To think it's time to repeal the sugar tax?

[Citrusandginger]

It's been a soapbox subject of mine for a while that it's difficult to buy drinks without artificial sweeteners since lots of products have been reformulated to reduce the sugar content.

Now UPF and artificial sweeteners are being looked at, as very sadly the incidence of bowel cancer has increased in younger people.

I was brought up in the 70's and while we mostly had home cooked foods, we also had angel delight, Vesta meals, and plenty of other chemical foods. The one thing we didn't have was Diet Coke. We had full fat coke on high days and holidays but the only drinks with artificial sweeteners were marketed for people with diabetes.

I personally gave up sweeteners about 18 months ago and have found it has reduced my sugar cravings overall, so I can see the benefits to me as an individual. My adult children drink diet drinks regularly though - and think they are invincible. I'm worried that the messaging that sugar is bad/so drink diet drinks is so ingrained in their generation, that this will be hard to turn around.

Surely, we need to at least be honest about the health issues associated with sweeteners and give people a choice?

Cancer cases rising twice as fast among under-50s

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c9a913dc-63f4-4fa4-8c25-0faa3301cdee?shareToken=654498f832dfc690127f6e147c127e93

I actually worked on the campaign against the sugar tax.
there is NO evidence that suggests that a sugar tax reduces obesity levels. All evidence cited is very weak (I looked into it extensively).
Sponsor of these studies are often dubious to say the least as well.
The companies did not change the formula of their drinks to reduce sugar because of customer demand. It was simply the sugar tax that forced them into it.
like others have said, moderation is key. I for one think it was an appalling tax that forces us to consume unnatural chemicals.

Tooth decay is the number one reason a child in the UK needs a hospital admission.

Children and adults in the UK eat 2 to 3 times the recommended amount of sugar per day.

The average UK child eats 7 times a day.

We are a nation of dysfunctional eaters and cheap,highly processed high sugar , high fat foods is not helping , neither is the culture of continuous grazing.

If ,as a country, we have to foot the bill for bad dietary habits then we should try to discourage consumption and recoup costs.

The years of healthy eating advice is doing nothing, most people only eat 5 portions of veg a day on Christmas Day.

Teamarugula I agree sugar isn't healthy, but at least it's honestly unhealthy and people tend to be more mindful of their intake. Very few people could guzzle 2litres of full fat coke as it's far too sweet for most of us.

But some people do drink 2 litres of Diet Coke. You only have to see the teens stopping at the co-op before boarding the school bus to know that for some of them it is normal.

That's so interesting. I think in years to come we will be shocked that we were led into this nonsense.

Artificial sweeteners, apart from tasting vile IMO, cause me dreadful stomach problems, migraines and even sometimes joint ache. A short while back Pepsi started putting aspartame in their non-diet cola - no notification, nothing to say they had changed the recipe etc. I drank maybe half a glass and was on the loo with a bucket in my hands all night. Pepsi used to be my cola of choice, but not any more! Like many of the drinks I used to enjoy, there's now a stealth addition of these compounds that make me ill.

All the sugar tax has done is make things that people will buy anyway more expensive. Kids don't eat fewer sweets because they cost more, people don't eat less chocolate because of the cost. But people with an intolerance to artificial sweeteners need to check the ingredients list of things that aren't listed as Diet on a regular basis in case they have been changed without notice.

I don't think we need to repeal the sugar tax. We need to do far, far more than the sugar tax.

The sugar tax got through because corporations had a work around (sweeteners).

We need to do root and branch stuff to address the obesogenic environment. Active transport, poverty reduction, free school meals, cooking classes, the lot. And penalise the fuck out of big food businesses.

However the evidence also shows we cannot moderate our sugar intake.
In the US it's even worse because high corn fructose , of which they've had a glut for many years, is shovelled into everything which is why American chocolate and dessert tastes disgusting to us.
The UK is addicted to sugar and anything to discourage that intake and health consequences should be tried. Artificial sweeteners merely encourage that "sweet tooth" but at least xylitol has ant decay properties.

@Citrusandginger Plenty of people drink lots of full-sugar drinks! I see teens drinking can after can of energy drinks and they are packed with sugar. I don’t think the choice of sugar vs sweetener is the limiting factor in how much people drink but whether their palate is accustomed to sweetness. Most sweeteners are actually sweeter than sugar.

I agree OP but for different reasons

I hate the after taste of sweetener and it has ruined so many drinks for me, even getting a normal G&T now has a sweetener-sweet tonic 😭 in most places

I still buy regular coke every now and then as that is the ONLY soft drink left without sweetener (I think?!)

Even San Pellegrino is betraying me

Hope there is a come back of normal sodas soon

@Allergictoironing yes sweetener is a migraine trigger product for me too

OJ and soda water/Perrier. It's the only way. TBH it was the only way even back when pub lemonade did have sugar in it.

Belvoir lime cordial and soda is also a fool-proof option.

That’s not actually true. I saw a doctor on a tv show experimenting with a girl who drank too much sugary fizz. She argued that diet drinks make your blood sugar rise anyway. So he tested her after drinking the sugar drink and her levels rose. Then he got her to drink the sugar free stuff for 24 hours and there was no rise at all. Zilch. Nada. So it’s misinformation and rumour based on no facts at all.

