TNC Review: Supermarket Cookies

at two very popular cookies. I am Susy Burrow and I'm Lean Wood, and as two of austray Is leading dieticians who specialize in evidence based nutrition, we bring you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites you can find in the supermarkets. So, Leahne, are you a cheeky biscuit eater when you have a cup of tea?

Strautthfield and Sydney for many years. And I remember walking around there with those memories of the amazing ice vovos with their fluffy marshmallow and the beautiful shortbread, you know, Scotch fingers, when biscuits were made with butter, you know, going back quite a long time now, and I don't I didn't grow up with biscuits. We didn't have them in the house. It was certainly novel when I worked to work at a biscuit factory and there were you know,

tim Tams and tiny teddies just everywhere. But I think from a nostalgia perspective, a lot of people who perhaps a getting a little bit older now, I definitely grew up with that cup of tea and a plane sort of milk coffee biscuit, and hence we went through that phase where family assautas were everywhere, and indeed you and I both worked in hospitals where that was served routinely in hospital. Still is there you go and I you know the you I do. When I'm looking at kids lunchboxes,

they have a lot of biscuits. You know, they have often tiny teddies or shape, so I think, obviously they're still consumer demand. But you know, the biggest category constituenties artists. You know, Arnets have been the dominant sweet biscuit in

as long as I can remember. For a very brief period of time, there was a company called Paradise Lights that came out that were made with a better oil, much lower in fat, that were quite palatable, but they just got eaten up by the big groups in supermarket. So I have today chosen an Arne's range to compare to one of the newer groups who are producing healthier biscuits as a position to try and improve the nutritional

profile of this category in the supermarket. So I've chosen the Arnot's chocolate chip cookies minis because I feel these are really marketed as school lunch box fillers. They're four dollars for seven packs, so pretty inexpensive as a snack food. First ingredient wheat flour, chocolate chips at twenty four percent so sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, natural flavor, and mulcifier sugar vegetable oil. Now, to the best of my knowledge, on it's hat do and continue to use palm oil

as vegetable oil in their formulation. I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong, but I have a very strong feeling that it is when they say vegetable oil, it is palm, which is a heavily saturated fat with very little positive we can say about it. Dessicated coconuts and neck skim, milk powder, baking powder, salt, and multifier natural flavor antioxidant. So if I see a food product land that is made with wheat flour, sugar and palm oil, generally my recommendation for people would be to run a mile.

So hence I'm not overly a big biscuit fan as a day to day food choice, because to me, it combines the three worst possible ingredients for our health in a product that this is really marketed, not as an indulgence, This is marketed as a daily addition to people's STF. So per serve, what does the numbers say? It's a twenty five gram sort of small bag. It's five hundred and twenty kilogels, so just over one hundred calories per serve. One point two grams of protein, which is as expected.

We wouldn't expect a sweet biscuit to contain much protein. It is relatively high and fat, so it's six point three grams of fat perserve, which takes it to correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, twenty five percent fat, so a high fat food saturated fat is over the recommended less than three percent for a low saturated fat food at almost fifteen percent, and that's coming from that palm

oil base. Seven point four grams of sugars perserve, but almost thirty percent sugar in this products overall, no dietary fiber are less than one gram sodium in significant given that it's a sweet biscuit, so there is nothing in here really I can say is nutritionally strong. It's made from wheat, refined wheat flour, sugar, and palm oil in they're better options. I don't think in this category there

are a lot of better options. I think it's an indulgent food, a sw biscuit, whether it's a timtam, whether it's a mint slice, whether it's a chop chip cookie. So I don't buy them. I don't recommend my clients buy them. And if that's your soul food, sure, but to me, the risk is that they slip into everyday diets as a food that's sort of not as bad as I see it as a dietitian am I being too harsh on the chop chip cookie?

a treat into your kids lunchbox. Make it once or twice a week, don't make it on a daily basis. I think it's probably the only positive thing we can say about this. Yes, I like that it's portion sized, but still it's quite a lot of calories and quite a lot of fat, and you know, the bad type of fat as well. Mind you, it's not like it's good quality fat. I'm actually quite high sugar, like seven point four ground of sugar for a little mini packet.

It's too high for our kids. So you know, if an adult was eating this because they genuinely loved chop chip cookies, perhaps this is a good option for an adult because it is small and it is portion controlled. I do like that, you know they're not buying an entire packet of biscuits and going to smash eight cookies at once. You know they got little portion controlled bags. But I think it really is marketeds as children sort of lunch box snack options, So we can't really beat

around the bushes. It's it's not a healthy product. We definitely don't recommend it.

are made with better oil, better types of carbohydrate, more vegetables. Like, really, I just think do better on its, Like, you're the category leader. There's a lot of innovation you could do to make some healthier choices for the market, and they're constantly underwhelming in terms of the initiatives to improve the food supply because ultimately, big companies like this where affect a whole category and supermarket are pumping a lot of palm oil into the food supply and a whole lot

of sugar. And I would say to reach out to them do better, because you have a responsibility as a category leader to do that, And until there's more push from supermarkets for healthier products, we won't see those changes. So the only way we can talk is by not buying them. So yeah, I really think as a company, they could do a whole lot better in the sweet category. So that leads me to a really interesting product that has started to filter through supermarket. You may have seen

this brand in cereal. Originally they had some low sugar icy poles and ice blocks. That was one of their first products, and then recently they've had Breakfast Cereal, a chocolate nutspread and these cookies. Now there are some of the cookies for kids. It's the no nastiest project better cookies. I've chosen the adult eighty percent less sugar, but there is also leanne a fifty percent less sugar which has some packaging for children. So some characters that you can

find in coals. This is the product found in woolies. I think they're also found in coals. Actually there's three varieties. They're five dollars for seven, so only slightly more expensive.

