Wednesday 26 October 2016

Sugar in ice cream and the madness of reformulation

The food fascists at Action on Sugar have been doing some of their pioneering research and have discovered that ice cream contains sugar. Sugar! Who would have thought it?

I've written about the anti-sugar crusade and Public Health England's horrendous reformulation policy for Spectator Health...

You would think that people who support sugar taxes would be pleased to find that high-sugar ice cream is more expensive than low-sugar ice cream, but the permanently outraged pressure group Action On Sugar has today turned its sights on the heir to the throne for putting his name to a luxury ice cream that contains more sugar than many of the budget brands. According to the Guardian, Prince Charles’ organic range of Duchy ice cream, which is exclusively sold in Waitrose, ‘appeals to children’ and should therefore have its sugar content slashed ‘to an acceptable level’. 
 
Our future king’s brand currently has 84 per cent more sugar in it than Asda’s budget brand. I have tasted neither, but I suspect the reason Waitrose can sell its ice cream at ten times the price of Asda’s is because it is a better product. It tells you a great deal about the future of food under the government’s reformulation scheme that an economy brand from a budget supermarket is being held up as a model for others to follow. To put it bluntly, if you want the government to force food companies to remove sugar, fat and salt from their products, you had better be prepared for your food to taste worse.






No comments: