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Warning: Muller Light’s Worse Than We First Thought

how many muller lights can we safely eat?

Maybe you've been a member of slimming world for a while now, and you want to know a little more about things, or you may have just joined, and you want to learn more about the syn free & free foods you're allowed to eat, in particular Muller Light yoghurts, and how many you can eat safely. Well you've come to the right place! I'm going to strip mullers down to the bare bones and expose them for what they really are, are you ready?

Slimming world’s going great I really can't fault it. I’ve currently lost just over 4 stone (58lbs/26kgs), and I’m really getting into things; in particular, learning about the foods that i'm eating, and what's in them. At first it was simply curiosity, but now it's more of a need, I need to know what I’m putting in to my body, and what's its doing to me.

Your body needs the right fuel

I don’t know if it's a good thing, but I'm thinking of my body more as a machine, a machine that needs certain “fuels” to keep it running well, especially if I expect it to do things I've never done before. I want to be fitter, leaner and strong than ever, and for that to happen I need to make sure I’m giving my body what it needs.

More...

Sure there's gonna be times when I eat junk food. It's who I am. I love food, and some of the tastiest food in the world (that I love) is unfortunately junk food. I'm not going cut that out completely, life's too short for that and it's simply not a realistic way to live in today's world, is it?

On a whole all I want to do is eat as healthy as possible while being realistic, I’m not talking about those odd days off we all have, I just mean majority of the time.

Syn Free...Really?

So on the slimming world diet Muller Lights are classed as a “syn free food” which in theory means you could eat as many as you wanted as they have no syns. This sounds great on the surface, but something that concerns me is the amount of sugar Muller Lights contain.

syn free muller lights?

Before I go any further I’d like to make it clear I’m not writing this with the intention that slimming world will allocate them syns, GOD NO! I love Muller Lights; I want to find out and share with you, what’s in them, what eating too many of them can do to us, and how many is a safe amount to eat.

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Like I just said I love mullers, and I usually eat two with my lunch every day. I have been known to eat up to 6 in a day when I'm craving something sweet or I'm waiting for dinner and I don’t want to go off plan. Mullers are probably the easiest thing to grab on the go, and that’s the main reason I eat a lot of them, it's probably the same for you, right?

Can you eat unlimited Mullers?

I finally found the poster that spurred me to look at muller lights in detail, and write this article for that matter. This poster clearly states (take a look below) you can eat an "Unlimited" amount of muller light yoghurts!

I'm not gonna spoil the rest of this article for you, but this is just crazy advice if you ask me, that's right I'm calling slimming world out! It's a green light for fat people to swap one addiction, chocolate for instance, for muller lights, and that's not healthy.

Slimming world poster stating you can eat unlimited muller lights!

Unlimited Muller lights...REALLY!

10 Muller Light's per day!

While doing a little research online to find out if there is a limit to how many mullers we should be eating it was interesting to see that there are loads of slimmers out there looking for an answer just like me, and you. I didn't find an answer, but I was shocked to find there are some people out their eating 8-10 muller lights per day! Now I know without even looking at any stats, eating that many has got to be bad for you, hasn't it?

What do the experts say?

The Food and Drink Federation have extensively researched how much nutrients we as humans should be eating as part of a balanced diet. They've put together a Guideline Daily Amount chart also known as the GDA, obviously this is a guideline and isn't 100% set in stone for everyone, we're all different, but its safe to safe its pretty spot on for most of us. As you can see from the picture below, amounts vary for men and women but overall their pretty similar.

GDA's for men and women

You know the labels you see on most products in the supermarket, something like the one below. This is where we find out what's in the muller light (or whatever you're looking at) and how much of our a percentage that pot counts towards our recommended daily nutritional intake.

GDA food label

What's in mullers and how damaging are they?

Now we know how much we sugar (and other nutrients) we should be eating as part of a healthy diet, and we also know where to find the nutritional values for muller lights, we now need to take a deeper look into the numbers to work out how many we should be eating.

