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.

I recall going into Uni once and buying a bottle of Fanta for lunch. Headed off on my drive home and was taken very ill suddenly. I had a searing migraine, I was sick, my stomach was so painful I was doubled up. I had no choice but pull into a lay by for a few hours until it passed.

I thought I'd picked up some bug until I glanced at the words 'new recipe' on the Fanta bottle. They changed to aspartame with no warning.

After that I triple checked everything and still do. Ironically I believe Fanta has now reverted to sugar.

It's not some imagined allergy. I can't eat certain cereals, sauces, no gum at all and I even reacted terribly to a medication once which my GP discovered had a sugary type coating containing aspartame.

It could be worse, it's not going to kill me but it is a pain in the arse.

There may be sugary drinks, but are there glucosy drinks - because I understood that glucose is the body's preferred source of energy. It's really hard to get a pick-up, now that Lucozade has been ruined.

It's strange that afternoon tea was a staple for decades, and now we are told that any sugar is harmful, even though cake, jam on bread and sweet scones were consumed everyday at 5pm by largely slim, active people. And puddings were eaten for lunch and with the evening meal, whereas now, not usually. That little bit of stewed fruit with sugar and custard probably didn't do people any harm - so it's the way we consume sugars which must be the problem.

More likely it's the severe reduction in activity levels and the increase in portion size.
No one needs sugar to the extent that anything with added sugar can be considered OK really. There is plenty of sugar occurring naturally in the diet.
The evidence on sweeteners and cancer risk is not clear cut.
It is virtually impossible not to be able to get regular Coke.
And the major point of the sugar tax was to protect children who do not have the admirable self control that pp have.

He’s a bloody national treasure! He gives a shit about public health and has run very effective campaigns about it, putting politicians to shame for not being as active as he has been about it. So good on him. We need more people like him in public life.

Yanbu OP. There were already diet drinks available, but now regular drinks also contain sweeteners. Plus a much bigger problem is diet versions of food, which basically replace fat with sugar, and the ever increasing sugar content of things like cheap bread. Most people don't guzzle pints and pints of fizzy drinks, but they do eat low fat yoghurts and cheap sliced white and those are what really do the damage because people don't even factor them into their mental awareness of how much sugar they're consuming, whereas with a can of pop they would and would then adjust the rest of what they eat accordingly.

@sergeilavrov

YANBU.

He has a really wide tongue as well.

My husband refers to him solely as The Chubby Tongued Cunt

PSA - M&S LEMONADE IS ALSO SWEETENER FREE, AND ONLY 65p A BOTTLE.

I tend to stock up every other week or so... more in summer.

you might not care if your childs calpol had sugar in, but for years children with chronic health problems, who needed recurrent antibiotics/painkillers etc. had their teeth ruined by sugary medicines.

Dish I didn’t say no medicines should be made with sweetener, did I? What I want is the choice. If my child needs antibiotics, or pain relief, I want to have the choice for her not to be made hyper by sweeteners. And I want the choice for the medicine to be more palatable, so it’s not a trauma for either of us for her to take it. For most children, it really is not going to be an issue to have relatively small amounts of sugar a few times a day over a very short period. With months in between periods of needing something.

For chronically ill children, I can see your point, though I pity them having to take medicine several times a day without anything to sweeten the pill just a little.

What I want is CHOICE. Because, you know, we’re not all robots, we’re human beings, and we have different needs.

Sweeteners are not bitter Yes, they are - to some people. Obviously they aren’t to you, but you shouldn’t extrapolate from that that your experience must be universal. Again, we’re people, not robots. Taste buds vary. Some people taste more than others. I don’t get much sweetness from most sweeteners, just bitter. Even the odd one that tastes sweet to begin with, like saccharin, is an unpleasantly over the top sweetness, followed by a revolting bitter taste. There is absolutely no pleasure in eating them, and I certainly don’t want my gut bacteria adversely disrupted for something that tastes of arse. It’s not a sensible trade off. I’d far rather have the odd sugary drink and enjoy it and account for the calories by adjusting elsewhere.

We don’t need to get hysterical or self-righteous about sugar. It’s not a health food, for sure, but it’s pleasurable to eat in moderation, and most people can tolerate small amounts with no ill effects. We need pleasure in life sometimes amongst the grind, not just a grim and joyless orthorexic existence.

I will never forgive Jamie Oliver for ruining Lucozade, I suffer from ME/CFS & Lucozade used to be great if I had used all my spoons up to help get me through the day or if I woke up feeling rough to give me enough energy to get up, dressed & get ds to school.

