Where can I buy low-sugar cereal bars?

Corny - German sugar free bars,
originally uploaded by Betacells.

This is my last "Corny", a cereal bar sold in Germany.

I bought two boxes of 10 when on holiday in Aachen before Christmas. I think they were less than €2.00 (only 15p a bar). These fairly plain yoghurt flavour cereal bars are 62% carbohydrates and 5% sugar (the hazelnut version is 1.3% sugar - for comparison note that skimmed milk is 5% sugar). They taste like you would expect sweet cereal bars to be and go really well with a tea or coffee. They were great to carry about as an emergency sugar-free snack when drinking in a cafe that only has sugary things to eat.

In the UK I can only seem to find low-fat, high-sugar cereal bars. I wish I'd bought 10 boxes while I was there.

How much sugar is in fruit?

This is a question I've been looking for an answer for since I was diagnosed.

For the first two months after diagnosis I was blithely adding a banana to my morning porridge, unaware of how much sugar this contained. Once I was advised by my GP's nutritionist that I should never touch fruit juices or smoothies and limit myself to a maximum of 2 portions of fruit a day; eating more vegetables to compensate. I am careful to avoid "hidden" fruit and sugar (in sauces, salads, added dried fruit etc.) and take care to account for any fruit I do choose to eat. As a rule if I am not sure how much sugar is in something I just buy something else.

Today I found that, for apples, according to the Food Standards Agency it varies with lower sugar apples being those with the strongest flavours (sugar to acid ratios being low). Their estimate is that an apple is around 10% carbohydrate (which I assume is almost all sugar).

The USDA National Nutrient Database has quite a nice food search engine showing tested sugars, carbs and fats. I've started a table on sugarfree.tiddlyspot.com which I will keep updated.