'Healthy' breakfast bars high in fat and sugar say Australian researchers

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2006

SYDNEY (AFP) — Some breakfast bars promoted as healthy food contain more sugar than a chocolate bar and more saturated fat than a bag of crisps, according to research by the Australian Consumers' Association. The Association tested 150 muesli and muffin snack bars and found only 14 met its health criteria.

"Some of these cereal bars would be more accurately called fat and sugar bars," it said in its consumer magazine "Choice". It said researchers found one brand of muesli bar had "as much saturated fat as a good fry-up of two bacon rashers, two fried eggs and a fried tomato". Another contained more kilojoules than a Mars Bar chocolate snack. Many of the bars wrapped in packaging promoting their 'real fruit' content contained less than four percent fruit puree, the research...