Galaxy Milk Chocolate Digestives, Galaxy Orange Chocolate Digestives, Galaxy Milk Chocolate Bar

Product Information

Aside from providing a calorie boost for exhausted health workers, are digestives (whose recipe is nearly two centuries old) any better for you than other biscuits?

Galaxy owner Mars says: "Combining the classic crunchy base of a digestive biscuit, with the irresistible creamy taste of smooth, finely milled Galaxy milk chocolate, this is a biscuit designed for you to enjoy for that little bit longer… Every last crumb!" It comes after category leader McVitie’s launched a non-HFSS digestive biscuit – Wholesense Digestives – in June. The digestive’s other major ingredients are fat and sugar. Or rather, sugar-like substances, such as invert sugar syrup, a sweeter-than-sugar mixture of glucose and fructose much loved by industrial biscuit bakers as it improves the browning and flavour. It’s also considered an indicator that the food is ultra-processed, and so should be consumed with circumspection – however, we don’t need a health report to know not to stuff ourselves with biscuits. Digestives are the sensible jersey of the biscuit world, comforting without being fancy. There are recipes for homemade versions on the internet but this seems an odd idea, much like those dough presses designed so you can spend hours sweating in the kitchen to make custard creams that look just like ones you buy, but at five times the cost. In fact, when the recipe was invented by two Scottish doctors in 1839 (McVitie’s manufactured its own secret recipe, created by Sir Alexander Grant, in 1892), the supposed “digestive” benefit came from the dose of bicarbonate of soda which lightens the texture, and, they postulated, might help with acid reflux. These days, commercial forms of baking powder (bicarb mixed with acid) are used, which helps the biscuit rise a bit, but whether there was ever any real digestive benefit is debatable.The cheesecake should be stored in the fridge and will last for 3-4 days. You can freeze the undecorated cheesecake, however you do need to let it set in the fridge first. Setting it in the freezer will affect the texture and it won't be as nice. Once it's set in the fridge, you can remove it from the tin and put the cheesecake in a box or tupperware. You could also slice it up, and freeze in portions. Then you can easily defrost a few slices at a time depending on when you'd like some cheesecake! How do you remove a no bake cheesecake from the tin?

The WWF says it can be produced sustainably, and all the supermarkets say they use only sustainably sourced palm oil. But Greenpeace argues that manufacturers have no way of telling if what they use is truly sustainable. The reality is, the only way to avoid palm oil altogether is to make your own digestives (as we discussed before). You can also opt for a brand that includes rapeseed oil, thus bringing down the total palm oil content. The NPD would reach different occasions and appeal to “a wider spectrum of shopper demographics”, said Frost. Mars said that, despite a third of households eating chocolate digestives, branded choice was extremely limited.

Can this recipe be made in a different sized tin?

More controversial is the palm oil that is an ingredient in all the biscuits I tried. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), palm oil production is responsible for the destruction of forests all over the world, destroying the habitat of endangered animals and contributing to global warming.