Sugar levels in various packaged foods

This is a question I often get - "How much of sugar is bad?"

As I had written in an earlier post, the limit for maximum added sugar is around 5-6 tsp per day. Unless someone gets into the habit of reading nutrition labels diligently, it is hard to figure out whether this limit is exceeded in a day, given that there are numerous packaged foods loaded with sugar that have pervaded our daily meals.

Given this situation, I find the guideline prescribed by FSSAI in the draft notification to be a valid benchmark that we can all refer to.

The energy (kcal) from added sugars should not exceed 10% of the total energy provided by the packaged food.

When a packaged food brand exceeds this threshold, then the brand should highlight the sugar value in RED in front of the pack. This is currently at the draft stage. IF and WHEN this gets approved, brands would still have 3 years to get this implemented.

Is it worth waiting that long, when our health is at stake? Definitely not. So I invested around 3 hours to compile this list of popular packaged foods and their sugar levels. It is shocking to note how much sugar these brands contain compared to the prescribed 10% threshold.

Under "health biscuits" category, the sugar values seem to be closer to the 10% threshold (still higher) but do take note of the high saturated fats (primarily from palm oil). The prescribed upper threshold is 2.6 gm per 100 gm whereas most of these biscuits contain way above than that.

I shall continue to update this list with more sugar-loaded junk. 

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1
2		Threshold limit for sugar proposed by FSSAI (value of energy from added sugar as a percentage of total calories provided)	10%				For bakery products, upper limit for saturated fat is 2.6 gm per 100 gm
3
4	Category	Brand Name	Calories and Sugar values based on	Calories (kcal)	Sugar (in gms)	% of kcal from sugar	Saturated Fat (in gms)
5	Breakfast cereals	Kelloggs Chocos	per 30 gm serving size	116	9	31.03%
6	Breakfast cereals	Kelloggs Thandai badam corn flakes	per 30 gm serving size	130	9.5	29.23%
7	Breakfast cereals	Kelloggs Special K	per 30 gm serving size	109	7.5	27.52%
8	Breakfast cereals	Soulfull ragi bites choco fills	per 100 gm	432	24.9	23.06%
9	Breakfast cereals	Kelloggs Granola - Almonds and Cranberries	per 40 gm serving size	178	7.2	16.18%
10	Health drinks	Yakult	per 65 ml serving size	50	10	80.00%
11	Health drinks	Bournvita	per 100 gm	393	37	37.66%
12	Health drinks	Horlicks Chocolate flavour	per 100 gm	370	30	32.43%
13	Health drinks	Horlicks Growth Plus Chocolate flavour	per 100 gm	380	26.7	28.11%
14	Health drinks	Horlicks Protein Plus Chocolate flavour	per 100 gm	370	23.5	25.41%
15	Health drinks	Complan Chocolate flavour	per 100 gm	419	24	22.91%
16	Health drinks	Pediasure	per 100 gm	462	22.2	19.22%
17	Dairy products	SunFeast Wonderz fruit n milk mango flavour	per 100 ml	86	14.5	67.44%
18	Dairy products	Epigamia Greek Yoghurt smoothie	per 100 ml	78.75	12.15	61.71%
19	Dairy products	Hersheys milkshake cookies n creme	per 200 ml	168.3	20	47.53%
20	Dairy products	Cavin's milkshake	per 100 ml	105	11.7	44.57%
21	Dairy products	Epigamia Greek Strawberry flavored yoghurt	per 100 gm	110.66	11.25	40.67%
22	Dairy products	Paperboat vanilla milkshake	per 100 ml	111.3	11	39.53%
23	Dairy products	Danone blueberry flavored yoghurt	per 100 gm	126	12	38.10%
24	Kid's specific treats	Bournvita biscuits	per 100 gm	457	30	26.26%	6.8
25	Health biscuits	Parle Nutricrunch honey & oats	per 100 gm	485	18.7	15.42%	8.7
26	Health biscuits	Unibic daily digestive oatmeal cookies	per 100 gm	499	18	14.43%	13.5
27	Health biscuits	McVities Digestive biscuits	per 100 gm	489	16.1	13.17%	10.7
28	Health biscuits	Parle Nutricrunch digestive biscuits	per 100 gm	489	14.8	12.11%	9.2
29	Health biscuits	Britannia Nutrichoice Digestive biscuits	per 100 gm	493	14.5	11.76%	10
30	Kid's specific treats	Kinder Joy	per 20 gm serving size	109	10.2	37.43%
31	Kid's specific treats	Oreo cream biscuits	per 100 gm	480	38.6	32.17%	9.7
32	Kid's specific treats	Lotte Chocopie	per 100 gm	434.48	33.7	31.03%
33	Kid's specific treats	Sunfeast Dark Fantasy Chocofills	per 100 gm	504	37.6	29.84%	11.4
34	Kid's specific treats	Britannia Treat JimJam biscuits	per 100 gm	483	33.5	27.74%	9.5
35	Packaged Juices	Tropicana mixed fruit juice	per 100 ml	56	13.7	97.86%
36	Packaged Juices	B Natural Himalayan mixed fruit	per 100 ml	52	11	84.62%
37	Packaged Juices	Paperboat Alphonso aam	per 100 ml	62	12.46	80.39%
38	Packaged Juices	Real mixed fruit juice	per 100 ml	56	8	57.14%
39	Packaged Juices	Paperboat aamras	per 100 ml	65	8.43	51.88%

P.S. The trigger for this post 

A few days back, I was browsing through the FSSAI draft notification document. 

D: What are you reading?

Me: Govt uncle is going to mark junk food packets in red color if it contains a lot of sugar and sodium. So when people shop, they can decide whether to buy packs marked with red color or not

D: hmm, can we see them in the supermarket tomorrow?

Me: No ma, it will take at least 3 years to see the red coded packs in supermarkets

D: Why wait that long? Let's take a red sketch pen, go to the supermarket and mark the bad junk foods ourselves

Instead of marking them in one supermarket, I decided to compile this list for quick reference. Hope you would refer to this list when you go shopping next time.