I hate sweetners and the fact they are now in most drinks (of course it's because of the sugar tax!)
On the rare occasion I fancy a fizzy drink I want it to taste as it should, same with squash so full fat coke, fever tree or rocks is about it

I'm another one who disbelieves the (industry funded) research about this issue

I think the increase in bowel cancer has more to do with the consumption of red meat. Young people seem to eat a lot of burgers, and as soon as the sun comes out so do the barbecues! Years ago a steak was a rare treat and now people are eating them as regular treats. Just my two’pennorth.

I actually don't disagree. My OP was slightly goady and I appreciate that tackling obesity, diabetes, inflammatory conditions and bowel cancer is far more complicated than just banning artificial sweeteners.

But I genuinely don't think the sugar tax has helped the nations health in any way and I am concerned that sugar has been replaced with sweeteners without any serious attempts to promote properly healthier alternatives.

I was born in the 1960s so my childhood was in the 60s/70s. My mum cooked everything from scratch. She would make her own custard and rice puddings, egg custards, cakes and jam tarts and sponge puddings. Everything was made with ingredients from the pantry so there was very little processed food.

I didn't have my first McDonald's until I was about 19, as a child I never had pizza, I must have been about 19/20 when I first went to Pizza Hut. There wasn't the fast food places about like there is now, plus we were always out playing, riding bikes and getting lots of exercise.

For anyone that wants to find sweetener free drinks and we warned of recipe changes, like the one Pepsi sneaked in, I recommend joining a group on Facebook called 'Save our sugar'

It was the sugar tax. Almost overnight it went from being a choice of sugar and sugar free, to now largely having a choice of one or two sugar options and the rest are now ‘Zero’.

I’m more of the view you know where you stand with sugar than sweeteners, and I do hugely resent that choice being limited as I don’t really like the idea of sweeteners (mostly irrationally, I accept!).

I started taking M&S sugarless sweets daily asi was on a medication that made my mouth very dry. This was over a year ago.
I was having severe pains in my left ribs random
ly over several months. I thought it must be due to posture or something -turns out it was the sweets. /sucralose.
The info online says they can cause pain (v vague) the other info is they can halve the microbiome in your gut.
Anyway I stopped eating then and the pain went.

As most of you seem to be in anti-sugar tax agreement can I offer up a personal viewpoint (which I suspect no one else here will share). I’m not really proud of this, but being honest about my shopping behaviour:

when I’m in the supermarket I know that sweet treats are going to be popular with my kids. They have a long shelf-life too.

The fruit aisle of the supermarket is a nightmare. Fruit is comparatively expensive and doesn’t last well. Child A won’t eat bananas, but likes apples. Child B can only eat hard fruit if cut up due to Arfid which rules out taking apples for packed lunch. Child A prefers soft fruits in general. Both kids will only eat fruit when perfectly ripe; anything not perfect (a small mark or bruise; sourness; too soft or too hard) will be rejected and the “ick” might stop that child eating that fruit for weeks or months.

When I was a child the only fruit I wouldn’t eat was manky home grown plums and apples with worms in. My mum would slice the fruit to prove it was worm-free!

So what have I done wrong? I have done something really wrong and I tried so hard (breast feeding, baby-led weaning on home made purées). I gave in to convenience and now it is SO hard to back-pedal.

The supermarkets pedal perfect produce and inadvertently I have trained my kids to reject wonky or unexpectedly sour/soft food.

It is SO much more complex than just sugar tax. It is training a nation to demand and tolerate whole fresh foods against. How do you do that?

My point is, sugar tax or not, I’m drawn to buy these unhealthy processed foods that are stacked with sugar salt and/or fat. I know I shouldn’t. I’m not stupid. But I don’t exhibit sensible educated behaviour or self control, I just take the easy route of buying something I know won’t be wasted and will give pleasure. It’s dreadful parenting and role modelling. The sugar tax hasn’t changed my behaviour but not would reversing it help my health. I’m still going to buy too much of the wrong food groups.

FYI I am a child of the 70s and my upbringing was impeccable- my mum was a sahm and cooked entirely from fresh except a very rare Mars Bar and a daily supermarket yoghurt. She even made her own ice cream and cheese!

All the drinks companies are changing the recipes of everything. Even most “full sugar” options now aren’t if you carefully read the ingredients. It’s frustrating as I drink fizzy drinks once in a blue moon, but if I do, I want them to be a treat. They’re mostly horrible and synthetic now.

I read the title and wondered if we were back in 1763! 😂

The idea that the food industry is covering up research on sweeteners doesn't make sense when you consider all the work that has gone on to remove/reduce naturally occuring molecules that have been shown to cause cancer

[Source, I have worked in an industry where many millions have been spent to minimise the levels of something that occurs naturally in cooking]

I do understand that some people have sensitivities to certain ingredients (hence labelling for things like PKU/aspartame), and some people get aftertastes from certain sweeteners.

I'd repeal the sugar tax because, like so many health initiatives it penalises those at the bottom of the income scale, and drives the silly mentality that foods are either 'good' or 'bad', rather than to be consumed in moderation.