Sugar in our Kids Meals

We’ve had some enquires recently about the sugar in our Kids Meals, so we thought we’d post something about this important issue.

Our founding statement is “To cook using the same ingredients and techniques a good cook would use at home” and that still underpins everything we do. How that works in practice is that we use only familiar, store-cupboard ingredients; we don’t add any artificial preservatives or flavour enhancers; and if we want to take the acidic edge off a tomato sauce we use a sprinkle of sugar, like you would at home.

As for our Kids Meals, the recipes we’ve come up with over the past couple of years don’t contain any added sugar at all – all the sweetness comes naturally from the ingredients be it vegetables, fruit, milk, pasta or grains (which is why the nutritional information will still include a figure for sugars). However, some of our older recipes do still include added sugar, usually those using a classic tomato sauce. So our kids Lasagne recipe includes 1g of added sugar per portion, equivalent to about a fifth of a tea spoon, and 9g of sugars overall, just under half the recommended daily intake of sugar for a child aged 4-to-6 years. We plan to remove the added sugar from these recipes in the near future.

The one recipe where this may pose a real challenge is our kids’ Chicken Tikka and Rice, which is intentionally sweet and includes nearly 4g of added sugar, or just under one teaspoon, and 8g of sugars overall. We’ll have to figure out exactly what to do with this one.

To be crystal clear, our kids meals containing added sugar are listed below – 5g of sugar is equivalent to one teaspoon.

• Kids Beef Lasagne – 1g added sugar per portion (9g sugars overall)

• Kids Sausage Casserole – 1.575g added sugar per portion (5.4g sugars overall)

• Kids Cottage Pie – 0.65g added sugar per portion (4.5g sugars overall)

• Kids Meatballs & Spaghetti – 0.7g added sugar per portion (4.5g sugars overall)

• Kids Chicken Tikka – 3.96g added sugar per portion (8.1g sugars overall)

If you’ve got any questions on this or any other aspect of nutrition, do drop us an email at edwardanddale@cookfood.net