haven't learnt anything precise about the amount (much less the nature) of the Added Sugar in this cereal. Quaker Oats certainly does not retreat from the 30% claim: 'The statement...is designed to help consumers make informed nutritional choices at breakfast time. Quaker Oats Chocolate Crisp is the only Quaker cereal in the UK to contain chocolate and yet still has 30% less sugar than the leading diet brand. We feel that this is an important benefit of the product to communicate to consumers.' The consummate, imperturbable, condescension of the cereal manufacturer. What would help informed nutritional choices would be information about the amount and nature of sugar, especially Added Sugar. That help is implacably withheld from us. (I rather doubt whether this particular cereal will last long: the chocolate curls sink inexorably to the bottom of the package.)
An interesting after-thought concerning Chocolate Crisp: Quaker Oats evidently knows the percentage of somebody else's cereal, and does not mind revealing its own figure through comparison. What does this say about all the reiterated demands (to which we shall return in a moment) that recipes are sacrosanct? (And, are our culinary gurus really so myopic that they cannot, if need be, work out exactly how much Added Sugar there is in Sugar Puffs or any other competitor? or our regulators so gullible (or pliable) that they cannot see how the QUID regulations are being fiddled and diddled to exclude Added Sugar?) The real reason, I suspect, has nothing to do with competition (for all parties to breakfast cereal production are aware that too much added sugar may be a powerful disincentive), nor with regulations (carefully crafted to circumnavigate such sugar). More a cartel, than competition.
This is the one consistent thread - no percentage for Sugar, as an Ingredient - running through the tapestry of percentages, and touching (though certainly not consistently) every other Ingredient.
Amongst all the Ingredients, Sugar is the one dog that does not bark.
Sometimes (not often) it is straightforward enough to work out the proportion of Sugar, based on other percentages: the Co-op's Perfect Choice quantifies all the other relevant Ingredients, leaving 25% for Sugar. Sugar itself is not quantified among the Ingredients, 'as it does not characterise a breakfast cereal'. (But, just to add a challenging frisson of uncertainty, Ingredients percentages do not always add up logically. For example, Weetabix Wheat (59%) and Rice (31%) Flakes, with Prebiotic oligofructose syrup (7.7%), total 97.7%. 'Sugar', unquantified of course, comes before syrup, which Sugar must therefore exceed - but we have only 2.3 percentage points left unassigned.)
In other cases, you can estimate, but only very roughly, the Sugar percentage. For instance, the given percentages in the Ingredients list of Waitrose's Oat Crunchy add up to 69%, with Sugar second to oats (58%), but ahead of honey-dipped banana chips (4%). The unassigned 31% are divided between sugar (no. 2), and vegetable oil, also unquantified (at no. 3). My sudoko-like calculation is that Added Sugar must be at least 15% and not more than 26%, both substantial proportions. But a precise figure, no.
Ask any cereal manufacturer why such an important Ingredient as Added Sugar is never quantified, and you will almost invariably be told that this is a trade secret. Welcome back, to our earlier friend, competition. But we are no longer playing tiddly-winks with minute percentages of honey. Now, the stakes are very much higher, and there is a real danger that the percentage of Added Sugar may slip out, despite our best endeavours. That might lead to bare-knuckle competition indeed. 'The formulation is of a confidential nature (Kellogg's).' 'Due to confidentiality, we are not able to give the percentage on pack (Nestle).' 'To prevent people copying our recipe we do not state the amounts of these [Sugar-related] Ingredients on the Ingredients list. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience this may cause you.' Ever-courteous Sainsbury. No need for apology, it is all grist to the mill of my argument here. 'We are not trying to mask the quantity of added sugar, but do not wish to put a % by every ingredient as this will give our recipe away to our competitors.' (Somerfield, in answer to my question, why not quantify just Added Sugar, and nothing else?) Somerfield may claim not to mask the quantity of Added Sugar, but in fact they make it impossible to deduce that quantity exactly from the information on pack. The same is true of every pack I have examined, from whatever manufacturer. A huge and ubiquitous credibility gap.
The above assertions of commercial secrecy are brief, sometimes even a little brusque. But occasionally we may glimpse the patterns of negotiation and manipulation lying behind the secrecy claims.
