The point that should be taken from your comment is not that they replaced the sugar with something else because we dont yet know if the aspartame is better or worse than sugar, though we do k ow that sugar is bad in large quantities.
What should be noted is that the study found that sugar consumption has halved, which seems to be a no brainer as the majority of soft drinks either contain half the amount or no sugar. I belive in the UK at least pepsi has half the sugar and almost everything else has no sugar. Coke is the only one that still has the full sugar content it had before. But they sell coke zero at such a low price now and push it with alternative flavours that it is being consumed in higher quantities than ever.
The point being, yeah, the tax stopped drinks makers using sugar so the sugar consumption dropped.
Like i stopped using salt to season my food and i found that my salt intake lowered… wow. Thats crazy.
True, and in typical UK fashion, the costs didn’t go down, but up despite using a cheaper amount of sweetener to get the same sweet effect.
I’m not really sure why, but it felt like a huge surprise at the time that basically all sodas and squashes just switched sugar out almost overnight. For those with diabetes or intolerances, it was quite a tricky switch, and I’ve had a few friends that relied on drinks like Lucozade look for alternatives (and struggle).
Fully agree that the amounts are concerning. Removing sugar will have obvious health benefits, but drinking a lot of anything is likely going to be disastrous.
The point that should be taken from your comment is not that they replaced the sugar with something else because we dont yet know if the aspartame is better or worse than sugar, though we do k ow that sugar is bad in large quantities.
What should be noted is that the study found that sugar consumption has halved, which seems to be a no brainer as the majority of soft drinks either contain half the amount or no sugar. I belive in the UK at least pepsi has half the sugar and almost everything else has no sugar. Coke is the only one that still has the full sugar content it had before. But they sell coke zero at such a low price now and push it with alternative flavours that it is being consumed in higher quantities than ever.
The point being, yeah, the tax stopped drinks makers using sugar so the sugar consumption dropped.
Like i stopped using salt to season my food and i found that my salt intake lowered… wow. Thats crazy.
True, and in typical UK fashion, the costs didn’t go down, but up despite using a cheaper amount of sweetener to get the same sweet effect.
I’m not really sure why, but it felt like a huge surprise at the time that basically all sodas and squashes just switched sugar out almost overnight. For those with diabetes or intolerances, it was quite a tricky switch, and I’ve had a few friends that relied on drinks like Lucozade look for alternatives (and struggle).
Fully agree that the amounts are concerning. Removing sugar will have obvious health benefits, but drinking a lot of anything is likely going to be disastrous.