THE LATEST ‘HEALTHY’ offering by McDonald’s – porridge – contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and the same amount of calories as a cheeseburger.

The so-called “bowl full of wholesome”, which is currently sold in the US, is porridge with 21 ingredients automatically added – including cream (which itself has seven ingredients, just two of which are dairy), brown sugar, diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins. As well as thickeners, colours, stabilisers and preservatives, the porridge oats themselves even have an added ingredient – something intriguingly named “natural flavour”.

Rather than being the healthy breakfast option presented, the concoction of ingredients mean that a diner would ingest “about the same amount of sugar as a Snickers bar [and] about the same amount of calories as [a McDonald's] hamburger” – while paying more than the price of a burger for the trouble,  says Mark Bittman, a food author and blogger for The New York Times. To put it in context, a cup of Fruit & Maple Oatmeal has about 32 grams – or eight teaspoons – of sugar.

However, Julia Braun, a registered dietitian for McDonald’s USA, told ABC News that the calorie count was not outrageous: “About half (of the sugar) comes from natural sources,” she said of McDonald’s oatmeal. “That’s providing a half a cup of fruit, or a quarter of your day’s fruit.”