Biscuits

For a country of over 65 million people who find agreeing on anything very difficult, when it comes to biscuits we are amazingly united. According to research group Mintel, 93% of us eat biscuits and, in the last year alone, we munched our way through 420,000 tonnes of them.[1]

Despite growing consumer concern about healthy diets, people still appear willing to make an exception for the irresistible biscuit. Sales of biscuits have grown by 4% to £1.8 billion in 2017,[1] the same year that sales of other unhealthy snacks such as chocolate and confectionery stagnated.

Troublesome ingredients

The thought of putting your favourite biscuit brand under the ethical microscope might be daunting prospect. Because if you look past their indulgent persona, the vast majority of biscuits contain a whole host of ethically troublesome ingredients such as palm oil, sugar, and cocoa. Understanding the wider implications of these industries might make you think twice before putting your hand back into the cookie jar.

Palm oil

13 companies in this guide received our best rating for palm oil. None received our worst rating. Only Mondelz lost a whole mark in this category, owing to a combination of its middle rating and external criticism from Greenpeace. This suggests that most companies in this industry are actively tackling this issue.

We don’t think that it is clear whether consumers should avoid it altogether. With this in mind, companies can get our best rating either by being palm oil free, or by using best practices in their sourcing.

For example, a company must have all of the possible palm products used in its global supply chain certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) plus something extra like full disclosure of volumes, suppliers, or traceability to the mill. Or else a high proportion certified and even more other positive initiatives. The higher proportion of palm sourced from segregated supply chains, the easier it is for a company to achieve our best rating. 

Another way companies can demonstrate engagement on this issue is by sourcing palm oil that is certified as organic. Doves Farm was one such company; it stated on its website, “The Palm Oil used in our products is responsibly sourced from an organic supplier in Colombia. It is fully traceable, GMO-Free and, being produced in South America, is in no way implicated in the destruction of Orangutan and other wildlife habitats that is occurring in Southeast Asia.”

Cocoa scores

Chocolate biscuits are the most popular biscuit type in the UK. In our chocolate guide we have detailed the many ethical problems of chocolate and said that, as a minimum, companies need to source their cocoa from certified suppliers.

But, in the world of biscuits, very few companies are taking this responsibility seriously. In fact, our research has shown that only Against the Grain, Island bakery, Biona, Doves Farm and Traidcraft source 100% certified cocoa. The remaining companies in this guide have been marked down under our Workers’ Rights category because of the well-known prevalence of child labour in the industry.

High in sugar

The big news when it comes to sugar is the UK’s long-awaited sugar tax, which came into force in April 2018 for soft drinks. Money raised from this levy will supposedly be channelled directly into funding school sports and breakfast clubs. Although there are no guarantees that the sugar tax will be effective in the UK, similar taxes in Mexico have seen a 10% decline in soft drinks consumption in just two years.

Its introduction has prompted sugar and health campaign groups, such as Action on Sugar, to call for a widening of the tax to other high-sugar foods such as biscuits and sweets.

The NHS recommends a maximum daily sugar intake of 30 g (7 teaspoons) for those aged 11 and over and, with most biscuits containing 3-5 g each, you can understand why they have been targeted. Such is the health concern surrounding biscuits, Diabetes UK have dedicated an entire page on their website to their health impacts.

For children aged 7 to 10, the recommended maximum daily sugar intake is 24 g, and for children aged 4 to 6 it is 19 g. In other words, five biscuits can exceed a 10-year-old’s full daily sugar allowance.

The NHS has this advice: “Read the nutritional information on food labels to see how much sugar the food contains. The nearer to the beginning of the ingredient list the sugar is, the more sugar the product contains.

“Look for the ‘carbohydrates (of which sugars)’ figure in the nutrition label to see how much sugar the product contains for every 100 g: 

• more than 22.5 g of total sugars per 100 g is high. 
• 5 g of total sugars or less per 100 g is low. 
• If the amount of sugars per 100 g is between these figures, it’s a medium amount of sugars.”
• The UK’s most popular biscuits, McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives, contain 29.5 g per 100 g and are therefore high in sugar.

Does sugar beet cane?

Although biscuit companies are feeling threatened by the sugar tax, they are currently enjoying the lowest sugar prices for many years. The EU’s removal of sugar beet quotas in October 2017 has seen global sugar prices drop dramatically. As the EU ramps up its sugar beet production, sugar cane producers from the Global South are being squeezed out of the market.

One might assume that producing sugar from sugar beet grown in the UK and the EU would have dramatically less environmental impact than importing sugar cane from half way across the world. However, as is often the case, both industries have their ethical shortcomings. 

On the one hand, tropical sugar cane is both more productive and requires less land than sugar beet. However, as the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) highlights, sugar cane is also a very ‘thirsty’ crop that has contributed to deforestation and fresh water pollution in countries such as Brazil. In terms of carbon footprint, an EU sugar industry report found that “The carbon footprint range for EU beet sugar was found to be at least similar, if not lower, than cane sugar imported and refined in the EU.”

Supermarkets abandon Fairtrade

When we last looked at biscuits back in 2015, four of the UK’s major supermarkets, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Tesco, and Asda, all offered Fairtrade-certified own brand biscuits. However, all the above have ceased these ranges. This follows a very public distancing that some UK supermarkets have taken away from Fairtrade, a move spearheaded by Sainsbury’s and Tesco. We did, however find Fairtrade shortbreads available at the Co-op.

Packaging

Plastic food packaging has come under the spotlight in recent months after the BBC’s Blue Planet II series highlighted the chronic damage it is doing to our marine ecosystems. Like most food companies, biscuit producers contribute to this problem. All brands in this guide appear to use plastic packaging to varying degrees.

Renewed public attention on this topic has prompted some brands to make commitments to reduce their plastic packaging. Mondelz, for example, has pledged to reduce its global use of packaging by 65,000 tonnes by 2020. Fox’s immediate parent company, 2 Sisters, aims to slash its packaging 90% by 2025.

Where to buy the Best Buys

You should be able to find these biscuits in wholefood shops. Otherwise, try this guide:

References:

1.  Sweet Biscuits and Snack Bars, Mintel 2018