Quaker Sugar Puffs illustrate the interplay of divergent forces in such cases very well, even bringing in "trading standards". Sugar is so indisputably prominent here that it simply must be quidded. But no. The competition argument, again, wins the day. Wheat and honey are also blazoned (as is brown sugar, which has dropped out of this particular Ingredients list altogether), and to declare such percentages 'would give away the formulation of our product (which would help our competitors) and thus after discussions with trading standards we were allowed to only declare the percentage of honey.' And honey, at 3%, is the sole statistic in the Sugar Puffs Ingredients list. Leaving 97% to the reader's imaginative distribution is hardly freedom of information.
Or, for another example: 'After speaking with our Technical Department I can advise that we are not required to give a percentage of sugar in Morrisons Maple and Pecan Crisp as it is not named in the product title.' How neat. Be as specific, yet discreet, as you like, in drawing up the list of characterising features to be highlighted on pack, and to which you would not mind giving a percentage - and then, if something isn't on your list, it's exempt. QUID is turned on its head, becoming a positive justification for not giving a percentage. And Sugar never will be on your characterising list, because it is so omnipresent. 'To provide the information would, in fact, be contrary to the spirit of the regulations' (Nestle, always at the cutting edge of advertising controversy).
All the above 'confidentiality' answers amount to a boycott of the manifest QUID principle, of freedom of information. An interesting, and recurrent, balance of priorities. Information which the law says should be made available to everyone, and which certainly has profound implications for personal and public health, may be withheld in the interests of commercial competition (or, as seems much more likely here, of maintaining a united front of concealment concerning Added Sugar - the cartel factor is at work again).
I wonder who was the cunning legal boffin behind QUIDs, an advisor to a cereal company maybe, even someone in the pocket of the sugar barons? Surely not someone in the House of Lords, fine-tuning legislation in exchange for a modest, several digit, pecuniary donation? perish the thought.
And, as you work out and weigh up these elusive 'Sugar' percentages, remember they are almost certainly all Added Sugar only, although the grim, threatening AS words never appear. Little or no mention of naturally-occurring sugar in these Ingredients lists.
Note too that, wherever there is some slight adjustment to the rules, or to the way in which the rules are applied, care is always taken to avoid sugar specifics. The law determines which Ingredients must be quidded; so far as I know, firms are not forbidden to quid any other Ingredients if they wish. That would significantly increase the information available to consumers. It would also be a valuable spur to competition. And firms are eager enough to parade their 1% components, even though these are not required. But no firm has done so, yet, for Sugar. There, the boycott of optional quidding is constant and complete. Whose hand on the tiller, I wonder? Or, a question of piper's tunes?
Meanwhile, Sugar slips through unscathed, uncounted.
Sugar is king, and has special rights. It would have been more user- (or eater-) friendly, in Sugar Puffs just above, to quid sugar, and leave wheat and honey in the shadows. Quaker Sugar Puffs sent me a L3 voucher, and later in our correspondence one for L2.
However, as we move through the Ingredients lists, with their often absurd scatter of tokenist percentages, and their always unpercentaged Sugar entries, we come to the next sieve, Nutrition. And here sugar is treated differently. We have seen how 'Sugar', the Ingredient, is never defined, never quantified. The curious enquirer is directed to the Nutrition list, where, under Carbohydrates, there is a subheading, 'of which sugars'. (Some languages specify 'total sugars', making the terminology just a tiny bit more precise, but I have rarely seen this in English.) Under Nutrition, sugars are always plural, the addition of that final 's' advising us that some other kinds of sugars are now being included, presumably naturally-occurring sugars. But that same final 's', seemingly so helpfully advisory, also prevents us from separating out Added Sugar from that occurring naturally in any of the Ingredients. The treatment is different, the end result is the same. Added Sugar per se again escapes our microscope.
The distinction which I suggest, between Sugar as an unpercentaged Ingredient, being Added Sugar only, and sugars as Nutrients, being both Added and naturally-occurring, is apparently (though not quite unanimously) confirmed by manufacturers: 'You are correct in thinking that the ingredients figure [a slip here, no figure is given, not even a percentage] is added sugar only and the nutrition figure means added sugar, together with naturally occurring sugars - as in Maple Syrup (Morrisons).' And at first glance the distinction between Added Sugar, and naturally-occurring sugar, seems a simple factual detail. Perfectly well-known to manufacturers, perfectly comprehensible to consumers. Not so. For a remarkable variety of responses confronted my questions about distinguishing between 'Added' and 'natural'.