As you probably know there's loads of different muller light flavours (Turkish delight and cherry being my personal favourite), meaning the nutritional information varies slightly from flavour to flavour; to keep things simple I'm going to use the vanilla flavour as a base for the stats below.

muller light vinilla nutrition information

As you can see in the picture above, there’s 12.3g of sugar in each pot. That equates to 13.6% of a women's and 10.25% of a man's recommended daily amount (GDA) of sugar according to the F&D Federation (chart above)!

"Just reading how bad #mullerlights are on #slimmingworld, its shocking http://ctt.ec/ajet6+ on @darranmansfield blog"

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Am I the only one that’s finding that astonishing? 13.6%/10.25% of a whole days recommended intake for sugars. Knowing that each pot contains 12.3g of sugar, and that I’ve eaten up to 6 pots some days, that's a staggering 73.8g of sugar, or 82% of my recommended daily amount!

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muller light sugar content

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82% just on muller lights, that’s crazy isn’t it, tell me it's not just me!

What’s worse is the people that I told you about eating 8-10 mullers a day, which is excessive how ever you look at it. If you were to eat 10 muller lights in one day like some people are, that works out to 123g of sugar entering your body, and if that’s not bad enough, you will have consumed 136% (women)/102% (man) of your recommended daily intake! That’s insane. That's over a day and a quarter’s recommended allowance!

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It's only sugar right? What's the problem?

Sugar is wonderful, almost beautiful in a strange sort of way. It can make the dullest of foods taste out of this world, so how is it something that tastes so good can be so god dam bad...literally evil towards us.

sugar cubes...we wont harm you

We know that eating too much sugar is risky to our health, but I was shocked to find out the full extent of what it can do, do you know what too much can really do to your body?

It can cause things such as,

  • Type Two Diabetes
  • Damage blood vessels
  • Nerve Damage
  • Organ Damage
  • Heart disease
  • Stokes
  • Retinopathy
  • Kidney disease
  • Foot problems
  • Sexual dysfunction
  • Miscarriage and stillbirth

Holy cow! All jokes aside that’s a scary list. Did you know too much sugar could do all that? I think I speak for both of us here, when I say we want to stay as far away from that list as possible; no one wants those health problems do they.

It's just not worth it

It's safe to say from the stats we've just gone over, eating too many muller lights is bad for us, and could almost certainly harm our health in the long run.The big question still exists though, how many can we eat per day safely?

To tell you the truth it’s not an easy question to answer; there's so many variables to consider, thing such as current health conditions, age, weight, activity level, and your diet. Our diet is the biggest variable that needs to be looked at from a personal level, no ones going to be the same. What you’re eating throughout the day that include sugars will determine how many you can safely eat.

Sure there's going to be people out there eating a lot of sugar within their daily diet, and if that's you then you probably shouldn't eat too many mullers. On the flip side to that, if know your daily diet doesn't include that much sugar, eating three or four muller lights wouldn’t be that bad every now and then.

My Thoughts

It all boils down to the old saying, everything in moderation. Personally I'm going to limit myself to one or two per day. I can't see eating one or two muller lights a day harming you in the slightest as long as the rest of your diet is healthy and in moderation. I wouldn’t advise eating four, five, six…ten muller lights a day. That WILL certainly harm you in the long run as we’ve discussed above.

How many do you eat? What's the most you've eaten I one day?

That was pretty eye opening right, did you know there was that much sugar in a muller?

Do you know someone that loves muller lights, that could benefit from this article? Share it with them, they'll love you!

Muller Light FAQ's

I found out that a lot of you are finding this article through questions that you're looking answer about muller lights.

So I thought why not answer them for you all, so here they are; below are the most popular questions about muller light yoghurts and slimming world I've got so far.

I'll be updating this section regularly, make sure you check back from time to time.

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  • Are Muller lights syn free?
  • How much sugar are in muller lights?
  • Am I eating too many Muller lights?
  • Where’s the cheapest place to buy Muller lights (in the UK)?
  • Can you have muller lights on slimming world?
  • How many muller lights can I eat a day?
  • How many mullers can you eat on slimming world?
  • Are muller light part of your 5-a-day?
  • Are muller lights fattening?
  • Is there anything in muller light yogurts that’s bad for you?
  • Are muller lights a fat burning food?
  • Are muller lights healthy?

