Who would have thought?
As someone with an intolerance to artificial sweeteners, I’ll never forgive Jamie Oliver for pushing the sugar tax, alongside his insistence on “improving” school meals that resulted in mass outsourcing of school food to the lowest bidder.
Kids aren’t drinking less soft drinks than before, the drinks themselves have just replaced sugar with chemicals and byproducts that aren’t particularly healthy themselves…
replaced sugar with chemicals
OH NO, NOT SCARY CHEMICALS!!!111
Sugar is a chemical, ya dolt. So is water. So are most of the components that make up you.
Man, education has really taken a nose dive…
Maybe leave the cuntery back over at Reddit…
This community is supposed to be for uplifting news.
The community name isn’t a license to say dumb things and not be called out for it
Then call it out, but maybe not be such a cunt about it. It’s an embarrassment for the fediverse that someone can’t be civil to what is a fair comment, even if it’s not factually accurate. Even on cesspools like Reddit you wouldn’t see this kind of toxicity.
It’s an embarrassment for the fediverse that someone can’t be civil to what is a fair comment
It wasn’t a fair comment though was it it was an attempt to spread utterly false information. Also I’m sorry, but I completely do not accept this premise that somehow Lemmy is better than Reddit.
It was absolutely a fair comment.
The quoted part of the comment makes it seem like “chemicals” is the subject of the assertion. It’s not. The comment goes on to describe what chemicals and why they’re a concern.
Yes, it’s not a great comment, it’s not eloquent, it could be more concise… but that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to make disingenuous misrepresentations about the authors intended meaning.
Okay well I will challenge the content of the comment and you can make arbitrary and utterly unfounded comments about my assessment.
But apparently I’m not allowed to call out insanity wherever it appears because that would be rude. God save me, I was rude to an ass wipe.
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.
Have you considered drinking unsweetened stuff? Either plain water, or “flavoured” water. Basically soda without any sugar or sweeteners. It’s surprisingly tasty, and pretty much as healthy as pure water.
Alternatively there are tons of different sweeteners. Some like stevia should be fine even if you have issues with, say, aspartame.
Sadly, Stevia doesn’t agree with me either, although I don’t feel as ill as if I have drinks with aspartame, which is what most drinks in the UK use.
I recently bought a soda stream for just this, since I now mostly drink sparkling water. There aren’t many cordials here that don’t use a sweetener, and many of my previously favourite kombucha brands now use aspartame - but there’s enough to have some choice.
And the amount of aspartame has doubled
So? That’s way less bad
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Aspartame can lead to overeating. Some research also point to liver cancer.
Ok, now do sugar, and compare the statistical quality of the evidence too please
But sugar sucks too? I’m not defending either.
Great, now all the undernourished kids with poor parents are going to drink water instead and lose weight to dangerously unhealthy levels.
According to The Guardian (same source as this article), the number of children in food poverty in the UK is 4 million. 15% of UK households went hungry in January. Now, soda isn’t the smartest source of calories in a kid’s diet. It’s expensive and low in other nutrients. But kids aren’t always smart. A poor kid thinks “I’m hungry, I have a few pounds, there’s a vending machine, problem solved”. If the soda is too expensive, that doesn’t mean the kid is going to go to Aldi, buy some potatoes, and roast them for a cheap and nutritious meal. They’re a kid! It means they’ll pay more or go without. Which means you’re making the poverty and malnutrition problem worse.
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solution: more meat.
Username checks out.
How about more veggies and legumes?
no.
Thanks for your unbelievably ignorant view!
What source can you cite that shows that children in poverty primarily source their calories from soft drinks/soda and now will be at greater risk of nutritional deficit specifically as a result of this tax?
Food poverty is clearly related to cost of living issues and social inequity all greatly exacerbated by Brexit, not a tax on sugar.
This site provides data and resources for more information.
Food poverty is a problem in the UK but drinking Coke isn’t the solution. If you look at the nutrition information on the can of your average soda it’s basically either sugar or artificial sweeteners and nothing else. No calories in that there’s no proteins in that you can’t live off it so who cares if there’s less sugar in it?
Also food banks exist, they absolutely should not have to and it’s a disgrace that they do, blame Cameron and his big society nonsense, but they do exist and in large numbers. I don’t think there’s anywhere in the country that you couldn’t get free food if you needed it.
This person said the same thing in news and they didn’t even look up how much the tax penalty was. It’s 18-24p per liter depending on the sugar content and there are a lot of exceptions. Poor people are not denying their kids (apparently necessary) sugary sodas because they can’t afford an extra 24p.
I think the stupidest thing about food banks is they give the same random bags of food to poor and homeless people, so I often see carrier bags with tins of beans or dry pasta just dumped by the roadside because what the fuck is a homeless person going to do with 600g Aldi penne pasta?