Some manufacturers have given me details without hesitation: the Co-op, discussing a cereal with 25% sugars in its Nutrition list, told me that about 7/8 of this is added, the rest being natural from dried fruits (21.7% and 3.3%). These figures cannot be quite right, since the cereal is chiefly made up of maize, wheat, rice and oats, all of which also contain natural sugar, but the proportion between Added and natural is striking.
Again, Weetabix, for its Alpen Crunch Bran, 14.6% total sugars, 9.5% Added. But, in a much later letter (the hiatus in our correspondence was my fault, not his), the same official remarks, hardly consistently, 'It is not possible with current labelling to easily distinguish between the amount of added and naturally occurring sugars.' Oh, I see. Is he perhaps retreat-ing from his earlier, more relaxed stance? as if to reassure me, he comments with patronizing helpfulness that, the more fruit there is, the more naturally occurring sugar there will be, 'as fruit contain quite a lot of sugars'.
A second group of manufacturers, unwilling to bite the bullet and admit their Sugar/sugars relationship, indulge in a variety of camouflage contortions. Quaker Oats have their own ingenious sleight-of-hand to distinguish between Ingredients and Nutrients. While this was presented to me initially as a means of rescuing 'Sugar' from the indignity of quantification amongst the Ingredients, the Quaker Oats exegesis seems to have a wider flexibility. 'Regarding QUIDs...for sugar in the ingredients list, I can confirm that the claim relates to sugar as a nutrient, not to added sugar as an ingredient...' So, if I understand him correctly, if you have a problem with an Ingredient, try reclassifying it as a Nutrient (despite being in the Ingredients list?), for 'QUID declarations are not required for nutrients, nor are they triggered by nutrition claims'.
Another example of ingenious, if somewhat opaque, tackling the difference between the Ingredient Sugar, and sugars under Nutrition: Morrisons explained that the former 'relates to the Sugar in the recipe, whereas sugars in the nutritional information are analytical figures for the whole breakfast cereal'. Is it altogether too whimsical to imagine the scrupulous cooks, having completed the recipe, then adding a dash of maple syrup, before testing the finished product with a fingertip sample?
My Nestle correspondent, the Environmental Services Manager - he who had told me that providing certain information would be contrary to the spirit of the Quantitative Ingredient Declaration - went on, approximately (I like the judicious hesitation of that word, not overstating the case), approximately 99% of the total sugar content of Cinnamon Grahams (now Curiously Cinnamon) is Added Sugar. He is advised 'that this percentage holds good for the majority of breakfast cereals to which sugar has been added'. This is factually ludicrous, but it does suggest the carefree way in which sugar may be added to our cereals. (I mentioned this Nestle estimate to another manufacturer, who commented: 'When "sugar" is detailed in the ingredients list, it will be all sugar [thus disagreeing with manufacturers who limit Ingredient Sugar to Added Sugar only], however, this does not mean the product will end up with 99% added sugar.')
Thus, while some firms are comfortable (not on pack, of course) with precise figures for Added and for naturally-occurring sugars, some others fall into memorable acrobatics, trying to explain the difference between Sugar and sugars, without letting slip just how much Added Sugar there is.
Yet a third group insist that all the necessary information is already clearly provided. Somerfield is briefly dismissive of the need for any elaboration: 'we do put on all our packs full nutritional information and GDA information which includes the % sugars.'
The most extravagant comments of this kind come from Nestle. The quantity of sugar is 'clearly provided' under Nutrition. The consumer is given 'complete information' relating to sugar content, rather than having 'just an indication of "added sugar"'. Indeed. But no one is asking just about Added Sugar: we need to know what is added, and how much, and what occurs naturally. The standard 'total sugars' under Nutrition give 'a more accurate and true figure' - though it is hard to see how lumping added and natural sugars together in one blob enhances either accuracy or truth. 'Due to confidentiality we are not able to give the percentage on pack.' Again the alleged primacy of competitive commercial considerations. Or a determination not to disclose too much, lest we risk alarming prospective customers. (A friendly letter from Quaker Sugar Puffs advanced the same accuracy and truth claim - sugars 35%, and pleaded for the same confidentiality.)