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If I say “Yeah! There brilliant for you!” the health nuts out there will jump all over me, telling me how wrong I am (like I care), but I want to answer this question in another way.

Let’s say you’ve finished your lunch and your craving something sweet; normally (before living a healthy, realistic lifestyle) you would grab a mars bar. If, instead of the mars bar you had a muller light, then that would be, without a doubt healthier.

A quick look at the stats;

Mars bar (58g): 34.6g of sugar, 9.9g fat and 260 calories!

Muller light strawberry (175g pot): 12.4g sugar, 0.2g fat and 89 calories.

Picture of a marsbar nutrution values

Not healthy in the slightest!

I’d love to see the health nuts argue with that! Simply put, in moderation, and compared to regular chocolate & sweets, snacks they are the healthier choice.

If you have a question that I haven’t yet answered, please click here and drop me a line, and I’ll be more than happy to answer it.

    Darran Mansfield
     

    Hi! I'm Darran Mansfield, I've been on the Slimming World diet for about 10 months, and I've lost 5 and a half stone (74lbs/34kgs), I'm by no means a weight loss expert, but I do have first hand experience, and that's what I'm here to share with you. I'm looking for a healthy, sustainable lifestyle that's enjoyable yet maintainable in today's modern life. If that's what you want, you should stick around, I'm sure you'll find something helpful and don't forget to say hi to me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Instagram.

    Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 29 comments
    Janette

    I too am on my slimming world journey and have list 2 and a half stone. This diet certainly works and I have about 6 mullers a week. I think the danger, and also the attraction of SW, and the way it draws people into the programme is the way it advocates unlimited ‘free’ food. What fatty wouldn’t want to know that we can continue gorging ourselves on a daily basis as we always have?!
    But now with a little more wisdom I am realising that what is permissible isn’t necessarily sensible, and am aiming to eat more like a ‘normal’ person- that is someone without a binge eating habit.
    So thanks for your article, it underlines some sensible guidelines and highlights the need for moderation. Trying not to shudder at the word!

    Reply
      test test

      Hi Janette,
      Congratulations! That’s great 🙂
      I think your right, it is a great ad they us….fat people come eat! haha but in all seriousness they do try and teach you right from wrong and how we should be doing things which is good and does work overall. People just need to look past the “what can I eat…ok, now pig out” stage. I’m really happy you liked the article, that makes my day 🙂 Stay in touch update us with your progress along the way won’t you 🙂

      Reply
    Austen Lenihan

    yeah buddy two per day you’ll be good!

    Reply
    Nickya

    Great reading…. I often eat 6 muller lights a day but after reading this I will be cutting down!

    Reply
      test test

      I’m glad you enjoyed it Nickya, let me know how the reduction helps 🙂

      Reply
    donna hartland

    iv been a slimming world member for a while now after being on the diet for a few weeks and eating the the muller light for everything for the sins free i came to the conclusion that eating this amount of muller can not be good but after some research i dont eat them at all now after discovering the amount of aspartamaine that is in the low fat muller which is broken down turns into embalming fluid so all skinny sugar is now replaced with natural products and 1 teaspoon malkuna honey which is healthier all round

    Reply
      test test

      Hi Donna, thanks for the comment 🙂
      Yeah it’s shocking right, aspartame is massive “icky” subject I could dedicate an epic article on (think I might!). I think it’s terrible how the government let us eat this stuff and allow manufacturers to us it to pump out chemical crap, why isn’t food just food?!?!?

      How’s slimming world going for you by the way, got any other hints and tips you can share with us all?

      I’m definitely gonna try that mukuna honey tip you mentioned

      Reply
    Yvonne

    Thanks for this Darran. It was SW which got me into eating mullerlights as they’re syn free. I’ve lost weight in the past with SW but calorie count now.

