Speaker 1: Do you enjoy a biscuit with a cup of tea
Speaker 1: or pack a couple of sweet biscuits in your kid's lunchboxes?
Speaker 1: Long gone are the days when a packet biscuit was
Speaker 1: made with real butter and a soft, creamy filling. But
Speaker 1: since they occupy about half an hole in the supermarkets,
Speaker 1: it would appear there are still plenty of us who
Speaker 1: enjoy a sweet biscuit regularly. So on today's episode of
Speaker 1: the Nutrition Couch Product Review, we're taking a closer look
Speaker 1: at two very popular cookies. I am Susy Burrow and
Speaker 1: I'm Lean Wood, and as two of austray Is leading
Speaker 1: dieticians who specialize in evidence based nutrition, we bring you
Speaker 1: the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new
Speaker 1: products and old favorites you can find in the supermarkets. So, Leahne,
Speaker 1: are you a cheeky biscuit eater when you have a
Speaker 1: cup of tea?
Speaker 2: I must say, biscuits aren't really my sol food And
Speaker 2: I for mane of my clients know that my sort
Speaker 2: of philosophy around food is, you know, like bulk of
Speaker 2: our diet is healthy foods, little sprinkle of solt foods.
Speaker 2: So I must say my soul foods are more probably
Speaker 2: chocolate or ice cream versus a biscuit. I can't go
Speaker 2: past a good quality shortbread. But I'm not really biscuit
Speaker 2: girl at heart. I had much rather a piece of
Speaker 2: cheesecake or much rather as goop of ice cream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I sort of torn on biscuits for a period
Speaker 1: in my very early career when I was still studying.
Speaker 1: I worked at Arnet's Biscuits, actually, when the factory had
Speaker 1: just moved from the head office where it was in
Speaker 1: Strautthfield and Sydney for many years. And I remember walking
Speaker 1: around there with those memories of the amazing ice vovos
Speaker 1: with their fluffy marshmallow and the beautiful shortbread, you know,
Speaker 1: Scotch fingers, when biscuits were made with butter, you know,
Speaker 1: going back quite a long time now, and I don't
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up with biscuits. We didn't have them
Speaker 1: in the house. It was certainly novel when I worked
Speaker 1: to work at a biscuit factory and there were you know,
Speaker 1: tim Tams and tiny teddies just everywhere. But I think
Speaker 1: from a nostalgia perspective, a lot of people who perhaps
Speaker 1: a getting a little bit older now, I definitely grew
Speaker 1: up with that cup of tea and a plane sort
Speaker 1: of milk coffee biscuit, and hence we went through that
Speaker 1: phase where family assautas were everywhere, and indeed you and
Speaker 1: I both worked in hospitals where that was served routinely
Speaker 1: in hospital. Still is there you go and I you
Speaker 1: know the you I do. When I'm looking at kids lunchboxes,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of biscuits. You know, they have
Speaker 1: often tiny teddies or shape, so I think, obviously they're
Speaker 1: still consumer demand. But you know, the biggest category constituenties artists.
Speaker 1: You know, Arnets have been the dominant sweet biscuit in
Speaker 1: as long as I can remember. For a very brief
Speaker 1: period of time, there was a company called Paradise Lights
Speaker 1: that came out that were made with a better oil,
Speaker 1: much lower in fat, that were quite palatable, but they
Speaker 1: just got eaten up by the big groups in supermarket.
Speaker 1: So I have today chosen an Arne's range to compare
Speaker 1: to one of the newer groups who are producing healthier
Speaker 1: biscuits as a position to try and improve the nutritional
Speaker 1: profile of this category in the supermarket. So I've chosen
Speaker 1: the Arnot's chocolate chip cookies minis because I feel these
Speaker 1: are really marketed as school lunch box fillers. They're four
Speaker 1: dollars for seven packs, so pretty inexpensive as a snack food.