If I were homeless, I’d take beans over Coca Cola any day…
I work in a food bank and that is not what they do. We have a different food bags for different people, typically they are divided into people who have no way to cook food, people who only have access to a microwave, and people who have access to a proper kitchen.
Tin food gets given to people who have access to a microwave and if they need one they can even get a tin opener. Although we seem to give 10 openers to the same same 12 people again and again I have no idea what they’re doing with them but we have hundreds of the damn things.
Once they’ve picked up that bag they can then go to the tables and pick up extras that they like. The bags will contain things like tin soup and pasta, assuming they have access to cook it, and then they can put in fruit and vegetables as they like. There is no point giving vegetables to people who won’t eat them, it’s just a waste of food, so that’s why it’s done like that.
We have very few people who come to the food bank who literally have no way to cook food because the local church has a few microwaves that I believe they can come and use whenever they want. There’s always the odd person who’s just awkward though, so they get bread and peanut butter, crackers and a bit of cheese. It is rather hard to accommodate them but they are accommodated when they turn up.
The one near me either doesn’t do that, or maybe they only have the “access to kitchen” bags by the time the homeless get there.
Which food bank is this because they’re supposed to be registered on a list and they’re supposed to behave according to a set of rules. Now there are random churches who decide to “be Christian” but do it badly. Nothing can be done about them. But if they are on the list of approved food banks they’re supposed to operate according to approved rules.
I assume it’s a Trussell Trust one, but they are all in churches round here, so it could be as simple as an 80 year old volunteer giving out the wrong bags…
Cough Cough… Now follow suit America. I am sick of seeing people being so unhealthy and addicted to this drug.
The comments here are incredible. Are we being botted by Big Sugar?
No, people are just gullible and love to feel like they know something everyone else doesn’t
A billion dollar industry would never do such a thing.
That, and sugar is insanely addictive.
back to brown ale, then, Timmy
With my ADHD just cutting on sugar seems to be the best diet change in my life period. I mean, of course there’s sugar in lots of things, but at least not putting it into tea and not eating Snickers improves everything.
Once you stop taking sugar in coffee and tea you’ll also notice that both tast so much better without sugar. :)
I mean, that’s somewhat dependent on the coffee/tea. But yeah, if you have good quality, then the taste doesn’t get masked by sugar.
I still like some sugar. A qube, maybe two if I’m feeling frisky. But i definitely enjoy my earl grey more when i can actually taste it
I already knew, it was compulsive
Imagine what would happen if we taxed capital gains properly 🐸
Or other externalities
It worked so of course they didn’t extend it to other things with more hidden sugars (things like pasta sauce, flavoured yoghurts etc)
gtfo of here with sugar in my pasta sauce. It makes no sense and tastes bad.
And boxed macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, etc. NoW wItH AdDeD SuGAr! Get all the way out of here with that nonsense. Stopped eating it a while ago, but people depend on cheap easy meals.
I add sugar when I make pasta sauces all the time, also to stews and stir fries. It’s a nice dimension.
If you’re doing it yourself you’ve got control over how much you’re adding. It’s the pre made sauces they are the problem where they use it as a cheap way of masking how shit the tomatoes they’re using are.
There it’s used more as a preservative than anything else
I like sugar in some pastas it cuts the acidic down for me.
If something was too acidic I’d probably add a sprinkle of MSG, or Parmesan if you don’t have that.
Parmesan makes sense, it’s a bit alkaline so will act to help neutralise the acid. You could also put a small amount of bicarb in.
Add a tiny bit of bicarb to cut the acid down. Sugar just makes it sweeter and doesn’t actually do anything about the acid.
Sugar is added because the tomatoes used aren’t that sweet and are really acidic.
If you use sweeter tomatoes (san marzano for example), you just need a bit of salt and you are good to go.
Just use a carrot, cube it and add it to the sauce
Ill have to see if I can find some and make a little homemade sauce and see the difference
My recipe is as follows :
-100ish grams of onion,carrot, celery and olive oil.
- two big cans of san marzano (about 3liters)
- 10 g of salt
- basil to your taste.
I pulverize the onion,carrot and celery with the olive oil until it makes a yellow paste. The goal is to have the same consistency as the grinded tomatoes.
I cook the paste until the water is evaporated.
I use a small hand grinder to grind the tomatoes in the can, then add it to the paste.
I let it cook uncovered for about 45 mins to an hour. I do the white plate test where you take a small spoon of sauce, put it in the plate and angle the plate. If you see water running down the plate, then it still need some cooking.
Once the sauce stick to the plate and the water doesn’t run down, then I add the salt and cover the sauce. I let it simmer for another 30-40 mins.
