Nando's meals 'less healthy than KFC'
If you thought a Nando's chicken meal was healthier than a KFC, think again.
A new documentary going out on Channel 4 tonight reveals that the Portugese-themed restaurant's meals can have more calories and more sugar than similar dishes from the fried-chicken chain.
They are also made with chicken from exactly the same suppliers, Moy Park, despite Nando's charging more.
In Tricks of the Restaurant Trade, nutritionist Amanda Ursell compares the KFC Toasted Twister wrap with the Nando's chicken wrap.
And, she found, while the KFC wrap had 480 calories and 4.7g of sugar, the Nando's meal had 594 calories and 16.2g of sugar - more than three times the amount. It did, though, have slightly less salt.
But even Nando's fries were found to be less healthy than KFC's, with a whacking 546 calories per portion, rather than 310.
Combining the two gives a calorie count of 790 for the KFC meal, compared with 1,140 for Nando's.
Meanwhile, Nando's is considerably more expensive, with a wrap and fries costing £8.45 - nearly twice as much as the £4.59 it costs from KFC.
The documentary highlights just how difficult it can be to make healthy choices about food. Just this week, a report from the Food Foundation found that more than half of people find nutritional labels confusing - and warned that manufacturers and retailers are constantly steering us towards high-sugar, high-calorie foods.
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Of the 57 food items and 23 beverages on the McDonald's menu, for example, only 18 food items and five drinks were low enough in fat, sugar and salt to be allowed to be advertised to children.
In another example, a single pot of yoghurt from one leading manufacturer was found to contains almost all of a child's daily sugar allowance, says the report.
"Our diets are now the greatest threat to our health but acting now makes good economic sense too. Tackling obesity could deliver a return of £17 billion a year, including saving the NHS £800 million a year," says Anna Taylor, the Food Foundation's executive director.
"This problem cannot be addressed by piecemeal tinkering with the food environment, it needs deliberate, clear-sighted government leadership which looks at the food system as a whole, and uses policy to make healthy and sustainable eating easier for everyday people."