Speaker 1: First ingredient wheat flour, chocolate chips at twenty four percent
Speaker 1: so sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, natural flavor, and mulcifier
Speaker 1: sugar vegetable oil. Now, to the best of my knowledge,
Speaker 1: on it's hat do and continue to use palm oil
Speaker 1: as vegetable oil in their formulation. I'd love to be
Speaker 1: corrected if I'm wrong, but I have a very strong
Speaker 1: feeling that it is when they say vegetable oil, it
Speaker 1: is palm, which is a heavily saturated fat with very
Speaker 1: little positive we can say about it. Dessicated coconuts and
Speaker 1: neck skim, milk powder, baking powder, salt, and multifier natural
Speaker 1: flavor antioxidant. So if I see a food product land
Speaker 1: that is made with wheat flour, sugar and palm oil,
Speaker 1: generally my recommendation for people would be to run a mile.
Speaker 1: So hence I'm not overly a big biscuit fan as
Speaker 1: a day to day food choice, because to me, it
Speaker 1: combines the three worst possible ingredients for our health in
Speaker 1: a product that this is really marketed, not as an indulgence,
Speaker 1: This is marketed as a daily addition to people's STF.
Speaker 1: So per serve, what does the numbers say? It's a
Speaker 1: twenty five gram sort of small bag. It's five hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty kilogels, so just over one hundred calories per serve.
Speaker 1: One point two grams of protein, which is as expected.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't expect a sweet biscuit to contain much protein.
Speaker 1: It is relatively high and fat, so it's six point
Speaker 1: three grams of fat perserve, which takes it to correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong. Yes, twenty five percent fat, so
Speaker 1: a high fat food saturated fat is over the recommended
Speaker 1: less than three percent for a low saturated fat food
Speaker 1: at almost fifteen percent, and that's coming from that palm
Speaker 1: oil base. Seven point four grams of sugars perserve, but
Speaker 1: almost thirty percent sugar in this products overall, no dietary
Speaker 1: fiber are less than one gram sodium in significant given
Speaker 1: that it's a sweet biscuit, so there is nothing in
Speaker 1: here really I can say is nutritionally strong. It's made
Speaker 1: from wheat, refined wheat flour, sugar, and palm oil in
Speaker 1: they're better options. I don't think in this category there
Speaker 1: are a lot of better options. I think it's an
Speaker 1: indulgent food, a sw biscuit, whether it's a timtam, whether
Speaker 1: it's a mint slice, whether it's a chop chip cookie.
Speaker 1: So I don't buy them. I don't recommend my clients
Speaker 1: buy them. And if that's your soul food, sure, but
Speaker 1: to me, the risk is that they slip into everyday
Speaker 1: diets as a food that's sort of not as bad
Speaker 1: as I see it as a dietitian am I being
Speaker 1: too harsh on the chop chip cookie?
Speaker 2: Leian No, And let's not sugarcredit guys their chocchip cookies
Speaker 2: despite being in a mini packet, and then you know,
Speaker 2: marketed at kids, you're still putting chop chip cookies into
Speaker 2: kids lunchboxes every day. It is what it is. So
Speaker 2: it's really something that has to be an occasional food,
Speaker 2: not an everyday choice. And I feel like because it's
Speaker 2: in a smaller packet, parents sort of think, oh, it's
Speaker 2: just a little bit, it's not that bad. But there's
Speaker 2: nothing nutritional in this And if you want to put
Speaker 2: a treat into your kids lunchbox. Make it once or
Speaker 2: twice a week, don't make it on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably the only positive thing we can
Speaker 2: say about this. Yes, I like that it's portion sized,
Speaker 2: but still it's quite a lot of calories and quite
Speaker 2: a lot of fat, and you know, the bad type
Speaker 2: of fat as well. Mind you, it's not like it's
Speaker 2: good quality fat. I'm actually quite high sugar, like seven
Speaker 2: point four ground of sugar for a little mini packet.
