The food and drink industry are tasked by Public Health England to reduce at least 20% of sugar by 2020 through removal of sugar, reduction in portion size or shifting purchasing towards lower sugar alternatives.
Why not take a look at our very own perspectives piece “A positive approach to sugar reduction” by Kirstie Jackson, our Own Brand Product & Project manager here at Bidfood.
Here at Bidfood we are fully supportive of the PHE initiative, we want to offer our customers choice and encourage a step forward towards lower sugar alternatives within the out of home sector. Within our own brand ranges we are continually working on reducing the amount of sugar within the nine key categories without compromising on quality or taste.
We have carried out extensive redevelopment work on our Everyday Favourites scones recipes. With improvements in quality our new recipes offer a light, fluffier eat alongside an appealing homemade, rustic visual. With absolutely no compromise on taste our sultana scones now have a 14% reduction in sugar against original recipe, ensuring to keep a high fruit content, and our plain scone now contains a staggering 26% less sugar.
With rigorous benchmarking and taste testing we have had great success in lowering sugar in our Everyday Favourites ice cream range without compromising on taste or quality. Our range now has over 20% less sugar!
Our ever popular tray cakes range has been through some recipe developments – not only do they now contain 19% less sugar on average but we have also worked on some fantastic recipe improvements. Our lemon drizzle tray cake now contains Sicilian lemon juice drizzle rather than a syrup and our Victoria sponge now contains a homemade jam with higher fruit content. While we’ve increased the amount of carrot in our carrot cake traycake and we now use an Arabica coffee paste in our coffee & walnut.
Our range of Everyday Favorites gateaux is currently undergoing some recipe redevelopments. So far we have had great success in improving the eat and visual of the products alongside a reduction of up to 28% less sugar in our strawberry, lemon and black forest whole and pre-cut gateaux. Developments on the rest of the range are soon to follow.
Working closely with our supplier we have taken great steps forward in reducing the sugar content in some of our biscuits. Successes so far are our Everyday Favourites bourbons and Everyday Favourites ginger nuts, whilst also tackling the fruit shortcake that features within our Everyday Favourites sweet biscuit assortment.