Granola business leads campaign in schools to cut sugar

Just Live a Little, the Northern Ireland gourmet granola producer, is teaming up with primary schools to educate final-year students about what really goes into their breakfasts.

The company, a leading supplier of breakfast cereals and snack bars to retailers in Britain, other parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is responding to the market trend for more information about ingredients especially sugar.

Just Live a Little owners David and Jill Crawford, who have a young family, have made it their mission to get children involved and better informed about the amount of sugar added to their breakfast choice.

Jill Crawford explains: "Just under a year ago, Public Health England in tandem with Northern Irish health officials released a guideline for the food industry advising how to reduce sugar in cereal, with a goal of reducing sugar in selected food groups by five percent by August 2017 and 20 percent by 2020.

"As a parent, I have long realised how important it is to reduce sugar, especially in food and drink for children and young people. This is why we've developed our breakfast granolas and other products that can lead and change opinion This project is only the start of a wider company strategy to lower sugar in our own range and to encourage others to do the same," she adds.

Their campaign began with a 'My Breakfast' launch at a primary school near their home this month. The hour-long course encourages primary school-goers to dream up their best breakfast using Just Live a Little Granola as their base ingredient - they decide what to add in and how it should taste as well as its brand name, design and how it can appeal to parents and purchasers.

The creative and enterprising workshop was the first of many they hope to set up with interested schools across Northern Ireland over the rest of year, with St Paul's Primary School in Belfast next.

Supported by their ally and packaging supplier, Priory Press Packaging in Bangor, a designer, printer and producer of packaging, students will be sent home with a blank box. Their homework will be to let their imagination run wild in designing their own design for the packaging. The winner will win the My Best Breakfast award.

Based at Portaferry in county Down, the couple formed the business in 2011 at their home. The enterprising couple are passionate about the campaign to increase awareness among youngsters about healthy eating and recently introduced reduced sugar granolas, including on trend coconut with Chia, pumpkin seeds and quinoa developed for Waitrose, the high-end food supermarket in Britain. The low sugar granolas are also now available in Tesco NI stores. The new breakfast granolas have less than four percent sugar.

The important health initiative has also been influenced by an episode of Jamie and Jimmy's Friday Night Feast on TV, where top chef Jamie Oliver demonstrated that the sugar content in one bowl of cereal can equate to three doughnuts. And by research from the British Heart Foundation has found that 27 percent of children here are classified as being overweight - eight percent reaching obese levels.