To still be pissed of by Jamie Oliver

[marysuzairn]

Everytime I go round a friend's house and they bring out the pims I can't have it because virtually all lemonade now has sweeteners in. People say they taste like crap and gives me such a bad headache.

We need to maximise the amount of nutrient-dense foods we eat, and minimise the processed & sweet things, but if we are going to eat some sweet stuff, then sugar is less bad, as long as it's not in huge quantities.

Agreed- my diabetic friend doesn't recover now with sips of lucozade as they've reduced the sugar. I have to try and get spoonfuls of honey into her when she goes low.

I had a work mate with an insulin pump and we all had sugar cubes on us and new how to get them into her mouth on the rare occasions things went wrong. I don't think I'd have managed with honey.

I agree absolutely with the OP. I can't have most artificial sweeteners, amongst many other things, they trigger really severe migraines. It makes my diet really restricted & difficult. The sugar tax was short sighted - surely the aim was (should have been) to reduce people's reliance on sweet foods, not convert people to using artificial chemical substitutes. I'm not the only person who medically can't have them, a lot of people can't, & there's no long term research for some of them.

When I moved back from belgium last year, I moved lots of San pellegrino mandarin cans back with me, as they are still full sugar over there. I am down to my last two.

@marysuzairn agree San Pellegrino is a crappy nestle brand. But they price it at the higher end of the general supermarket water market. A marketing success though.

I don't support all the AS being put into drink. I don't really care what anyone chooses to drink really. Or what they put in their body. But I do think the manufacturers are responding to market demands and the days of sugar being in fizzy drinks are over. Unless you go to the "upper" end of the market.

Ribena is dead to me now

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

You do realise, don’t you, that sugar, like fat, is not one big unmitigated evil? We need them in our diet, just not too much – same as with everything.

Duh, yes. I'm not a complete idiot. How patronising.

I imagine this is going be the same way that they bring in GM foods (probably already have) and US-style chlorinated chickens etc. They won't advise you clearly on the label (maybe not even in the small print, if certain lobbying groups have their way) - they'll just be considered the 'best' and the default.

Then, if people dare to object to it, they'll be told "Well, not putting chickens through the standard chlorination process is very unhygienic. If you're so determined to have dirty chicken, you might be able to find a niche supplier somewhere; but if you don't like the 'healthier' chickens, you always have a choice to have a grapefruit instead."

But we really don't need much sugar.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll well you will have a choice then won't you? Don't eat chicken and or only eat chickens where you know the source and practices?

Yeah even the "full fat" ones have sweeteners in. That's what pee's me off. They also give DH a headache. Aspartame in particular is a nasty one for many reasons.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5617129/

Duh, yes. I'm not a complete idiot. How patronising.

I didn't think you were, but your posts suggested to me that you genuinely thought that sugar must be avoided at all costs. You also gave the impression that you think people who choose sugar over AS are complete idiots who need to be patronised and saved from their own stupidity.

Unless they bring in rationing or some kind of permit, it's always going to be a case of promoting good balanced diets but then allowing adults to make their own decisions.

Water is essential - it comes freely from your tap until you physically stop it; but if you drank a huge amount of it in one day, you could die from internal drowning. In fact, if you flooded your house, your whole family could die from external drowning. It's all about treating adults as adults.

It’s market forces. Don’t buy the artificial ones. Buy the real sugar ones. Then there will be more sugar ones and less artificial crap.
It’s a tax not a ban.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll well you will have a choice then won't you? Don't eat chicken and or only eat chickens where you know the source and practices?

That is indeed correct. Do you believe that suppliers should be giving me the clear information that I need to be able to make that choice? I do. Or should I just be bulldozed like with the AS drinks manufacturers (and several posters on this thread) and told that I should take pot luck as to what I'm given?

I am so tired of people who have to claim some kind of 'sensitivity' rather than just a simple preference. It doesn't make you special, it makes you irritating and dramatic. That's probably what's giving you the headache.

"Double-blind trials have been carried out with aspartame at Duke University and in one of the best-designed of these studies, the effects of a single large dose of aspartame in people who had claimed to be sensitive to the substance was investigated. The results showed no difference in headache frequency, blood pressure, or blood histamine concentrations (a measure of the allergenic potential) between the experimental and control groups.[24] In another study, at the University of Illinois, which involved diabetics, subjects in the placebo group actually had more reactions than those in the aspartame group."

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198517/

But we really don't need much sugar.

