Sweet success with reduced sugar
Picture 2,000 bath tubs of sugar - that’s the amount of added sugar Fonterra Brands New Zealand is set to remove from its products over the next 12 months.
A reformulated Fresh ’n Fruity yoghurt with 40% less added sugar1 has hit supermarket shelves, signalling the latest step in Fonterra’s commitment to limit added sugars across its products.
Fonterra Brands New Zealand, Managing Director, Brett Henshaw says, “Healthy People and providing valuable nutrition are a key part of our new strategy, and our business is doing everything we can to make it happen.”
“The World Health Organization recommends less than 10 percent of our daily energy intake should come from added sugars. This means around 12 teaspoons of added sugars each day for adults. However New Zealand’s total added sugar intake is currently averaging 14 teaspoons per person, each day.”
“Unicef’s “The state of the world's children 2019” report ranked New Zealand second-worst in the OECD for child obesity, with 39% of Kiwi kids classified as overweight or obese. We want to be part of helping to fix this problem,” Brett says.
“Our Co-op has nutrition targets that are designed to help consumers limit their intake of added sugars. The Fonterra Food and Nutrition Guidelines – endorsed by the New Zealand Nutrition Foundation – shows that the co-op aims to limit the addition of sugars to less than 2% (2.5 tsp) of daily energy requirements per serve. 2
“The new Fresh ’n Fruity yoghurt comes hot on the heels of Primo and Calci-Yum UHT, where our team has also reduced added sugar levels by up to 40%.
When we combine what we’ve already achieved through similar reductions undertaken over the last 18 months, we are now putting 600 tonnes less added sugar into our products each year.
“And the good news is we won’t be stopping here, our innovation team will be getting stuck into more work like this.
“It’s not an easy task taking this much sugar out of our products while also delivering to consumers expectations around taste.
“Our Fonterra Brands Innovation Team have worked hard on this over the past year and a half, and this has included a lot of consumer testing.
“The overall liking of the reformulated Fresh ’n Fruity recipe by the sensory panel was really positive. We’re confident our consumers will love the new Fresh ‘n Fruity recipe as much as we do,” Brett says.