I grew up on Sanitarium Weet-Bix for breakfast – my folks bought it because it was healthy with only 3.3% in sugars. Moreover, Sanitarium took the high moral ground in the 80s and 90s, waging war with Kellog’s Nutrigrain and others by pointing out that their high sugars content (33% for Nutrigrain) was not at all nutritious.

Since then Sanitarium have presumably decided that making money is more important than health, and have released two Weet-Bix Crunch products – Honey and Cocoa – in which the sugars content is 29.4% and 28.7% respectively. Ultimately that doesn’t bother me – it’s their brand and they can dilute it if they want to.

What does bother me, however, is that having set the brand expectation of low sugar products over many decades of commitment to that brand promise, the packaging for the 28.7% sugar Weet-Bix Crunch Cocoa tells me only how good it is:

I used to be able to trust Sanitarium to tell me what was healthy for me – I could buy any of their products without reference to the nutritional panel. Now I can’t. Now I must interpret what they say about their products, and compare the nutrional content of their products to those of other brands. And as soon as I’m forced to do that, I have no brand preference for any of the entire Sanitarium product range.

The dumbest part of this is that we’ll all find out anyway, so it can be stated upfront. Find a way to prominently state that it’s got a higher sugar content than we expect and we might buy it as a treat for our kids anyway.

Trust needs no interpretation or comparison.