Skip to main content

Major chocolate brands could reduce product sizes to meet new sugar targets

| Supplier news

Mars, Nestlé and Mondelez-owned Cadbury have reportedly offered to reduce the size of their chocolate bars by 20% in order to cut their sugar content to comply with new guidelines from Public Health England aimed at fighting childhood obesity.

According to The Times, the offer was made by the manufacturers following meetings with PHE officials in order to avoid being named and shamed in a report on childhood obesity which is due to be published next month.  The companies have yet to decide whether they will cut prices at the same time.

The 20% reduction is the amount by which the agency is seeking to cut sugar across a wide range of food and drink products by 2020. Whilst other high sugar products such as soft drinks and breakfast cereal can be reformulated using artificial sweeteners, the chocolate makers say doing this ruins the taste of their products.

The targets set by the PHE will come on top of reductions already made by manufacturers and are due to be laid out in the report. The government body has said progress will be measured either in average sugar content per 100g of product, or by reductions in portion sizes.

Pin It

Related Articles

By: Daily Investor  Ramokgopa referred to South African municipalities owing Eskom R78 billion, which is increasing at an alarming rate.
By: Se-Anne Rail - IOL Knorr is recalling its brown onion gravy sachets after manufacturers have discovered some packets may contain traces of cow’s milk and soy.
By: Bianke Neethling – Daily Investor Eskom has done a tremendous job of limiting unplanned outages and improving the performance of its coal fleet, which bodes well for load-shedding in South Africa going forward.
By: Shaun Jacobs – Daily Investor In June, the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of Coronation in its legal battle against SARS regarding the profits earned by its Irish-based subsidiary, Coronation Global Fund Managers (CGFM). 
By: Myles Illidge – My Broadband Eskom is cracking down on corruption surrounding its operations and service providers, and using new technologies and systems to minimise opportunities for criminal activity.