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

Yes, I hate it that sweeteners are in almost every drink now, including the non-diet ones. I assumed the tax did apply to food as well, as recently found that my pickled beetroot had artificial sweeteners in. I can’t handle plain water at the moment because I’m pregnant, there’s no way I want to consume huge quantities of artificial and inadequately tested (there’s no funding incentive to actually thoroughly research these things so most of the safety evidence is just a ‘lack of evidence of harm’) additives right now. It’s even in cheap ‘juice drinks’.

If the sugar tax was applied to everything we'd end up with sweetners in things like tinned tomatoes.

I avoid everything with artificial sweetners in. Most sad about San Pelligrino and Fentimans (except bizarrely orange jigger which is still full fat). We buy Rock Blackcurrent, Coke, Fevertree, Appletizer.

If you want to eat healthy avoid all sugar and processed food, and eat real natural food like people ate before WW2.

Sugar is a "real, natural food". You think people didn't eat it before ww2? I avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague, mainly drink water and have the occasional full sugar coke or sprite. I despair about the amount of chemical crap in our food these days, even fruit and veg is no longer uncontaminated most of the time. Scary to think what this is doing to us.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/forever-chemicals-food-risks

YANBU I'm allergic to artificial sweetners and my drink choices are becoming more and more limited.

Artificial sweeteners make my IBS worse, I’m also gluten free and lactose intolerant
I hate shopping as there is so little choice and spend ages reading labels
I buy lemon or lime juice to add to sparkling water, drink black coffee, earl grey tea with lemon and enjoy spirits and wine!

The damage is done sadly. The NNS are so much cheaper than sugar that manufacturers are unlikely to switch back.

I now drink alcohol when I go out as there is usually nothing soft I can have other than soda water. Even some of the big brand ciders have sweeteners in them so I now avoid cider as last time a half pint nearly put me in hospital.

They are creeping into other foods now as some people have commented. The evidence is now coming out just how much harm these chemicals do to the gut biome.

I'm another person annoyed that drinks I genuinely enjoyed occasionally have been ruined. Ultimately we shouldn't be drinking that much sweet stuff, be it sugar or artificial sweeteners. I don't like the taste and I'm dubious about what they do to your gut and your insulin - and your desire for junky stuff in general.

I actively dislike the taste of things with Aspartame, it just makes things taste odd!

I have never heard of any child needing hospital admission for tooth decay.

Please can you find me some evidence to back that statement up?

I'd have thought the biggest cause of children being admitted to hospital would be viral wheeze or tummy bugs causing dehydration.

Increasingly there is no "full sugar" version available. Those of us who would prefer a particular product with sugar rather than sweeteners, and are happy to pay a bit extra for it generally find that the selection on offer no longer includes an option without artificial sweeteners.

Foods without any UP are becoming worryingly rare. The UP food issue is by far the most concerning problem and the one that the government and policy makers should be addressing. But they won't, because it's easier to pay lip service to the food issue with things like the sugar tax. Tackling the more important issues would mean taking on the food manufacturing giants, and none of them want to rock that particular boat.

We need to keep the sugar tax, in fact it should be increased. It’s utterly terrible for health and well being, you only have to walk around your local town centres to see how sick and malnourished some folks look.

@Needanewname42 just because you haven't heard of children being admitted to hospital with tooth decay it doesn't meant it's not happening. A whole raft of truths exist outside of our own experiences!

I have heard about it on a number of occasions, most recently last week on a news story which involved interviews with dentists and paediatricians.

You'll find plenty of reliable information about it e.g. www.nature.com/articles/s41407-023-1798-1.

Ultimately the best thing would be to wean ourselves off having regular sweet foods (as you say, the cravings do go away) rather than debating whether sugar vs sweeteners is better or worse.

^This. Losing the love for sweetness of any kind is the challenge.

Do enlighten us all as to how apples manage to make up the majority of fruit in pure orange juice. Or indeed, how juicing the fruit but retaining the pulp gets rid of the roughage?

Finding a decent lemonade is surprisingly hard these days!

As soon as someone uses the phrase full fat coke you know they’ve got no idea what they’re talking about.

Diet drinks don't cause tooth decay because of the sweeteners -- it's the acid. Full sugar Coke is worse because it's got both sugar and acid in it.

That said, it's absolutely true that manufacturers changed products because of the sugar tax; they've said so. And now Ribena tastes vile. We really should be drinking fewer sweet drinks, but this isn't the way to handle it. All that happens is that manufacturers don't want to give up sales, so they lower sugar just enough to come in under the threshold. People still wind up drinking loads of sugar.

As for the US, there's no evidence that high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar; the most common variety is 55/45 fructose to glucose and almost the same ratio as sugar. (You'd see it labelled as glucose-fructose syrup in other countries.) It's just vastly cheaper as the US grows a lot of corn but has tariffs on sugar. The reason the chocolate tastes grim is because Hershey's uses a controlled lipolysis process. The resulting butyric acid gives it a tang that many people find slightly rancid, which Americans are used to, but Europeans are not. There's a reason Hershey's developed this process, but I can't remember what it is. Some type of preservative effect because milk goes rancid, I think. Anyway, the issue with it is really that because it's so cheap, it's easy to load foods up with it. If regular sugar were as cheap, many products would have that instead.

I have diabetes and always keep glucose tablets in my bag for emergencies, but they taste a bit chalky and soft drinks do come in very handy! Also, the artificial sweeteners don't settle stomachs the same as real sugar when you're ill.

No, we know perfectly well that it's "full sugar" and not "full fat," it's just a joke expression.

As for the juice argument, calling 100% juice equivalent to soft drinks is hyperbole, but the sugar and acid aren't good for teeth, and children shouldn't drink too much of it.

It's awful but true and increasing numbers year by year https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/dental-crisis-30000-rotten-teeth-removed-from-children-in-hospitals-reveals-new-nhs-data#:~:text=New%20data%20published%20by%20the,trend%20in%20childhood%20oral%20health.

Here's your roughage information https://www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/enjoy-food/what-to-drink-with-diabetes/fruit-juices-and-smoothies#:~:text=Fruit%20juice%20and%20smoothies%2C%20on,extra%20calories%2C%20carbs%20and%20sugar.

Most smoothies, fruit juice drinks are apple based . Obviously pure juices like orange are not but again even those with pith in will still have less roughage than the whole fruit and the juicing process liberates sugar so it is more easily accessible.
Processing fruit in anyway increases accessible sugar which is why dried fruit like raisins, dried dates etc is as bad for your teeth as sweets. It also makes fruit stickier so again a problem for dental health in a way that whole, untouched fruit is not.

Unfortunately fruit juice is not nearly as healthy as marketing would have us believe and no one , adult or child, should drink too much.
In fact the whole fruit is much healthier, has far better vitamin and nutrient content , is better for our waist lines , tooth health and overall health . Juice is a great way to increase calories and sugar load when adults and children in the UK already consume daily 2 to 3 times officially recommended levels . https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/orange-juice#bottom-line
Like coke etc it really should be an occasional treat , not an everyday essential. Whole fruit is far better alongside a variety of colours of vegetable

I don't think anyone really needs to drink fizzy drinks at all, except for an occasional treat like they used to be in the 70s and 80s. Maybe they should all be taxed, sugary and artificially sweetened.

The US chocolate thing is due to their much vaster distances from the milk production to the sugar manufactories', as you suggest they do some process that helps preserve the milk for that time which causes the vomit style taste.

A tax on processed food would be better than taxing sugar.