A comparison of the nutritional qualities of supermarket's own and regular brands of bread in Sweden
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Processed food is associated with unhealthy qualities such as higher content of harmful fats, sugars and salt. The aim of our study was to compare the nutritional qualities of supermarket's own brands and regular brands of bread sold in Sweden. Additionally, we compared the nutritional qualities of gluten-free and gluten-containing bread. We collected information from the labels of 332 bread products available in the largest grocery store chains. The Australian Health Star Rating (HSR) system was used to quantify the nutritional quality of each bread product. We compared all supermarket's own brand products to regular brand products, and gluten-free to gluten-containing bread. The mean HSR for the supermarket's own brands was lower than the regular brands (3.6 vs. 3.7; p = 0.046). For the regular brand products, the fibre, sugar and total fat content were greater (p < 0.001, p = 0.002 and p = 0.021, respectively), while less protein (p = 0.009) compared to regular bread products. Gluten-free bread had a lower HSR than gluten-containing bread (mean 3.5 vs. 3.8, respectively; p < 0.001). The regular brand products were slightly healthier than the supermarket's own brands, primarily as a result of a higher fibre content. Gluten-free bread products were slightly unhealthier due to a lower protein content.
Date Issued
2020-04-22
Date Acceptance
2020-04-20
Citation
Nutrients, 2020, 12 (4)
ISSN
2072-6643
Publisher
MDPI AG
Journal / Book Title
Nutrients
Volume
12
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access
article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32331290
PII: nu12041162
Subjects
FoodSwitch
bread
front-of-pack labelling
gluten-free
health star rating
nutritional quality
packaged food
private label
supermarket’s own brands
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Switzerland
Article Number
ARTN 1162