Food products aimed at children rarely live up to their nutritional claims, writes Sylvia Thompson
PARENTS ARE being mislead by "healthy" marketing claims on food items which are popular choices for children's lunchboxes, according to new research.
The study looked at 24 food and drink items packaged as healthy choices for children's school lunches and found that every product was high in either sugar, salt or saturated fat. About one-third of the products were high in both salt and saturated fat.
"The health and nutrition claims are so persuasive that many parents don't realise that these products are high in sugar, salt and fat," says Anne Marie Kavanagh who carried out the research for her Masters in Nutrition in Education at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin.
Using UK government guidelines for acceptable levels of salt, fat and sugar per 100g, Kavanagh found that three popular fruit juice drinks were high in sugar although they were marketed as "rich in vitamin C" or "containing natural fruit juice".
Similarly, she discovered that six popular yogurt products were all high in sugar. Some of the nutrition claims on these products were "100 per cent natural ingredients", "great for growing kids", "50 per cent more calcium than leading competitors".
In her investigation of cheese products, Kavanagh found that all six products were high in salt. Similarly, she found all five meat products aimed at children's lunchboxes to be high in salt.
Many of the meat and cheese products were also high in saturated fat.
As part of her study, Kavanagh asked parents what motivated them when they were purchasing food for children's lunchboxes. Some 94 per cent of mothers (all replies to survey were from mothers) stated that health was the most important motivating factor when food shopping for their children's school lunches.
The taste and appearance of the food item and children's preferences were other less important yet significant motivating factors. Only 23 per cent of mothers stated that convenience was a factor when food shopping for their children's school lunches.
"I think that maybe some parents don't want to say that convenience is important and also, there is a perception that individualised products are more hygienic for lunchboxes," says Kavanagh.
The study found that most parents regularly purchased between four and six of these products with every parent surveyed purchasing at least one.
The study also found that whether the mother worked outside the home or not did not impact on the number of these "healthy" lunchbox products. However, mothers with higher educational standards bought fewer.
Kavanagh says that new European regulation on nutrition and health claims will go some way to preventing misleading health claims on new food products.
However, she says the fact that established products can continue to display health claims until 2010 weakens the legislation.
"These products already have a market share and many parents won't bother looking at subtle differences to their health claims after that date."
Mary Flynn, chief specialist in Public Health Nutrition at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, disagrees. She says, "People are very vulnerable to the message on food products, especially when they are choosing food for children.
"However, I don't believe people will still be drawn to products once unsubstantiated health claims are withdrawn."
Flynn also suggests that the British nutritional guidelines used in this research is "a rather blunt instrument for deciding what's healthy or not".
She adds: "For instance, many dairy products will be high in fat using these guidelines yet they continue to be the best source of calcium for the bone development in children." The EU has yet to finalise the Europe-wide nutritional guidelines.
Kavanagh, who works as a primary school teacher, says nonetheless that regular consumption of these so-called healthy lunchbox products must be a factor in our rising levels of obesity and childhood diabetes.
She believes several steps need to be taken to help parents buy genuinely healthier food for their children's lunchboxes.
"First off, parents need to learn to bypass the marketing information on products and go straight to the ingredient list to see if a product is high in sugar, salt or saturated fat," she says.
To help parents decipher what are often complex lists of ingredients, Kavanagh suggests that the Health Promotion Unit produces a business card with clear information on what represents a high, medium and low percentage of sugar, salt and saturated fat in 100g.
In terms of an input from schools, Kavanagh says that healthy eating policies are useful. "Eighty per cent of all mothers surveyed said that they were influenced by healthy eating policies in schools," she says.
However, she believes schools could go further by having a talk on nutrition as part of the induction day for parents of children going into junior infants.
"Older children also need to be given more media and literacy training as part of their health and nutrition education," she says.
And, finally, she says that manufacturers need to change their products to provide genuinely healthy options for school lunchboxes.
"Market research has already shown manufacturers that people want healthy convenience foods so they should be able to adapt their products to provide truly healthy options," she says.
Louise Sullivan from the Food and Drink Industry Ireland says a lot of products have already had their salt, sugar and fat content reduced.
"The Nutrition and Health Claims regulation provides a structure around health claims and many products have already adapted or removed claims or taken steps to reduce salt, sugar or fat in their products," she says.
She adds: "We are in danger of creating a bad news story around products such as yogurts which provide beneficial nutrients to children.
"And, also, we'd like remind people that they can always look beyond the claim and compare sugar, salt and fat levels on ingredient lists, which are clearly provided by manufacturers."
• It should be noted that some fruits are naturally high in sugar and some dairy products and meats are naturally high in salt and fat which will sometimes be a factor in overall sugar, salt and fat levels in processed food products