No, but we do need some. I don't drink tea or coffee, so no added sugar there (hot drinks seem to have largely escaped the sugar banhammer). I mainly drink fizzy water, but I sometimes like to add a dash of cordial to it. At the moment, I buy Rocks, which is much more expensive, but a bottle lasts me a couple of months, so I don't mind.

I'm not even saying that naturally sweetened drinks shouldn't have a sugar tax on them - just asking that they still be freely available for those who don't want sweeteners that they hate the taste of and find make them ill.

I do not believe that manufacturers are responding to consumer wishes by adding sweetener to their supposedly 'traditional' drinks: it's just that the sugar tax has made their ingredients more expensive, so they're banking on people not noticing when they bulk it out with cheaper ingredients (i.e. AS).

Artificial sweeteners are also very bad for people's health. Unlike sugar, we don't need any quantity of them in our diets at all; so if anything, maybe they should also have a heavy tax on them and the default for soft drinks be for them not to taste sweet at all. If people find that unpalatable, why should only one 'unhealthy' sweetening option be condoned and the other condemned?

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll strictly speaking the water isn't free but me saying that is completely pedantic . It's certainly a hell of a lot cheaper than a bottle of pop.

And YES I totally agree with the manufacturers giving us the information about where our food has been sourced from. I'm appalled that this won't be happening. I suppose a lot of people won't care really, which is the justification. I do care and I'm not going to be feeding my kids chicken that I can't place the source.

I am so tired of people who have to claim some kind of 'sensitivity' rather than just a simple preference.

All the sugar alcohol sweeteners ending in "ol" do have a laxative effect. It is a known fact, I used to love Maoam chewy sweets, but they contain sorbitol, so I no longer buy them.

I also find that drinks containing artificial sweeteners leave a horrible sickly aftertaste in my mouth, so for me it is the effect on my bowels and the nasty aftertaste.

YADNBU! DH and I said the same thing about Pimms yesterday. It's ruined by the awful lemonade.
I did read an article from a couple of years ago that said Waitrose had a lemonade with actually sugar, not sweeteners, but not sure if that's still true.
Plus, having met JO in real life and seeing first hand what an arrogant and obnoxious individual he is, I can't stand anything he does!

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll strictly speaking the water isn't free but me saying that is completely pedantic

I said 'freely' (as in fast-flowing and very easily accesible) and not 'free'

Glad we seem to have found some common ground.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

But we really don't need much sugar.

No, but we do need some. I don't drink tea or coffee, so no added sugar there (hot drinks seem to have largely escaped the sugar banhammer). I mainly drink fizzy water, but I sometimes like to add a dash of cordial to it. At the moment, I buy Rocks, which is much more expensive, but a bottle lasts me a couple of months, so I don't mind.

I'm not even saying that naturally sweetened drinks shouldn't have a sugar tax on them - just asking that they still be freely available for those who don't want sweeteners that they hate the taste of and find make them ill.

I do not believe that manufacturers are responding to consumer wishes by adding sweetener to their supposedly 'traditional' drinks: it's just that the sugar tax has made their ingredients more expensive, so they're banking on people not noticing when they bulk it out with cheaper ingredients (i.e. AS).

Artificial sweeteners are also very bad for people's health. Unlike sugar, we don't need any quantity of them in our diets at all; so if anything, maybe they should also have a heavy tax on them and the default for soft drinks be for them not to taste sweet at all. If people find that unpalatable, why should only one 'unhealthy' sweetening option be condoned and the other condemned?

The main reasons companies used artificial sweeteners in the first place was because of cost, nothing to do with health. Aspartame costs one 70th of the price of sugar.

All the sugar alcohol sweeteners ending in "ol" do have a laxative effect. It is a known fact, I used to love Maoam chewy sweets, but they contain sorbitol, so I no longer buy them.

Medical professionals will pretty much all tell people with diabetes to either eat in strict moderation or, better still, avoid completely the sugar-free sweets and snacks that contain sorbitol and other AS, sold by unscrupulous companies as 'diabetic chocolate' or whatever.

The clue is clear as day, right there in the name: sorbitol = sore butt-hole

I haven't RTFT but fucking hell there are some bored trolls on Mumsnet today cheers!

I haven't RTFT but fucking hell there are some bored trolls on Mumsnet today grin cheers!

You must be quite bored yourself if you've got nothing better to do than look for a thread that doesn't interest you, click on it and then take the trouble to tell people that they shouldn't show similar interest in the discussion. Just saying....