How many teaspoons of sugar in malt loaf?

Malt loaf is a dense, sticky, dark fruit bread sold in the UK, sweetened with malt extract and usually containing raisins or sultanas. It is often sliced thick and spread with butter, and a packaged loaf is small enough to cut into only a handful of slices.

Dr Unwin’s sugar burden chart lists malt loaf in its middle column, foods with added sugars, at 14.7 teaspoons per 100g. The chart gives no portion, so the calculator uses 100g, more than a typical slice. The figure scales with weight, so a slice weighing a quarter of that carries a quarter of the figure.

Its carbohydrate comes from several sources at once: wheat flour, which is digested to glucose; malt extract, rich in maltose, a sugar made of two glucose units; added sugar or syrup; and dried fruit.

The chart prints no glycaemic index, carbohydrate weight or glycaemic load for any food. The load here was back-calculated from the teaspoon figure per 100g.

Giving every food per 100g lets the chart compare foods by weight, though not by the amount usually eaten. Malt loaf shares its column with chocolate rice crispies, digestive biscuits, raspberry yoghurt and a fizzy orange drink.

The dried fruit in malt loaf is represented on its own by dried mixed fruit, from Table 1 of the 2016 paper. Honey is the other food in the calculator’s snacks category that the sugar burden chart gives per 100g.