A look at labelling

Today is Healthy Monday! Yay!

Today, let’s speak on a subject that affects you and I – labelling!

My daughter was given a pack of biscuits which I found (intact) in the car. It was one of these really cheap biscuits that you can purchase for about NGN10. Even though I knew not to expect much, I took a look at the packaging to read the ingredients list. Before I could do that though, this caught my eye:


1 Pack = 1 glass of milk*

I was intrigued! Really? I could eat this and literally not need to drink milk? These had to be healthy biscuits!! But then, notice the asterisk? Not a lot of people usually do. I turned the pack around to find what it meant:

*One pack of 33g Milk Biscuits has Calcium equal to 175ml glass of milk

Interesting stuff! So of course, I was now dying to know what the ingredients were:

Biscuit Ingredients

Flour, Sugar,Vegetable Fat, Ammonium Bicarbonate, Food Additives E170, Invert Syrup, Skimmed Milk Powder, Salt, Sodium Bicarbonate, Milk Flavor, Vanilla Flavor, Soya Lecithin.

I want to keep this post as short as possible so I am not going to go into all the ingredients here. They actually deserve a post of their own. Let’s stay with the Calcium story.

  • a standard glass is 250ml but here we are told that 1 pack = 1 (175ml) glass of milk. Already, the math doesn’t add up. Hmmmm.
  • Calcium is good for the strengthening bones and teeth, but sugar depletes Calcium. Did you notice that sugar is the second ingredient? This implies that there is more sugar in the biscuits than Calcium. We can infer that the amount of calcium depleted by this packet of biscuit will be more than that which is replaced by it. So really, are we getting any Calcium?

Another thing I found interesting is that they went to the trouble of highlighting the Calcium content under nutrition information. They could have easily done this for Sugar as well but that information is missing. I suspect that it is because this information would not be to their advantage.

biscuit calcium

I opened the packet and ate some of the biscuit. I cannot measure the Sugar content with my body but suffice to say that the Sugar level is really high. It tasted just of sugar to me.

To end this post, I would say that we need to be more vigilant of what we feed ourselves and our children. There are an abundance of these biscuits in the market and I know that a lot of parents pop them into their children’s school bags as a snack or even buy a carton of two and let them nosh on it at home.

These are the things that contribute to an increased rate of infant and childhood diabetes, obesity and more. It is the manufacturers prerogative to put anything they want (within reason) on their labels and push these aggressively in the market. It is our responsibility to be discerning consumers. It is also our responsibility to take the time to feed our children right.

Follow my healthy lunch series for easy, interesting recipes that can go into a child’s lunch bag…and yours.

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