By Harriet Mallinson | Published on November 21, 2017
Christmas is rarely considered a healthy time of year, after all most festive celebrations seem to revolve around food, but a new study has shown that by shopping wisely we can save ourselves unnecessary calories, fat and sugar without sacrificing taste or portion size.
Researchers compared holiday items from five major supermarkets (Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Morrisons) to see which stores will leave your belly reassembling Santa’s paunch. The study examined nutritional information for goods such as mince pies, cranberry sauce and pigs in blankets, comparing the same portion size each time.
On average, the report by fitness experts Nuyoo suggests that it is wiser for your waistline to shop at Waitrose this year and a disaster for your diet to buy from Asda.
Mince pies proved the most dramatic in calorie difference. You may want to keep shopping bills low by shopping as Asda, but the study proved that their mince pies are the most calorific of all the supermarkets, weighing in at a whopping 280 calories per mince pie. Waitrose meanwhile, could well be worth the extra pennies as their mince pies come to just 117 calories.
However, 100g of Waitrose’s stuffing contains 277kcal while Morrison’s offering has just 157kcal. Yet for pigs in blankets – that’s sausages wrapped in bacon – one from Morrisons is 129kcal while Waitrose’s equivalent is a mere 43kcal. Tesco’s comes out on top, though, with 41kcal per sausage.
Nuyoo noted that making the right supermarket choice for Christmas groceries could save 725 calories, which is 36% of a woman’s daily calorie intake, and 29% of a man’s.
“It is hard to avoid Christmas treats, but smarter decisions could be made this year when it comes to your holiday shop,†says Abby, a spokesperson for NuYoo. “It may seem like an effort to go to different supermarkets, but the number of calories that you can save is definitely not to be sniffed at, it’s the equivalent of eight roast potatoes!â€
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Which supermarkets include the most sugar?
Through Nuyoo’s analysis, it was revealed that Sainsbury’s, on average, slip the most sugar into their seasonal products. Morrisons on the other hand rank last for sugar content, and the difference between the two was 20.6g of sugar, the equivalent of over five teaspoons, or 74% of your recommended daily allowance.
In fact, if you bought the lowest sugar-containing items each time, you would save a massive 51.7g of sugar, or 13 teaspoons, which is the equivalent of almost two days’ worth of sugar intake.
The Christmas purchases with the largest sugar content difference, were cranberry sauce (where switching to Morrisons from Sainsbury’s could save you 17g of sugar), mince pies (13g difference per mince pie) and Christmas cake (8g of sugar difference).
Which supermarkets include the most fat?
The numbers reveal that if it is fat content you are looking to avoid this holiday season, then steer clear of Waitrose, where the total fat content of the selected Christmas items contained a whole 14.9g more than the lighter-option supermarket, which was Sainsbury’s.
Making low-fat decisions for each item on this Christmas list could in fact save you 37.8g of fat in total. Which is a huge amount, considering men shouldn’t have more than 30g of saturated fat a day, and women no more than 20g.
The seasonal foods with the biggest difference in fat content were stuffing (where Waitrose’s stuffing managed to pack 14.8g more fat than Sainsbury’s version), mince pies (6.5g difference between Asda and Waitrose), and pigs in blankets (5.4g difference in fat content per portion).
Harriet is Editor of MACROS and perfectly capable of eating an entire log of goat’s cheese in one sitting.
