Generally, sweeteners refer to all edible substances that can give the food a sweet taste after addition. Conventional sweeteners are the various kinds of sugars, with cane sugar (sucrose) being the most common one. Sugars are under the food substance category of carbohydrates. No matter your cookies contain white sugar, raw sugar, brown sugar or other types of sugars, each gram of sugar contributes 4 kcal to your cookies.  

To make the snack taste sweet while keeping its energy content low, food manufacturers may replace the role of conventional sugars by other sugar substitutes which are the sugar alcohols and low-calorie sweeteners. Sugar alcohols are carbohydrates that can be found in fruits but they will not be completely absorbed nor utilized by the human body. This is why they provide fewer calories (1.5-3 kcal per gram). 

Besides, low-calorie sweeteners, also known as non-nutritive sweeteners, are artificial sweeteners that possess very low or even no calories. Yet, the sweetness they provide can be tens to hundreds of times that of cane sugar. Just add a tiny amount of these artificial sweeteners into food will be enough to provide a sweet taste. Many snacks have claims like “zero sugar, zero calories” or “no sugar” but they taste very sweet, probably this is contributed by these non-nutritive sweeteners. 

Trans-fat is commonly found in crispy snacks, such as biscuits and chips, because most likely the ingredient list of these snacks will include shortening and hydrogenated vegetable oils, in order to generate the desired flavorsome and crispy characteristics. Shortening and hydrogenated vegetable oils are products of vegetable oils after hydrogenation processing. The aim of this processing is to convert the original liquid state of vegetable oils to semi-solid or solid, and so to facilitate storage and prevent the unsaturated fats from turning bad which creates a rancid smell.  

Long-term consumption of trans-fat will interrupt metabolic processes of the body and increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases, which chronically do harm on children’s health. The US Food and Drug Administration has already banned the use of trans-fat in food formulae invented after 18 June 2018. On the other hand, there is no legal regulation on the use of trans-fat in food production in Hong Kong while pre-packaged food products must show the trans-fat content in food labels.