Finally, there is also a fourth way, more conciliatory, of approaching Sugar and sugars. Sainsbury's sent me this comfort-zone assurance in July 2008 'We are always looking for opportunities to improve our packaging and provide clear, easy to understand information for our customers. Therefore, providing consistent, easy to understand labelling for added sugar [my italics] is something which we are currently investigating.' I wish Sainsbury's well, but I am not holding my breath (unless, of course, Minister Primarola's tackle can bring down such giants). Jordans went along this road some four years ago, well before Sainsbury's. After somewhat protracted correspondence, Jordans did eventually come round to the view that Added Sugar is perhaps 'an area that we could consider giving more information to our consumers'. At first, I was pleased with this openness to sensible outside suggestions. But, on reflection, the tone, slightly manipulative, began to worry me. Manufacturers might consider giving consumers, you and me, more information - but, then again, perhaps there are some things which it is better we don't know, which should after all, and after careful second thoughts, be withheld from us. Jordans offered their tentative concession in January 2006. I should have known better than to hope that they would come up with something. I wrote recently, to ask about progress on this front, some three years and more later, and was assured that Jordans 'are [still?] aware of the need for less sugar', but that they have nothing further to report about this since September 2006.
One further conciliatory example. I wrote to a very highly respected supermarket chain, about a particular cereal, and received a brief courteous note, saying; 'We have discussed this matter with our buyer and can confirm that sugar content of this product is 30%. This information will be added to the labelling once the old labelling has been used.' I drafted a reply, querying this (sugars in the Nutrition list were only 21%), but I never sent my reply. Her note to me was so wildly off-message - both in the high sugar content, and still more in the cheerful abandon with which it was proposed to publish this excess - that I feared, if further attention were drawn to the note, it might blight her career. An old-fashioned girl, signing herself Miss. I wonder if she will ever read this. - A simple mistake, surely, an accidental weapon in the armoury of obfuscation, shrouding Sugar in our cereal. I suppose it was a simple mistake. Or a stalling device? Or, might hers have been a spoof letter, which I was too simple to recognise?
Closely related to the Sugar/sugars conundrum is the health question: Is there a significant difference between Added Sugar and that occurring naturally? Morrison's is reassuring, albeit (unintentionally?) enigmatic: 'There is no difference in nutritional value between added sugar and naturally occurring sugars as no added sugar is extracted from sugar beet or cane where it occurs naturally.' Does this make sense? I had written to them twice, and have hesitated to trouble them a third time. For the second 'no' read 'our'?
Sugar Puffs also discount any nutritional distinction: 'The nutrition analysis refers to total sugars but is compared to the equivalent of 2 table spoons of sugar (as sucrose). There is no difference between the 2 in total sugar content and neither one is any better or worse for you.'
The Co-op commentary is more guarded: 'There is some debate whether sugar (sucrose) from natural sources is more beneficial to health than refined sugar so we do not differentiate in the nutrition information between these.' Some debate there certainly is, but that is obviously a compelling reason for stating the exact quantities, rather than sweeping the whole question under the carpet. For 'more beneficial' read 'less detrimental'?
Just how explosive the medical dimension of sugar may be is shown by the reaction to Professor John Yudkin's book, Pure, white and deadly, first published in 1972. The book was noticed by the World Sugar Research Organization, under the heading 'For your dustbin'. The WSRO condemned the book as science fiction. This led to a lengthy libel suit, with costs eventually awarded against the WSRO, which issued a somewhat mealy-mouthed retraction ('We accept that he holds these views...'), a concession leaving Mr Brown, by comparison, a paragon of penitential rectitude.
Cereal packaging has relatively little to say about the complex variety of sugar. Among the headings which I encountered here nnd there in the course of my survey are these; brown sugar, 'brown sugar (sugar, molasses)', partially inverted brown sugar syrup, raw cane sugar, dextrose, dried glucose solids, glucose-fructose syrup, prebiotic oligofructose syrup, wheat glucose syrup, and more.
Sugar Puffs go a little further than most, in breaking down sugar into its constituent parts: glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, honey, glucose syrup, and molasses. Perhaps this little bouquet is less alarming than a single all-embracing entry. A helpful letter elaborates. 'Brown sugar is white sugar and molasses and due to compound ingredient and allergen legislation, we split this out in our ingredient list.' So legislation can have direct practical effect. But the word 'white' disappears. Indeed, I have never seen it on pack.
