When the bloody hell did food get so sweet?

[Leakinglikeacolander]

Made the mistake of shopping when hungry and saw spaghetti hoops, having not had them since I was a teenager I thought I'd have a nostalgic lunch.
I might as well have had sugar puffs on toast, I couldn't believe how sweet they were.
16 grams of sugar in a can! I had to bin them.
Surely they can't always have been that bad?

I had a full fat Coke yesterday, and it actually tasted LESS sweet than the sweetend variety. And don't get me started on the craft ales all cranked with citrus and unfermented malt.

Also, as you age your taste buds detect sweetness as less pleasant.

I think the South Koreans are the worst for sweet food. Someone linked a recipe here the other day for a Korean savoury sandwich and it looked nice but for the multiple layers of sugar! I visited there for a few days once, bought some chicken from a Korean KFC type place and the coating was just so sweet that I couldn't eat it.

There's a Co-op pesto pasta salad which is horribly sweet. Yuck.

I bought some Lidl potato salad on MN recommendations, that too was hideously sweet.

www.which.co.uk/news/2019/08/four-ways-sugar-is-fooling-you/?fbclid=IwAR1Wx9qGAHH8iYysT6JmJ2OFvXQ_HweVTgLO39xWLtLOLI60i0xcMShOI9E

I don't think they've upped the sugar in spaghetti hoops. I think they've taken most of the salt out, so you now notice it much more.

Incidentally I very much hope food manufacturers are encouraged (or forced) to slowly cut sugar just as they have salt. It's very easy to adjust your palette slowly - I really notice it when I travel to or from the US where (as a pp said) things like bread are much sweeter; you stop tasting it either being there or not being there after a few days.

Agreed. It's getting to the stage where all the things I used to love, I now just don't want to eat!

LisaSimpsonsbff I imagine manufacturers are saying they are reducing sugar, they just replace it now with various sweeteners whether that be aspartame and the likes or the more natural stevia, either way it all tastes like shite.

I would rather have sugar than sweetener any day -but- for goodness sake why so much sugar in things that don't need it. I like spicy sharp pickles ones that bite back

I suppose the problem is that cheap food, like spaghetti hoops or cheap bread doesn't have some complex subtle flavour waiting to come out. If you take away the salt and you take away the sweet then people will complain that they taste like either chemicals or nothing

It’s worse in other countries. I’ve just come back from 2 months touring North America and nearly everything I ordered from toast to salad dressing to shawarma and was sweet AND enormous. Even the wine was sweet.

The only way to avoid this is to make your own meals from scratch, unfortunately. I always have, but even I get annoyed having to search through bilberry and bramble packets to find the normal ones amidst all the “super sweet” varieties.
I get my bread from a Farmers’ Market, made traditionally, without all the extra sugar and rapid fermenting yeasts etc. And I make my own cakes, sauces, custards, without adding sugar to the original old fashioned recipes.

Why the fuck has glucose syrup been put into everything. Its even in those Boka cereal bars which are all green traffic lights.

It just goes to show that the traffic light system means zilch.

I can't buy bread from Greggs as it tastes far too sweet

I make most meals from scratch and our consumption of processed foods is fairly limited.
Even when making cakes I tend to reduce the sugar by about a third. Going out for dinner now can be a bit hit and miss with regard to the amount of sugar in sauces and stuff.
I wish manufacturers would start on reducing sweetness rather than reducing sugar, I think incremental changes would help re-set people's tastebuds and perhaps start to tackle increasing obesity levels?