The first ingredient is wheat flour and then they're using a no added sugar dark chop chip at nineteen percent, which is made with cocoa, solid sweetness, natural sweetness erythrotol stevia polydextros to a little bit of sugar soy lefuce and natural flavor and then some other sweetness again, so erythrotol isomalt stevia, so all natural sweetness, sunflower oil rather than palm inulin, some sugar, regular sugar, whole like powder, golden syrup, natural flavor, salt, raising agents. So this is

a processed food. So again we're not saying it's good, but what we are saying is nutritionally. When we take a look at the numbers, there are vast differences. And again it's not using anywhere near the amount of added sugar or palm oil that you're finding in the aren't It's range. So this is a twenty gram serve. It's coming in three thirty one killer jewels, which is about what is that lean sixty seventy eighty just eighty calories per serve, so less than one hundred similar levels of

protein one point three. The fat is still twenty percent fat, so this is not a low fat product, but the saturated fat is a third of the amount in the Arnet's variety of five grams. The overall carbohydrate is ten grams per served, but the sugars are low, like one point one grams of sugars per serve versus seven and I think that's five percent sugar versus thirty in the Arnet's variety and a bit of fiber two point one grams.

So for me, again, I'm not saying this is a healthy product that I would be encouraging people to add to the diet. But if I was choosing to put a snack food in my kid's lunchbox that was sweet, still tasted good in a portion control, this is the one I would absolutely buy over the full strength version. And I do buy these cookie which is how I came familiar with them, because I saw them in supermarket and was like, wow, that's a lot less sugar eighty percent.

What do they taste like? Because ultimately we can make foods healthier, but if they don't taste good, no one's going to eat them. And the kids like them. But I've said before on the Potti Land, I never put a whole pack of the snack food in the twins lunchbox. Now they're six, I put half. So I'll open one of these bags and give a few cookies along with

a savory snap. And I've always found that's a really smart way financially to use snack food, but also to give them a taste of something tasty so they're not deprived without putting what I would define as real rubbish in there, so you won't see me putting tiny teddies or corn chips with MSG or really processed snacks.

over consumption in Australia. When a company commits to taking sugar out of the food supply in their formulations, because we all have less sugar, we don't notice and they can manage to do it. But Arnot's have remained staunch a not doing that for twenty thirty years. So I think good on this group, the No Nastiest Project, which is an Australian group for pushing them to make a healthier variety of sweet biscuit, which should have been done years ago by the market leader.

six seven dollars a serving. This is less than a dollar, so it's actually, you know, it's quite affordable for a lot of families. It's got you know, so much less sugar, so much less saturate about it's got more than double the amount of dietary fiber. There's many positives in this compared to the to the Arnets brands. So I agree with you. I think Arnets need to step up to

do better. We're clearly not getting an ARNT sponsorship on this podcast anytime, Susie, but I do hope that our listeners appreciate our honesty and our transparency.

and have innovation like this. But definitely land, you go overseas, you go to the UK, you go to America, there are millions of new formulations of food products. It's just we're small here and Arnets haven't had a push. So you know, good on this company for doing it. And the truth is, you know, listeners, we have to support

these companies. If we want healthier foods in supermarket, if we want Willies and Calls to keep stocking, then we've got to buy them because otherwise they'll get eliminated and deleted and again we'll just get it replaced with other crappy supermarket brand that they make cheap or continue to have the low price point, poorer quality food. So if you want better quality food than the super market, you've got to be prepared to pay a little bit more

for it or they don't survive. And we've seen that time and time again with really strong products nutritionally, but people don't buy them because they're a bit more expensive and they get deleted. So you've got to support a companies like this who are trying to innovate and create healthier products. So you know, as I said, I don't generally buy sweet biscuits as part of my shop and less of course timtams are occasionally on a half price

sale like anyone. But in the case of these, these are one of the healthier snacks that I do include in my kids lunchbox, and that's not sponsored. I just had noticed that they were making them and thought, wow, that is a really great product that we've really needed for a long time in supermarkets. So well done to the No Nastis project and support them if you can, because they're an a strained company and we need to give them that support if we want them to survive.

adults eating them. And also, you know, it's everybody together supporting these smaller companies, which we want to do, you know, in terms of people that make coca cola and you know, cocoa pops and that sort of thing. That's not what we want in the bulk of the shopping aisles at

the supermarket. So we really do want to support these, So spread the word, tell your friends, take it to your mum's group, and while you're at it, let them know where you heard about it on the great new podcast, The Nutrition Couch.

Couch product review. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to have us delivered to your inbox every Sunday and Wednesday morning. We love to hear from you on our social sites and we love when you leave us a review. So if you haven't left us a review yet on the Nutrition Couch Podcast via the Purple Apple Podcast app, we would love for you to do that because that really helps us in the charts. And we will see you on Sunday morning for your weekly Nutrition

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