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Your welcome Yvonne, it was the same for me, before slimming world I didn’t really eat many yoghurts, but when I joined I started eating them because they were free and very sweet tasting; just like you.
      It’s amazing how many people don’t know what’s in them and their shocked when they find out.

      How’s thing’s going for you, got any personal tips of your own you’d like to share?

      Reply
    Mae

    Hi Darran .Thanks for this update. I joined last night and find it very confusting.I had a muller light at lunch time and I am pleased that it is a free food but this added to rice, pasta, potatoes all seems too much. I guess you have to take the attitude of all in moderation. I have 1 stone to lose and wondering if this type of diet is for me! Lets wait and see.

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Hi Mae,
      Thanks for the comment, mullers are a great sweet/dessert just make sure you want how many you eat because of the sugars.

      It’s great you started slimming world, and your journey to a healthy lifestyle. I’ve dropped you a quick email going over the food in a little more detail.

      Cheers!

      Reply
    Elvira morgan

    Is new mullerlight syn free

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Hi Elvira,
      What new mullers are you asking about? what’s the flavours?

      Reply
    Christina

    Hi
    A very interesting article, I have often wondered why the muller lights are free when they contain so much sugar. For that reason I have only ever had one a day. I have to say that anyone, whether they are on a weight loss plan or not, should be concerned if they are having multiple portions of the same food. I have been with slimming world for over a year and it really does work, but its important not to forget the two golden rules… “Eat a variety of foods and Everything in moderation” those “rules” are at the front of the Slimming World food optimising book.

    Good Work Darran!

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Hi Christina,
      Thanks, I’m glad you liked the article; yeah it’s crazy right how much sugar’s in mullers lights. Your are right about the two golden rules which I fully agree with, but I do think posters (pic above) that say the word “unlimited” above muller lights is very misleading to new slimming world members.

      That’s great to hear about your success with slimming world, have you got any personal tips that you could share with us all?

      Don’t forget to share the article with all your slimming world friends if you think it would help them 🙂

      Thanks!

      Reply
    Lisa Taylor-Henson

    Firstly congratulations on your successful weight loss Darren.
    I started slimming world today. I have two stones to lose and I was concerned about theses “free foods” and the sugar content. I am still sceptical about the diet full stop. Your article is very enlightening and certainly makes you stop and think. I won’t be eating anymore than two muller lights a day. Thanks for the tip. Awareness is always a good thing when it comes to sugar

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Thanks Lisa,
      Well done for starting, it’s always the hardest step; I’m sure you’ll be fine losing what you want. I’m the same, these free foods look great on the surface but if you look at them more closely, eating loads of them like “we’re allowed” doesn’t seem that healthy. It’s a hard one to balance because the diet plan works, I can’t fault that, but on the other hand being allowed to eat loads of “this and that” can’t be that healthy, can it? Ultimately I think it boils down to moderation and as the old saying “if it seems to good to be true, it probably is!” lol

      I’m really glad you found the article helpful and hope to see you around the blog 🙂

      Oh and don’t forget to pass it on anyone that you know, that’ll benifit from reading it too
      Cheers!

      Reply
    Trish

    Hi Darran I enjoy your blogs.You asked me what I would like you to write about and for.me it is,,, After sticking too the plan all week the scales only read 1/2lb loss or worse still a gain, how to cope with the uphill struggle when u want to give in. Thanks Trish

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Thanks for the comment Trish, I’m glad your enjoying the blog, it’s always great to hear that 🙂

      I understand your frustration; sticking to plan and getting no where or no where fast. I’ve been here and it to say it sucks is an understatement, it seems a common problem as i’ve been asked this a few times now, and I think it’s something that needs addressing, I’ll be writing a post shortly, keep an eye out!

      Reply
    Richard

    Hi Darren, thanks for writing the article I found it really interesting. I always loved Muller Corners so when starting SW I was really happy to see that Muller Lights were 0 syns. I have one or two a day now just to get the lovely sweet taste. I will think about this now when I get a craving for more.

