Sugars, sugars and more sugars, that seems to be the primary energy in Jungle’s Energy Bar’s. How much of the calories or energy in these bars are empty or from fat rather than oats as advertised. Let’s see if we can cut through the sugary, sweet marketing hype and see a little more clearly what these and other similar ‘energy bars’ are actually about and why all the sugar, colourants and flavourants in something that supposedly is healthy.
A 40 gram bar contains at least 8.1 grams (20.3% of ingredients) of sugars or roughly 2 teaspoons per bar. Each bar also contains 7.4 grams of fat (18.5% of ingredients), 3.3 grams being saturated fats, fully 17% of your daily saturated fat intake. There are so many hidden sources of sugar in the array of ingredients that it becomes difficult to accurately calculate. For instance one of the ingredients you will see mentioned is ‘Humectant E422‘ which is actually Glycerol, now Glycerol is absorbed and metabolised as glucose (by the body) into fats. hmmm … and to make matters more interesting Glycerol comes from Propene and that …
Propene is produced from fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and, to a much lesser extent, coal. Propene is a byproduct of oil refining and natural gas processing.
So 38.8% of your health snack bar consists of fats and sugars.
20.3g sugars @ 1619kJ per 100g
Golden Syrup 1240kJ/100g – 74% sugar
Glucose Syrup 1330kJ/100g – 28% sugar
Palm Oil 3853kJ/100g
Invert Sugar
E440 – Pectins
Oats has roughly 1400-1600kJ per 100g