Speaker 2: It's too high for our kids. So you know, if
Speaker 2: an adult was eating this because they genuinely loved chop
Speaker 2: chip cookies, perhaps this is a good option for an
Speaker 2: adult because it is small and it is portion controlled.
Speaker 2: I do like that, you know they're not buying an
Speaker 2: entire packet of biscuits and going to smash eight cookies
Speaker 2: at once. You know they got little portion controlled bags.
Speaker 2: But I think it really is marketeds as children sort
Speaker 2: of lunch box snack options, So we can't really beat
Speaker 2: around the bushes. It's it's not a healthy product. We
Speaker 2: definitely don't recommend it.
Speaker 1: No, and I do when I'm at the park with
Speaker 1: kids and I see kids munching on tiny teddies and
Speaker 1: small packets of biscuits. I sort of think, really, like,
Speaker 1: there's so many healthier options out there. I just recently
Speaker 1: did a trolley this week and went into the health
Speaker 1: section and looked at the packeted snack foods for kids,
Speaker 1: and there's a growing range of very palatable snacks which
Speaker 1: are made with better oil, better types of carbohydrate, more vegetables. Like, really,
Speaker 1: I just think do better on its, Like, you're the
Speaker 1: category leader. There's a lot of innovation you could do
Speaker 1: to make some healthier choices for the market, and they're
Speaker 1: constantly underwhelming in terms of the initiatives to improve the
Speaker 1: food supply because ultimately, big companies like this where affect
Speaker 1: a whole category and supermarket are pumping a lot of
Speaker 1: palm oil into the food supply and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sugar. And I would say to reach out to
Speaker 1: them do better, because you have a responsibility as a
Speaker 1: category leader to do that, And until there's more push
Speaker 1: from supermarkets for healthier products, we won't see those changes.
Speaker 1: So the only way we can talk is by not
Speaker 1: buying them. So yeah, I really think as a company,
Speaker 1: they could do a whole lot better in the sweet category.
Speaker 1: So that leads me to a really interesting product that
Speaker 1: has started to filter through supermarket. You may have seen
Speaker 1: this brand in cereal. Originally they had some low sugar
Speaker 1: icy poles and ice blocks. That was one of their
Speaker 1: first products, and then recently they've had Breakfast Cereal, a
Speaker 1: chocolate nutspread and these cookies. Now there are some of
Speaker 1: the cookies for kids. It's the no nastiest project better cookies.
Speaker 1: I've chosen the adult eighty percent less sugar, but there
Speaker 1: is also leanne a fifty percent less sugar which has
Speaker 1: some packaging for children. So some characters that you can
Speaker 1: find in coals. This is the product found in woolies.
Speaker 1: I think they're also found in coals. Actually there's three varieties.
Speaker 1: They're five dollars for seven, so only slightly more expensive.
Speaker 1: The first ingredient is wheat flour and then they're using
Speaker 1: a no added sugar dark chop chip at nineteen percent,
Speaker 1: which is made with cocoa, solid sweetness, natural sweetness erythrotol
Speaker 1: stevia polydextros to a little bit of sugar soy lefuce
Speaker 1: and natural flavor and then some other sweetness again, so
Speaker 1: erythrotol isomalt stevia, so all natural sweetness, sunflower oil rather
Speaker 1: than palm inulin, some sugar, regular sugar, whole like powder,
Speaker 1: golden syrup, natural flavor, salt, raising agents. So this is
Speaker 1: a processed food. So again we're not saying it's good,
Speaker 1: but what we are saying is nutritionally. When we take
Speaker 1: a look at the numbers, there are vast differences. And
Speaker 1: again it's not using anywhere near the amount of added
Speaker 1: sugar or palm oil that you're finding in the aren't
Speaker 1: It's range. So this is a twenty gram serve. It's
Speaker 1: coming in three thirty one killer jewels, which is about
Speaker 1: what is that lean sixty seventy eighty just eighty calories
Speaker 1: per serve, so less than one hundred similar levels of
Speaker 1: protein one point three. The fat is still twenty percent fat,
Speaker 1: so this is not a low fat product, but the
Speaker 1: saturated fat is a third of the amount in the
Speaker 1: Arnet's variety of five grams. The overall carbohydrate is ten
Speaker 1: grams per served, but the sugars are low, like one
Speaker 1: point one grams of sugars per serve versus seven and
Speaker 1: I think that's five percent sugar versus thirty in the
Speaker 1: Arnet's variety and a bit of fiber two point one grams.