    I have been using SW for 8 weeks now and have lost 3 stone 4lbs so it is working for me.

    You are always asking people to leave any tips in your replies and my biggest tip and help is to get up early before work and do some exercise. I walk the dog for 3-5 miles every morning and I am sure this has helped me. I get to work feeling fresh and ready for the day and my body is all working at full pace nice and early. It only takes about an hour and is really worth it.

    Anyway good luck with your weight loss.

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      Hi Richard, Thanks for the comment 🙂 I’m glad you liked the article and found it useful, bit of an eye opener right?

      WOW! 3 stone 4lbs in 8 weeks, man you are killing it, you should be really proud of that, apart from exercise what’s helping you the most?

      Thanks for your tip about morning exercise, I fully agree, doing it in the morning really does set you up for the day. I myself used to got to the gym at 6:30am 3/4 times a week (work circumstances have changed this to after work currently) and I felt great, totally awake and ready for the day. I don’t know if your the same but it also made me feel as though I was ahead of everyone else, that they were just waking up, and I had done a big thing on my days to-do list, do you ever feel like that?

      Thanks again for your comment Richard, I look forward to seeing you in the comments more often 🙂

      Reply
    Alan

    Hi Darran
    My wife is a consultan for Slimming World so I thought I might be able to throw some light on why Muller Lights are free.
    Its basically because of the types of sugar, there are 2 main types, one is the “added sugar” and the other is “natural sugar”
    Added sugar is the bad guy, this is the one to avoid where possible, this is the one which causes all the health problems you have listed and would be classes as syns
    Natural sugar however is a good guy, it occurs naturally in fruit and dairy and this is where the sugar content of the muller comes from, as an example, compare the vanilla Muller with 7g of sugar per 100g to 100g of Apples which contains 10.2g
    It is a very confusing subject with Sugar, we are all told that sugar is bad for us but not that natural sugars are OK, plus the labels on foods show the total grams of sugar so will show natural and added sugar amounts combined, but RDA’s are set using added sugars only.
    Here is a link to the FSA site which explains a bit more about sugar in our foods

    http://tna.europarchive.org/20100929190231/http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/fss/sugars/

    Reply
    Wendy

    Interesting article on muller lights. I started to question the merits of muller lights after being with SW for a month (lost over a stone) and went through a period of feeling restless and irritable. Wondered if my mood swing might have something to do with the diet. Researching on the web it seems that the artificial sweetner, aspartame, present in muller light and diet drinks can cause mood swings. Why are muller lights syn free. Can it have something to do with all the advertising money they spend with Slimming World magazine ? Or am I just being syndical!

    Reply
    Linda Holmes

    I have had my doubts about the wisdom about eating a lot of Muller light yoghurt for some time. I have lost 3 stone on SW. I am a diamond member so I have kept the weight off for over a year. I have noticed that some other yoghurt brands have the same nutritional value as Muller light and yet attract a syn value. My guess is that there is some kind of commercial tie in between SW and Muller leading to the promotion of Muller Light as a Free food. Sound cynical I know but I think there may be something in this. I used Mullers as a prop at first when I was craving sweet stuff. i have weened myself off them and now eat natural yoghurt only and add seasonal fresh fruit myself.

    Reply
    Shar

    What about the aspartame?
    Just as bad as sugar!

    Reply
    Vanessa

    I was searching on the net to find out if eating 1 Muller Yogurt per day was bad for you (as I’ve started to eat it with my fruits), but since reading that people are consuming 6-10 daily (which is absolutely insane and just damn greedy) I do not feel so bad now. Everything in moderation!

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      I know Vanessa! I could believe it when I found that out, I mean how can they even think that’s ok, right?

      Reply
    becky

    Hi I always wondered this myself thanks for explaining it I am restarting slimming world tomorrow just hope I can stay on track this time if there is any extra info u could give me on best things to eat and not I would be very grateful zxx

    Reply
      Darran Mansfield

      It’s petty shocking went its all laid out like that aint it! Ermm what foods do you tend to go for…meats, pastas, veg?

      Reply

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