King Size Candy soon to be extinct in the UK

IAFRICA.COM - HEALTH & FITNESS SECTION
1 JUNE 2005

NO MORE KING SIZE CANDY BARS?

King-size candy bars which have helped fuel Britain’s expanding appetite and waistline will be phased out by some food companies in compliance with an official campaign against obesity, media reported on Monday.

Cadbury Schweppes, the conglomerate which produces the famed British Cadbury chocolates, and Mars, the Masterfoods subsidiary and maker of sugary snacks M&Ms, Milky Way and Twix, said some of their extra-hefty sweet confections would disappear from next year.

The country’s Food and Drink Federation, which also includes major multinational companies like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Unilever, Monday published a food “manifesto” in which its members vowed to “explore new approaches for individual portion sizes to help reduce over-consumption”.

The move is seen as an industry-wide bid to impose some self-regulation rather than face stringent state rules aimed at curtailing Britain’s health crisis.

Politicians and health specialists believe obesity has reached crisis levels here, with children “choking on their own fat”, according to an expert quoted in an alarming official report in May.

Britain has the world’s fastest-growing fat problem, with childhood obesity tripling in two decades and fully three-quarters of adults now overweight or obese.

Cadbury said on Sunday its king-size Crunchie and Boost bars would be put out of production from the end of February, while Masterfoods said it was phasing out its 100g Mars and 85g Snickers, according to the Daily Telegraph.

But the Mars and Snickers bars will be replaced by something equally large — a two-portion sweet which will be sold as a snack to share.

“The name king-size will be phased out”, Masterfoods’ Michael Jenkins told the newspaper, explaining that the large portions “will be changed so they are shareable or can be consumed on more than one occasion”.

Nestle, the Swiss food giant, has rejected calls to shelve its giant-size versions of Lion bars, Kit Kats and Rolos.

The products, packed with fat, refined sugars and calories are mostly consumed by “young men with active lifestyles”, a company spokesman said.

Consumer advocates dismissed the candy makers’ moves as superficial and intended only to deflect criticism, not change Britons’ junk food habits

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Candy News, Industry Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.