Speaker 1: So for me, again, I'm not saying this is a
Speaker 1: healthy product that I would be encouraging people to add
Speaker 1: to the diet. But if I was choosing to put
Speaker 1: a snack food in my kid's lunchbox that was sweet,
Speaker 1: still tasted good in a portion control, this is the
Speaker 1: one I would absolutely buy over the full strength version.
Speaker 1: And I do buy these cookie which is how I
Speaker 1: came familiar with them, because I saw them in supermarket
Speaker 1: and was like, wow, that's a lot less sugar eighty percent.
Speaker 1: What do they taste like? Because ultimately we can make
Speaker 1: foods healthier, but if they don't taste good, no one's
Speaker 1: going to eat them. And the kids like them. But
Speaker 1: I've said before on the Potti Land, I never put
Speaker 1: a whole pack of the snack food in the twins lunchbox.
Speaker 1: Now they're six, I put half. So I'll open one
Speaker 1: of these bags and give a few cookies along with
Speaker 1: a savory snap. And I've always found that's a really
Speaker 1: smart way financially to use snack food, but also to
Speaker 1: give them a taste of something tasty so they're not
Speaker 1: deprived without putting what I would define as real rubbish
Speaker 1: in there, so you won't see me putting tiny teddies
Speaker 1: or corn chips with MSG or really processed snacks.
Speaker 2: So I'll use a few of these.
Speaker 1: To even out the lunch box. And I think good
Speaker 1: on them because for many years now Arnats have been
Speaker 1: in a position of doing something decent with their formulations
Speaker 1: to improve the fat ratios, to help reduce the sugar
Speaker 1: content overall, as big cereal companies like Kelloggs have been
Speaker 1: doing for many years, and that has a profound effect
Speaker 1: over consumption in Australia. When a company commits to taking
Speaker 1: sugar out of the food supply in their formulations, because
Speaker 1: we all have less sugar, we don't notice and they
Speaker 1: can manage to do it. But Arnot's have remained staunch
Speaker 1: a not doing that for twenty thirty years. So I
Speaker 1: think good on this group, the No Nastiest Project, which
Speaker 1: is an Australian group for pushing them to make a
Speaker 1: healthier variety of sweet biscuit, which should have been done
Speaker 1: years ago by the market leader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like them and I agree like I think,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to buy a kids a treat,
Speaker 2: I think it's great. I think keeps the portions more
Speaker 2: and these like for the cost of it it's a
Speaker 2: dollar extra, it's still less than a dollar per packet,
Speaker 2: so it's actually a really you know, I think for
Speaker 2: most families, quite an affordable snaption. It's not like it's
Speaker 2: you know, like two three, four dollars like some of
Speaker 2: the quote unquote healthier adult based snack choices they have four, five,
Speaker 2: six seven dollars a serving. This is less than a dollar,
Speaker 2: so it's actually, you know, it's quite affordable for a
Speaker 2: lot of families. It's got you know, so much less sugar,
Speaker 2: so much less saturate about it's got more than double
Speaker 2: the amount of dietary fiber. There's many positives in this
Speaker 2: compared to the to the Arnets brands. So I agree
Speaker 2: with you. I think Arnets need to step up to
Speaker 2: do better. We're clearly not getting an ARNT sponsorship on
Speaker 2: this podcast anytime, Susie, but I do hope that our
Speaker 2: listeners appreciate our honesty and our transparency.
