Muesli has a good image. But an investigation by “Ökotest” shows that some foods contain a lot of sugar or traces of potentially harmful substances. Fortunately, there are also «very good» mueslis.
Fruit muesli – a healthy thing, one might think. But this is not necessarily the case for many a commercially available breakfast mix. As «Ökotest» (edition (1/2022) reports, there are sometimes many different pesticides in fruit muesli. Among them are even those whose use is banned in the EU. After all, if it’s a product with an organic seal, they are Mueslis largely unencumbered by pesticides.
According to “Ökotest”, 10 out of 50 fruit muesli products are defective
«Ökotest» examined 50 fruit mueslis with a fruit content of 7 to 55 percent. 21 of them got the grade “very good”, but also ten with the worst grade “inadequate”. The negative record was set by a muesli mixture in which the testers detected traces of 31 different pesticides, including the fungicides carbendazim and famoxadone, which are banned in the EU. Seven other products contained substances whose use is also banned in the EU.
Controversial in the EU, but not yet banned, is the spray poison glyphosate, which is suspected of being cancerous. Its massive use also endangers biodiversity. The commissioned food laboratory also detected traces of it in five fruit muesli alone.
Also interesting: “Ökotest” warns of glyphosate in more than half of the spaghetti tested
Contamination with mineral oil components
In addition, some mueslis were contaminated with mineral oil components – even organic mueslis contain aromatic mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOAH). “Carcinogenic compounds can also belong to this group of substances. Food should therefore be free of MOAH as a precaution,” writes “Ökotest”. The assumption: The mineral oil components could have gotten into the muesli ingredients from packaging or lubricating oils on machines.
The laboratory commissioned by «Ökotest» also detected saturated mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOSH) in fruit muesli. “MOSH accumulate in the human body. It is still unclear what the consequences of this will be,» the report said.
Fruit mueslis sometimes consist of 25 percent sugar
There is a scientific consensus that too much sugar is unhealthy. However, the note «no added sugar» says nothing about the actual sugar content. For example, some mueslis consist of a quarter or more of sugar, without sugar, cane sugar or glucose syrup appearing in the list of ingredients. The sweetness comes mainly from the dried fruit it contains.
Also interesting: The different names of sugar
The following applies to six mueslis in the test: Even a 50-gram portion contains more sugar than the World Health Organization (WHO) considers harmless to health even for an adult. For children, the magazine recommends mueslis that contain no more than 15 percent sugar.
With material from dpa