Is there enough fibre in your baking?

22/10/2014 Canteen Advice, Healthy Eating, Nutrition News Blueberry muffin

We get a a lot of calls from Canteen Managers who want to know how to ensure their baked goods meet the fibre criteria set by Fresh Tastes @ school in NSW. This criteria is there to ensure the baked goods are providing some nutrition that kids need.

Under the Fresh Tastes Occasional Food Criteria, Snack Food Bars and Sweet Biscuits need to meet the following criteria per serve to be classified as AMBER. They need to be:

  • less than 600kJ
  • contain less than 3g saturated fat
  • have more than 1 gram of fibre

While Cakes, Muffins and Sweet Pastries need to meet the following criteria (per serve) to be classified as AMBER:

  • less than  900kJ
  • less than 3g saturated fat
  • more than 1.5g fibre

We often get questions about how to increase the fibre content of biscuit, cake and muffin recipes so that it meets the standard set by Fresh Tastes.

Our top tips for boosting fibre are:

Substitute half of the flour for wholemeal flour (don’t substitute all flour for wholemeal as this tends to change the texture and cakes and muffins won’t rise properly).

  • Add some bran. Wheat, oat and rice bran are very high in fibre and will mix in well with other ingredients.
  • Add some oats. Oats are also high in fibre and have lots of other health benefits too. Rolled oats are a great addition to biscuits and small amounts of oat bran can be substituted for flour in cakes and muffins.
  • Add some fresh or dried fruit. While fresh fruit is preferable, dried fruit has a higher fibre content per gram so may be a better option in baked goods. Dates are particularly high in fibre and can be a delicious addition to cakes and biscuits. They are high in energy (kilojoules) though, so only use a small amount.

To be sure, you can follow the baked-good recipes on our website and feel confident your recipe will meet the AMBEr guidelines. Try our muffins here.

If you’ve got a recipe on your menu that you’d like assessed, Healthy Kids offers four free recipe assessments per year to its member schools. If you’d like us to analyse your recipes and tell you whether it meets Fresh Tastes, we’re more than happy to do so.  If your recipes don’t meet Fresh Tastes criteria, we’ll recommend some simple changes you can make so that they do.

Thank you!

 

– HKA,  OCT 2014