Still hitting the sweet spot: pladis slashes sugar content in McVitie’s

21-Feb-2020 - Last updated on 21-Feb-2020 at 09:25 GMT

pladis claims consumers will still get the same enjoyment from its slashed-sugar biscuits with a cuppa. Pic: pladis

McVitie’s has cut the sugar content of nine of its biscuits by up to 10%, which will remove an estimated 785 tonnes of sugar from Brits’ diet every year.

McVitie’s owner pladis has reformulated the recipes for Original Digestives, Rich Tea, Chocolate Digestives (Milk and Dark), Hobnobs, Chocolate Hobnobs (Milk and Dark), Caramel Digestives and Ginger Nuts. For example, Original Digestives now contain 9% less sugar, relating to around 0.3g less sugar per biscuit.

The variant has also seen a 5% slash in its salt content.

According to McVitie’s, the new recipes were ‘achieved through careful rebalancing of ingredients to reduce sugar and salt in order to get below or as close to Public Health England's target while maintaining the distinctive taste.’

Last year, McVitie's launched Granola Oak Bakes – billed as containing 35% less sugar than similar offerings found in retail – aimed to make Brits’ snack time healthier.

Exceptionally complex process

The company claims to have taste tested the new biscuits on hundreds of customers to ensure the reduction ‘could not be spotted’ – even going as far as making sure the biscuits tasted exactly the same when dunked in a cup of tea and used a mechanical dunking arm in a laboratory to record the time to break when dunked.

“For years, we have been working on reducing sugar in the nation’s favourite biscuits,” said David Murray, MD of pladis UK & Ireland.

“It is exceptionally complex process because our fundamental philosophy is that we will absolutely not compromise on taste or quality of the ingredients.”

The reformulated biscuits have already hit shelves across the UK.