Tomatoes and fruit could be stripped from pasta sauces and yoghurt under Labour’s sugar crackdown, food bosses warn

Tomatoes and fruit could be stripped from pasta sauces and yoghurt under Labour’s sugar crackdown, supermarket bosses have warned.

Government plans to label thousands of products containing sugar as ‘unhealthy’ would encourage manufacturers to replace natural ingredients with artificial sweeteners, food chiefs say.

Last week, health officials set out new plans to crack down on junk food including an update to the classification system for what is deemed healthy and unhealthy.

The new methodology would mean ‘free sugars’ – released from fruit and vegetables when they are pureed – would be placed in the same category as salt and saturated fats.

But food bosses say including free sugars in the calculations would encourage companies to strip out natural products.

Stuart Machin, the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, said the plans were ‘nonsensical’, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

He said the proposed change ‘encourages us to remove fruit purees from yoghurts or tomato paste from pasta sauces and replace them with artificial sweeteners’.

Meanwhile a spokesman for Mars Food & Nutrition, which makes the popular Dolmio pasta sauces, warned the rules could have ‘unintended consequences for consumers, such as vegetable and fruit purees and pastes being replaced with ingredients of lower nutrient density’.

Health officials are now considering whether to use the new classification system, officially called the Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM), for the junk food advertising ban.

This means that products containing fruit and vegetable purees could join crisps, sweets and biscuits in the ban on advertising between 5:30am and 9pm.

Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer at the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), said companies would likely consider reducing the amount of fruit and vegetables from their recipes in order to escape the restrictions.

She said: ‘Given the majority of the UK population are already struggling to reach their recommended five-a-day and daily fibre intake, we’re concerned that an unintended consequence of this policy could be that it makes it even harder for consumers to achieve this.’

A spokesman for Asda said the plans would ‘confuse customers, undermine data accuracy, and slow our progress helping customers build healthier baskets, aligned to our 2030 healthy sales target’.

The overhaul is part of a wider crackdown on obesity and forms part of Labour’s 10-year health plan.

Mr Machin added: ‘What we’ve seen so far on the NPM is nonsensical – not only does it completely stretch the definition of “junk food”, it also causes real confusion, never mind more bureaucracy and regulation.’

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Most children are consuming more than twice the recommended amount of free sugars, and more than one in three 11-year-olds are growing up overweight or obese.

‘We want to work with the food industry to make sure it is the healthy choices being advertised and not the “less healthy” ones so families have the right information to be able to make the healthy choice.’

Earlier this week a report from Danone – who manufacture probiotic yoghurts and drinks – warned that consumers are becoming ‘overwhelmed’ by conflicting advice on ‘healthy’ food.

James Mayer, President of Danone North Europe, said: ‘While the NHS 10-year plan rightly places a greater emphasis on the link between good nutrition and better health outcomes, we’re concerned other recent policy proposals, once implemented, may add to consumer confusion.

‘Industry has invested heavily in product reformulation – reducing fat, salt, and sugar to offer consumers healthier choices at the checkout. If those same products are suddenly reclassified as “unhealthy”, it undermines that effort and sends mixed messages to consumers.’