Fruit Roll-ups

Posted by kathryn in Shopping Basket, Health News, Food Labelling, Fruit and Kid's nutrition

Fruit Roll-ups are flat strips of sticky, violently coloured, chewy stuff. They’re sweet, but don’t really look, smell or taste like fruit. Roll-ups are heavily marketed to both kids and parents as a tasty snack, made of real fruit and therefore a good alternative to packing a piece of fruit in lunch-boxes.

However, as I’ve said before , you really can’t believe everything food manufacturers tell you and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has just rapped Uncle Toby’s on the knuckles for misrepresenting their products . Instead of 65% fruit, roll-ups actually contain only 25% fruit paste and 2% apple juice concentrate, with the other ingredients being:

• maize
• maltodextrin
• sugar
• hydrogenated canola oil
• emulsifier
• food acid (citric and malic)
• flavour
• 3 types of colour

All of which is a far cry from being close to fruit. Further adding to the negatives of Roll-ups are:

• a very high GI of 99 (table sugar is 68), whereas actual fruit mostly has a low GI, providing more long-term and sustained energy.
• they contain very little fibre – a Roll-up has about 0.2g of fibre, whereas an apple has 2g

Kids (and adults!) need better snacks than that. They need foods that contain vitamins and minerals, as well as fibre, that provide sustained energy to keep them going throughout the day. In an ideal situation all kids would eat fruit, but I realise that sometimes its difficult to get fruit into the little ones, hence the popularity of Roll-ups.

I’m putting together some alternate fruit snack ideas, suitable for both kids and adults, which I’ll write up in a post tomorrow. Update: the info is here and here .

22 September, 2006