I wasn't planning to write about this brand of digestive biscuits, given that I have already reviewed a few other brands (McVities, Parle Nutricrunch etc). But then I noticed a popular food blogger with a million followers, promoting Britannia Nutrichoice digestive biscuits as "healthy, high fibre, packed with whole wheat, nutritious etc". How irresponsible! The best part is that she adds honey in making a chocolate sauce and says that natural sweeteners are the best whereas the store bought chocolate sauce has added sugar. And then she proceeds to add 2 packs of Nutrichoice digestive biscuits to make a chocolate cake. What about the sugar and liquid glucose present in those biscuits, madam?
I ran a poll on Instagram a couple of days back and asked my followers to pick the product review they would be interested to read next on my blog. Guess what the majority picked - Britannia Nutrichoice Digestive biscuits, of course!
The brand focuses on "high fibre" as its core promise. But let's look at the ingredients:
Refined wheat flour,
Whole wheat flour (20%),
Edible vegetable oil (palm),
Sugar,
Wheat bran (4.7%),
Liquid Glucose,
Milk Solids,
Maltodextrin,
Raising agents [503(ii), 500(ii)],
Iodised salt,
Emulsifiers (322, 471, 472e),
Malt extract,
Dough conditioner (223)
Contains Added flavours (Nature Identical and artificial flavoring substances (vanilla))
- Maida, palm oil and sugar feature in the top 4 ingredients. Though whole wheat flour is present, it is only 20%.
- 100 gms of these biscuits contain 14.5 gm of sugar (around 3.5 tsp of sugar) and 21 gm of unhealthy fats (around 5 tsp of fats)
- The source of fibre is added wheat bran but the fibre is not substantial enough to be called as "high fibre" biscuits. 100 gms of these biscuits (around 9 biscuits) contain ONLY 6 gm of dietary fibre.There are plenty of natural sources of fibre - 1 medium sized guava contain 5gm of dietary fibre, 50 gm of roasted channa contain 8gm of dietary fibre. Why eat such junk to get our daily dose of fibre?
- Though sugar is less as compared to other biscuits like Oreo/Parle-G, we need to check how much salt is added to balance the taste. Iodised salt is listed but the sodium levels are not mentioned in the nutrition facts table.
- Raising agents - 503(ii) => Ammonium hydrogen carbonate, 500(ii) => sodium hydrogen carbonate or which we commonly call, baking soda. I'm sure some of you might have heard this advice from your mom/grandmom in your household many years back - "Don't eat bajji/bonda in restaurants. They add soda and it will upset your tummy." We were earlier concerned about the pinch of soda used in bajji/bonda that we used to order occasionally from a restaurant. But now, most of the bakery products and packaged foods (bread, bun, cookies, biscuits) contain baking soda and we eat them on a DAILY BASIS.
- Emulsifiers used are 322 (lecithin), 471 (mono and diglycerides of fatty acids - glycerol monostearate, glycerol distearate), 472e (Diacetyltartaric and fatty acid esters of glycerol). All three of them are derived mainly from soya beans (as the pack shows vegetarian symbol). So there is a high chance that the raw material used could be genetically modified.
From my personal experience, what I have observed is that the digestive biscuits (irrespective of the brand) are quite addictive. They are being marketed as "healthy", "diabetic friendly", "wholewheat", "high fibre" etc but if we read the ingredients and nutrition facts, they are equally junk as compared to other biscuits in the market.
P.S. As I'm typing this post sitting at my in-law's place in Chennai, my daughter who was next to me noticed that I'm writing about this brand. She slowly whispered in my ears, "Paatti/Thaatha have these biscuits. I saw this pack in their biscuit box. Why don't you give your presentation to them?". I thought to myself, "Yeah, right! They are angry with me because I don't give you Horlicks, Complan, Britannia cake, cheese slices and what not. If people don't want to change their beliefs, there's no point in trying to change them."