Nursery World - Children's packed lunches under fire for high sugar content

Chocolate biscuits, crisps and sugary drinks continue to be staples in children’s lunchboxes, according to new research from the Children’s Food Trust.

It found that while these types of foods are now banned in school canteens due to their high sugar content they continue to feature in packed lunches because children ask for them and like the taste.

The study was conducted by Kantar Worldpanel and collected data from 365.2 million packed lunches made for children aged under 16 between February 2015 to February 2016.

The results list the top 20 most popular lunchbox items; with the top five being bread, margarine, fruit, cooked meat and cheese.

lunch-survey-table

Juice or squash comes in at number six, with the study finding that 18 per cent of packed lunches contained ‘one-shot’ fruit drinks, which give a six-year-old their entire recommended daily intake of sugars (five sugar cubes) in one go.

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