My favourite sweets have to be Sports Mixture - fruit gums once made by Lion and now made by Maynards who are owned by Cadbury Trebor Bassett.

Before boarding a recent flight, my daughter bought a pack of Sports Mixture to eat on the plane. And seeing as they are my favourite sweets, I was intrigued to see "Be treatwise - Get to know your GDA" emblazoned on the front of the packet (GDA stands for Guidline Daily Amount).

Looking at the back of the packet, it's clear for all to see that each sweet contains just 5 calories and 0.9g of sugar. Which made me think eating a handful of Sports Mixture every now and again might still be on the cards.

That was until I took a closer look at the food label.

Because it also says that 100g of Sports Mixture contains 345 calories. Given that it states each sweet contains 5 calories, my schoolboy maths tells me that if I divide 345 calories by 5, I will be able to find out how many Sport Mixture sweets make 100g. And the answer is 69.

So according to the label, if I eat 69 Sports Mixture sweets, I will have consumed 100g of Sports Mixture and the 345 calories that goes with them.

Sounds good until you realise that a packet of Sports Mixture contains around 60-70 sweets - but doesn't weigh anything like 100g. The weight stated on the packet is 215g - more than twice what you would expect going by the food label.

If 100g gives me 345 calories, then 215g would give me 742 calories. And if each sweet really did contain 5 calories I would expect to find around 150 sweets in every pack (I wish!).

So either my maths is appalling, the weight stated on the packet is wrong or there are a lot more calories in a single Sports Mixture than the label is telling you.

Which is it? I think I'll ask Cadbury's. And I'll let you know the answer in due course.

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