Speaker 1: We like by the way, they're good. Well, we have
Speaker 1: to be, you know, and that's why we here are
Speaker 1: because if we don't call it out, who will And
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, as I said, all ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the biscuits in the supermarket I'll come from ARNT. So
Speaker 1: there is no reason why they couldn't have come up
Speaker 1: with a formulation like this other than they don't need
Speaker 1: to and it's cost. It's expensive to formulate new products
Speaker 1: and have innovation like this. But definitely land, you go overseas,
Speaker 1: you go to the UK, you go to America, there
Speaker 1: are millions of new formulations of food products. It's just
Speaker 1: we're small here and Arnets haven't had a push. So
Speaker 1: you know, good on this company for doing it. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, you know, listeners, we have to support
Speaker 1: these companies. If we want healthier foods in supermarket, if
Speaker 1: we want Willies and Calls to keep stocking, then we've
Speaker 1: got to buy them because otherwise they'll get eliminated and
Speaker 1: deleted and again we'll just get it replaced with other
Speaker 1: crappy supermarket brand that they make cheap or continue to
Speaker 1: have the low price point, poorer quality food. So if
Speaker 1: you want better quality food than the super market, you've
Speaker 1: got to be prepared to pay a little bit more
Speaker 1: for it or they don't survive. And we've seen that
Speaker 1: time and time again with really strong products nutritionally, but
Speaker 1: people don't buy them because they're a bit more expensive
Speaker 1: and they get deleted. So you've got to support a
Speaker 1: companies like this who are trying to innovate and create
Speaker 1: healthier products. So you know, as I said, I don't
Speaker 1: generally buy sweet biscuits as part of my shop and
Speaker 1: less of course timtams are occasionally on a half price
Speaker 1: sale like anyone. But in the case of these, these
Speaker 1: are one of the healthier snacks that I do include
Speaker 1: in my kids lunchbox, and that's not sponsored. I just
Speaker 1: had noticed that they were making them and thought, wow,
Speaker 1: that is a really great product that we've really needed
Speaker 1: for a long time in supermarkets. So well done to
Speaker 1: the No Nastis project and support them if you can,
Speaker 1: because they're an a strained company and we need to
Speaker 1: give them that support if we want them to survive.
Speaker 2: And don't you support them. Tell you know your friends,
Speaker 2: your family, take it to your mum's group, take it
Speaker 2: to your school kids' friends. Let them know about them
Speaker 2: as well, because the more we can share the words
Speaker 2: about better products, the better it is for our kids.
Speaker 2: Adults can eat these as well. There's no problem with
Speaker 2: adults eating them. And also, you know, it's everybody together
Speaker 2: supporting these smaller companies, which we want to do, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of people that make coca cola and you know,
Speaker 2: cocoa pops and that sort of thing. That's not what
Speaker 2: we want in the bulk of the shopping aisles at
Speaker 2: the supermarket. So we really do want to support these,
Speaker 2: So spread the word, tell your friends, take it to
Speaker 2: your mum's group, and while you're at it, let them
Speaker 2: know where you heard about it on the great new podcast,
Speaker 2: The Nutrition Couch.
Speaker 1: And they do have also a cereal I haven't tried that.
Speaker 1: They've got the icy poles as well, and also a
Speaker 1: half sugar ntella type product, so another product that's basically
Speaker 1: got a base of palm oil. So definitely, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in your kids' health, it's a good commitment to
Speaker 1: make to choose some of these products that are lower
Speaker 1: in sugar and made with better quality oil. All right lyam,
Speaker 1: But that brings us to the end of the Nutrition
Speaker 1: Couch product review. If you haven't done so already, please
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Speaker 1: will see you on Sunday morning for your weekly Nutrition
Speaker 1: Couch Podcast update. Have a great wake, see you guys.
Speaker 2: Light up