Twenty butter tubs in a bag of crisps
"Guess how much fat there is - as normal butter
tubs - in a 250 g bag of crisps?" I asked a friend of
mine. "I have no idea" she replied. "Just have a wild
guess" I urged her. "Well, I'll say three then", she
finally replied. "A bit more than ten", I said.
Small sized text on the side of the crisp bag tells
that 100 g of the product includes 33 g of fat. In
plain english this means that one third of the product
is fat. Total amount of fat is therefore 82,5 g. A
normal butter tub weighs 10 g and 80 % of butter is fat,
so a butter tub includes 8 g of fat. A bag of crisps
includes fat equivalent to ten butter tubs
Let's imagine Alice and Anna having a quick snack. Alice
takes a roll and spreads a whole butter tub on both
halves. Anna looks at Alice suspiciously thinking that
she is really putting a lot of fat on her roll - and
opens a bag of crisps for herself. But her bag includes
more than ten 10 g butter tubs.
2 dl flavored yoghurt includes 24 g of sugar. A
sugarcube weighs 3,1 g. In a cup of yoghurt there's
eight sugarcubes.
3,3 dl energy drink can includes 65 g of sugar.
This is equivalent to 21 sugarcubes.
Let's again think about Alice and Anna. Alice buys
coffee to have with her roll and puts four sugarcubes in
her cup. Anna looks at her "excessive" use of sugar
slowly and shakes her head. She buys herself instead a
can of energy drink and a cup of flavored yoghurt. These,
however, include altogether almost 30 sugarcubes.
Unfortunately on the packages of chocolate bars or
ice creams you cannot find information about the amount
of sugar in the product. On the package you can only
find a list of the ingedients, not the amounts.
World Health Organisation WHO has given
warnings about obesity becoming a serious health problem
in all developed countries and among the rich in
developing countries. Obesity increases the risk of many
diseases, such as heart diseases and and cancers.
Obesity epidemy has also speeded the explosive increase
of type II diabetes or the so-called adult onset
diabetes.
British New Scientist wrote in its editorial awhile
ago that obesity starts to be in the league as smoking
as a health hazard. It raised a question if there is any
sense in putting 10 spoons of sugar in a can of soda.
Sugar is hidden in also such products that you
would not think of, such as sausages and other meat
products. In UK the government is planning to impose an
extra tax and warnings on junk food.
- All packaged food, also candies, should have clear
and illustrative symbols that indicate how much fat,
sugar or salt the product includes. For example we could
use symbols of butter tubs and sugarcubes. If we did so,
a 1,5 liter Coca Cola bottle would have pictures of 50
sugarcubes, says Hassi.
