NESTLÉ has hit back over claims that Rowntree Fruit Gums can help people meet the Government’s healthy eating targets.
According to a national newspaper, the York confectionery giant suggested to a customer that eating 195 gums was equal to one of the recommended quota of five portions of fruit and vegetable per day.
The paper, under the headline “C By Gum”, claimed staff told the customer they had worked out that a person would need to eat eleven and a half tubes of fruit gums, with each one containing 17 of the sweets.
The sweets were said to have the same amount of Vitamin C as a single orange but also contain almost 2,000 calories, 238 grammes of sugar – nearly five times the recommended daily intake for a woman – and cost £7.08 compared to about 40 pence for an orange.
A Nestlé spokesman told The Press yesterday that the report went against everything the company believed in. “Fruit Gums, like all confectionery, should only be eaten as a treat and as a part of a healthy balanced diet,” he said.
“We would never recommend that you eat Fruit Gums as a substitute for fruit and veg. A nutritionally balanced diet should always come from a wide variety of foods.”
The spokesman added that Fruit Gums had been invented in York for Henry and Joseph Rowntree by a French confectioner called Claude Gaget in the 19th century, and were made in York until after the Second World War, when production switched to Newcastle.
The Press has reported previously how Gaget called on the Rowntrees with samples of pastilles which, with gums, were in those days almost a French monopoly.
The Gum Pastilles were developed and became an instant success after finally being launched, pushing the company’s sales and profits up, and some have claimed the new products got the company through a bad time and helped it expand into a major business.
Vit C by gum...
FRUIT gums are fun, and fruity. But one of your five a day? A national newspaper – OK, the Sun – suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that if you ate 195 of them, you’d get as much vitamin C as in an orange.
Nestlé are a bit put out. The company has never suggested the sweets could replace fruit and veg, a spokesman said.
They are a treat, and should be eaten only as part of a healthy diet.
We’re glad that one’s been cleared up.
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