Starbucks All Butter Shortbread Biscuits

Starbucks All Butter Shortbread Biscuits cost £2.20 and carry 271 calories a packet with 10g of saturated fat and 9.5g of sugar. Traditional shortbread, sold as a small packet.

10g of saturated fat is half an adult daily reference intake and the highest of any biscuit here, which is exactly what all butter means. Traditional shortbread is one part sugar, two parts butter and three parts flour, so butter is the second largest ingredient by weight and there is nothing else in it to dilute the figure.

9.5g of sugar is the payoff and it is genuinely low, less than the ginger biscuits at 18g and barely a fifth of what a bag of mini waffles carries. Shortbread tastes rich rather than sweet, and the numbers back that up: this is a fat delivery system, not a sugar one.

The whole point of shortbread is a texture that comes from having no raising agent, no egg and almost no liquid. Butter coats the flour, which stops gluten forming, and the result crumbles rather than snaps. Anything sold as shortbread that bends has been made with something else in it.

All butter is a phrase with a real meaning on a shortbread packet rather than a decorative one. Cheaper shortbread substitutes palm or vegetable fat for part of the butter, which changes both the flavour and the way it melts, and the phrase exists precisely to distinguish the two. It is also why the saturated fat figure here is honest rather than avoidable.

Fibre at 1g and protein at 2.7g are both low, and salt at 0.36g is modest. Wheat and milk are the only declared allergens and it carries a vegetarian label.

At £2.20 for a packet it is among the better value sweet items here, reaching £3.05 on delivery. The Bearista gingerbread is the low fat alternative at 1.4g saturated.