Whoever wrecked Cadbury's chocolate should be publicly flogged every day until they changed the recipe back to how it should be, it tastes worse than that awful cheap stuff that you could buy to melt & put on top of cakes.

I feel the same. I don't drink alcohol, my one indulgence when I go out was a soft drink. A lot of places only have stuff with sweetners. I wanted a mockotail for my birthday, we couldn't find any lemonade in our nearest supermarket without sweetners.

I cannot have them, they upset my stomach and give me a terrible headache. So now I mostly have to drink water when I am out too.

I am not a fan of orange juice or apple juice and our local pubs only have sweetener based drinks

@BarbedBloom

I am not a fan of orange juice or apple juice and our local pubs only have sweetener based drinks

Regular Coke doesn’t have sweeteners I don’t think.

Regular Coke doesn’t have sweeteners I don’t think

It doesn’t but after the sugar tax many smaller pubs stopped selling regular soft drinks on draft due to the expense. You can get bottles of coke but they are extremely small and very expensive.

but they are extremely small and very expensive.

Agreed, but those who like to control others will think it’s a good thing that you’re restricted in this way.

I think he’s rather annoying but his heart seems to be in the right place. I’d rather we had a few more Jamie Olivers in the world.

I’m not a soft drink person, but I am really not into sugar/fat tax. In theory, I get it. Tax the things that cost the NHS money and to encourage better choices. In reality, I think it takes too simplistic a view of what is and isn’t healthy.

There is research which suggests a link between artificial sweeteners and stroke/dementia. In 20 years time, sweeteners will be banned and we will all be back to natural sugars but in smaller quantities.

Two of the common sweeteners trigger awful migraines. It’s not a rare problem, I know others with the same issue. That makes me very skeptical of just how safe they really are.

@Doggybiccys

There is research which suggests a link between artificial sweeteners and stroke/dementia. In 20 years time, sweeteners will be banned and we will all be back to natural sugars but in smaller quantities.

This is very possible. And the worrying thing is so many of us knew this all along.

Jamie celebrated the sugar tax and was holding up the sweetener heavy ribenna as a success and now has moved on to other projects. Thats why I hold the guy accountable.

Crisps? Cereals? Theres lots of food with sweeteners in that arent fizzy drinks

And I don't eat any of them. If I am unfortunate enough to be caught unawares, my tastebuds inform me really quickly and I stop eating them and resign myself to the fact that I will be tasting that shit all day.

Me too, Dione. I don’t buy or eat much processed food, but that I do buy is good quality stuff, and tends not to have the sweeteners in. I always check labels of new foods to check, and don’t buy anything with sweetener in.

I also don’t buy food that’s meant to be savoury if it has sugar in, either. It’s usually a marker of a food being low quality and tasting awful if it’s supposedly a savoury item, but has either sugar or sweetener in.

Thats why i have stopped buying some tinned soups. Sugar is listed ad an ingredient and i think they taste too sweet for a savoury soup. I tend to make my own as we bought a soup maker st the beginning of lockdown

Before Jamie Oliver your country did not have a good reputation for food, he has arguably done a lot for England! I thought it would be practically illegal go speak out against him.... have admittedly not noticed the width of his tongue, perhaps this contributed to his lisp ?

Did JO improve the UK's reputation for food then?

Sugar is a poison, that's it, there's no way round it. Fizzy drinks are the worst form of this poison, people often get addicted to consuming huge amounts of these drinks. The marketing appeals to children so they get hooked on the drinks too. In coke, or energy drinks, the sugar is combined with caffeine, so two addictive substances together. Jamie Oliver is only espousing the huge amount of scientific data on the danger of sugar that has been around for literally decades now. The government was slow to act on sugar tax and it doesn't go far enough imo. By the way, sugar, as in white cane sugar is not a natural substance, it is very heavily processed, you'd be marginally better consuming raw unrefined brown sugar, but only marginally.

Diet versions are not much better, but if a person was addicted to the sugar version, switching to the diet version would be a way to step down and get off them. Sweeteners, the research of its safety is mixed, but if you consider that they are used in minute quantities compared to sugar as they are so so sweet, so your exposure would be less.

If you are diabetic, as other posters have mentioned, carrying glucose tablets would be a more reliable way to manage episodes of low sugar than trying to find a shop or pub that will provide you with a sugary fizzy drink.

As for friend serving Pimm's, well bring your own full sugar lemonade or drinks if that is your preference. You'd be better off with a good quality organic red wine though, stopping at one glass or water