On the other hand, the amount of new tabulation on pack grows by leaps and bounds. For example, the relatively new practice, of citing statistics for individual servings, though it may at the same time have (or have had) more innocent intentions, is a clever feint, making it more and more difficult to compare cereals, and to answer the two basic questions of this paper, how much sugar? and, what kind of sugar? The size of servings varies widely, 16g, 30, 40, 45, 50. Sometimes milk is included, sometimes not. The quantities of milk vary, 100ml,125, 200, 220. Morrisons offer their obsessionally numerate consumers this imaginative serving suggestion: A 16g serving is placed in a bowl and 125ml milk added. A few cereals cite skimmed, semi-skimmed, and whole milk. Parallel columns, one for 100g of the cereal, and the other for a serving with milk, may create apparent anomalies: Jordans Organic Porridge, for example, has 1% sugars, but milk pushes a single serving up to 26%. (In one Somerfield cereal, sugars are very nearly 1/3 in the 100g Nutrition list, and over 1/2 in the 30g list, a portion including milk.) The whole exercise is smoke and mirrors; we are blinded by statistics, baffled by data. But of what exactly these 'sugars' are, in any specific case, we learn effectively nothing. As for comparing one cereal with another, in the midst of this jungle, a significant degree of mental gymnastics would be required.
Conspiracy may seem a strong word to apply to the total boycott of specific information about the sugar added to our cereal: but such a uniform, unwavering determination to black this information out is impossible to understand without some central, presumably even secret, control, which effectively exercises censorship on this point. Commercial considerations, amongst cereal manufacturers and sugar barons, outweigh both health concerns and a general deference to the law.
Parliamentary redaction over expenses obscures much vital information, but at least a black tombstone indicates where something lies buried. No such marker for the Added Sugar percentage, which simply vanishes.
We have set out to discover, how much sugar, and of what particular kind(s), has been added to our breakfast cereals. At the end of quite thoroughhgoing investigation, we have found no answer. Responses have varied, some more painstaking over detail than others, or more assertive, some making mistakes which others avoided, all this seems natural enough. But, on the two key points - the percentage of 'Sugar', and the balance between Added and natural 'sugars' - we have found no such variation. Neither point is ever disclosed. On the contrary, virtual unanimity. Even the greenest of novice detectives would be instantly suspicious of any detail upon which every single suspect agreed. Someone must be calling the tune. And paying the piper?
Here at home the tobacco barons have in some measure been brought to heel, though they still ride roughshod over many swathes of the globe least able to afford the cost of their domination. But the sugar barons, here, still have things far too much their own way. My second thoughts, about Jordans' express willingness to consider disclosing more information to consumers, have proved justified. Jordans has decided that there are certain things which it is better we don't know - such as the percentage of Added Sugar in their cereals. Or, maybe, they have simply accepted someone else's decision.
Who will blow the whistle, stir up the hitherto taciturn dog?
What might help? Add 'Added Sugar' to the list of compulsory Quantitative Ingredient Declarations. Quid it. Thailand's comprehensive QUID labelling requirements reveal 39% Added Sugars in Kellogg's Frosties. We should do the same, and, eschew utterly all exceptions to the quidding requirement, most especially all those devious pleas about secret recipes. And indicate what sort of sugar. (Whole Earth, for example, is already very particular, priding itself on brown sugar [? = molasses - and white sugar], or still better raw cane. Even its salt is an Approved Non-Organic Ingredient. But Sugar percentages? well, no, but it is organically grown.) As a policy, quidding, and identifying, Added Sugar may not be enough to save Mr Brown (and he now has bigger issues on his plate). But it might help save some lives.
* * * * *
Then suddenly, what began in this report as a quirky fancy by a solicitous grandparent on behalf of the next generation but one, has become, through Dawn Primarola's Change4Life, a farreaching current concern which, in the old Quaker phrase, may 'speak to the condition' of us all. (Another theme, profoundly important for this paper, explicit here only at the outset, yet highlighted time after time in today's news, is our obesity epidemic. There is even, as I learn from Radio 4, an International Journal of obesity. If my paper helps in any way, even only one of the grotesquely overweight children, and grandchildren, so numerous on our streets today, it will have been time well spent. One child, selling programmes at the gate to a primary school Sports Day, in which he himself is too unfit to join. Or she.)
PS. As I was putting the finishing touches to this essay, a news item, on 3rd September 2009, reported a 15-fold rise in the number of adult obesity prescriptions being issued for children, some under the age of 12. The lifestyle revolution on a grand scale, trumpeted by Minister Primarola's Change4Life (of which I have not heard again since the beginning of last year), evidently has some way still to go.
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