I would like to request you redesign the nutritional information layout on your own brand packaging please.
I have diabetes - a condition which around 3 million people in the UK suffer from. I treat my condition through insulin injections. A key part of this treatment is matching the quantity of insulin I inject to the amount of carbohydrate I eat. For instance, I need to inject 1 unit of insulin to enable me to safely eat 5g of carbohydrate.
Therefore, for me, it is vitally important that the carbohydrate information per portion is clearly labelled. That way, if I am eating a portion of something that contains 40g of carbohydrate, I should take 8 units of insulin, for example.
The problem is, your packaging does not contain this information.
I acknowledge that your packaging does contain a macronutrient breakdown per 100g, so this does give me a starting point. However, I would state that the information is not particularly clearly presented - the usual standard is to do this as a table, rather than a list, which means I have to look quite closely to accurately judge the carbohydrate content per 100g.
I would also say that this information is not actually helpful in the case of smaller food items. For instance, I recently bought some Sainsbury's pork and chorizo lattice rolls. While these are delicious, I have no idea how to dose my insulin accurately for them. I know that 100g of these rolls contains 24.3g of carbs. But I probably wouldn't eat 100g of these in one go. I might eat 2 or 3 individual rolls. I have no idea how much each individual roll weighs, and thus how many carbs are in each roll, because this information is not on the packet.
There is 'per roll' nutritional information which lists almost every macronutrient variable EXCEPT the one I actually need, carbohydrates. So someone who is on a low-cal, low fat or low sodium diet can make informed dietary choices. But I can't. The 'sugars' reading is irrelevant as all carbs turn to blood sugar and need insulin, not just 'sugar'.
Therefore, at a glance, I cannot accurately dose my insulin - I need to find a pair of kitchen scales, weigh out the food and then get a calculator to convert the per 100g rate to something more useful. It would be much easier if the per item carbohydrate amount was simply included on the packaging in the first place.
Why is this important? Because if I get the carbohydrate estimate wrong, that can have immediate and extremely dramatic consequences. If I over estimate the number of carbohydrates in what I'm eating, I will take too much insulin. This could then cause hypoglycaemia, which can be fatal in as little as 15 minutes. It also causes severe cognitive impairment and indeed, one of the conditions set by the DVLA is that people with diabetes must have avoided serious hypoglycaemia in the last year if they wish to retain their driving license.
Meanwhile, if I underestimate the carbohydrate quantity, I will take too little insulin. This causes hyperglycaemia, which cumulatively causes blindness, amputation, heart disease and kidney failure.
As you can imagine, these are outcomes I'd wish to avoid when choosing to eat Sainsbury's products!
Therefore, would it be possible to put the total carbohydrate count per item on the packaging as well please? Or put this on instead of the useless 'sugars' information? Not only would this help the 3 million people out there with diabetes, it would also support the growing number of people who are on low-carb diets, in common with your support for those on low-sodium or low-fat diets.