After that, I cut my basil in big chunks with my hands and put it in the hot sauce. Add basil to your taste.
This is my favorite recipe i’ve found so far.
That sounds delicious. Post saved!
Someone said baking soda works, but ive never tried it…
I might just look into that. Anything is better then heart burn honestly
You need just a small amount.
That’s not because the sugar tax was enough.
It’s because the drink manufacturers mostly just stopped selling the full sugar versions, which kind of sucks for anyone who hates the taste of artificial sweeteners. Even squash like Robinsons became undrinkable. It tastes like battery acid.
There’s only really Coca-Cola left that tastes the same as it did before. Lemon and lime drinks like 7-Up or Sprite almost cover the taste of it, so they’ll do in a pinch. Otherwise I just drink water and cider. Apparently alcoholic drinks don’t need to tell you how many calories are in them either, so I’ll assume it’s none and carry on looking confused when I get on the scales.
I said this in another comment, but trying to find drinks that don’t use sweeteners is painful nowadays. I can no longer drink most squashes, and my soft drink options are pretty much limited to coca cola (normal pepsi now has sweeteners), sainsbury’s high juice, or rose’s lime cordial…
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Give people options and let the market decide
Who do you think is not giving people options? Because it isn’t the UK government. They didn’t make the drinks illegal. They put a pretty modest tax on them.
So I’m not sure what you want, a law to force Pepsico to sell drinks with sugar in them? Because I think the market wouldn’t be deciding there.
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Oh look, you took a post I wrote entirely out of context.
I’ll fix that for you.
That was in response to this:
Which was a response to this:
In this thread: https://lemmy.world/post/17453467
I’ll assume that was an honest mistake and you aren’t just trolling and definitely won’t get banned like in the many, many other communities you’ve been banned for trolling people in, so you’re welcome.
Edit: I suppose the alternative is you believe in such a thing as an “Artificial Intelligence Supercomputer,” but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there.
In fact, the only ones that do tell you seem to be the ones aimed at calorie counters who still want to drink, mostly hard seltzers like WhiteClaw, Truly, etc.
White claw smaller can at 5% is 100-110 calories a can.
It’s still the manufacturers decision to change the product
It’s because the drink manufacturers mostly just stopped selling the full sugar versions
Which was a result of the sugar tax. They didn’t just suddenly drop the sugar content for no reason.
The sugar tax didn’t include artificial sweeteners? That’s an oversight. Those things are bad for you in ways that are different from digestable sugars.
Artificial sweeteners were created to fight glycation and allow people with diabetes enjoy sweetness.
And glycation is bad thing.
They’re nowhere near as bad as consuming a huge amount of sugar.
They only cause issues for a vanishingly tiny amount of people that have pre-existing genetic conditions.
That’s highly debatable. It’s swapping one set of side effects for another, especially when drunk at high volumes.
It’s not highly debatable, it’s been studied to death. Sweeteners have existed for a long time.
There were rumours they cause cancer, this has been proven false. There were rumours they cause headaches, this has been proven false. There were rumours they cause infertility, this has been proven false. There have been rumours they stimulate your appetite, this likewise has zero scientific backing.
Aspartame, the most common sweetener, does cause issues for people with phenylketonuria, a rare genetic disorder, because it contains stuff they can’t metabolise. But so does a long list of foods people eat every day.
Some polyol sweeteners have a mild laxative effect if consumed in very high quantities, but the same is true for stuff like tea, coffee, most fruits, etc.
Sugar is far worse for your health.
So now people are avoiding sweet drinks not because they cost too much in taxes, but…because they taste like battery acid.
That’s still achieving the overall goal.
I wish Germany would bring its sugar tax that we abolished in 1973 back. To be fair a lot of people are agreeing it has to come back by now, so chances are good that we’ll soon have one again.
Why was it abolished?
Not being German, I maintain I am still accurately guessing that it’s because corporations waved money under politicians’ noses and their brains turned to mush and they said, “yes, masters.”
I think with Lauterbach as minister we have quite good chances. I was honestly kind of surprised to read that they are attempting to ban supervised drinking. Didn’t think the CSU of all parties would support that
What is supervised drinking?
In Germany teenagers between the age of 14 and 16 (which is the legal drinking age) may drink beer, wine and pearl wine in public places such as restaurants as long as they’re supervised by their legal guardians. Obviously in a “reasonable” manner
Oh neat, a German AMA. What’s pearl wine?
They mean sparkling wine. It’s called Perlwein in German, hence the mistranslation.
Great! Let’s do the States too!
Philadelphia has a “soda tax” that is effective, but the sugary beverage lobby has spent millions in attack ads and disinformation campaigns. I can’t imagine the shit fit they would throw if it were attempted federally.
Don’t forget the agricultural lobbies, which are huge but rarely talked about. They’ve lobbied for massive subsidies for corn and as a result corn syrup is cheap and used everywhere as a sweetener. A bill restricting it would never make it through the corporatist Congress.
Cook county tried it in Illinois a few years back, and it really made no sense.
It didn’t apply to juices (even though juices are loaded with sugar) and it taxed sugar free sodas the same as their sugar sweetened versions. They charged 1 cent per ounce for the tax. It was repealed 4 months after initiating it.
So they didn’t try a sugar tax, like Finland didn’t try basic income because opposing politicians sabotaged the trial in the planning stage to make the results worthless.
Even starting with HFCS would be a major positive impact
What do the kids drink instead?
Possibly just the sugar free equivalent on said drinks.
Tears
Possibly water, or perhaps tea
or perhaps tea
With more sugar
Sweetened tea gets a big L from me, tastes like shit. Unsweetened all the way.
The tax was on the soft drink companies. To avoid it almost all of them changed their recipes to reduce sugar (partially replacing it with artificial sweeteners).
bruh just ban all sugary drinks, it’s not that hard
They do have their place- just that place isn’t “something you can just drink every day without thinking about”
Unpopular opinion: The really bad ones, not talking about orange juice here, should be treated similarly to energy drinks. Banned for under 16 and taxed high.
Orange Juice is not meaningfully better than most sugar heavy drinks.
I have this argument with my wife a lot. She says that because the OJ is natural sugar it’s okay.
But the high-fructose corn syrup used in a cola is also natural sugar in the sense that it was grown on a farm. There even happens to be less of it in your average soda than in juice.
And I’m not really saying that you should drink soda instead of juice because it’s healthier, but somehow fruit juice is one of those things people think is good for them.
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I’d argue that natural non filtered orange juice is healthier because you drink it with all the fiber from the fruit, making the sugar absorption slower. A non filtered OJ is closer to eating a fruit than those industrial ones that finely filter everything to be just a colored sugary water.
Sure, but how many people actually know how commercial orange juice is produced and bother seeking out the real stuff?
I mean, you just need to make an OJ and drink it and then have an industrial one. The difference, even without the knowledge, is noticeable. Funny thing is, at least where I live, making an OJ at home is cheaper than buying the industrial one
Something I like in some of Europe is that food just has a rating on it. Not only are they stricter about food pretending to sound healthy it will just straight say this juice is a D.
In the US every company spends millions to make their sugar appear more healthy and it works.
I tried for a while to think of their place but there’s nothing I would say is absolutely necessary. What is their place?
They’re a dessert, treat them like you would ice cream or a chocolate bar instead of treating them like water
It’s people like you that we can’t have nice things. oh some Germans in Germany has started genociding Jews out of existence, so that must mean that all Germans are evil Nazis. you only consider moderation when their is a obvious utility. like oh you don’t need alcohol to survive, but because some people get addicted to alcohol. we must ban alcohol, so no one will get addicted ever again. we seriously need to learn moderation and nuance. we really need to collectively agree that I’m not your mom and neither is the government. Otherwise we will be asking ourselves, what is the point of enjoyment? People who are miserable breath just fine, and if you enjoy something too much you might get addicted.
I agree completely with your comment but I think you probably shouldn’t have brought the Holocaust into it really!
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meh. Godwin’s Law.
welcome to 1990.
Perhaps, but I feel like a second level comment was too early to invoke it. Also, there’s also the common corollary that whoever invokes Goodwin’s law definitionally loses the debate…
no.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sugary drinks. It’s just how often you have them.
Some people don’t like sugar free and sweeteners come with their own problems.
Exactly. Dose makes the poison. Also, artificially sweetened drinks are all garbage.
There is something inherently wrong with them. It’s liquefied nutrition that’s been designed to create an addiction and provide nothing but calories. It’s marketed as a companion to meals, or as sports drinks, or as a convenient “pick me up”. It’s marketed to children, to poor people without alternatives. They are inherently predatory and harmful to your health.
Consuming sucrose or fructose also results in fat being generated in the liver. It’s like alcohol and less than ideal.
then you’ll probably end up with a black market of sugary drinks, and people will go to great lengths to get it.
It’s almost as if this happened before with something else
It’s more nuanced than that. In the case of sugary drinks however, since they are really easy to make, you won’t even need a black market.
Just ban the sale and don’t enforce it on the black market. That would cover like 90%. It’s not like soda would be banned entirely, so it’s not like any other example. Just drink Coke Zero (or your flavor preference)
I have no idea why, but I get horrible heartburn from Coke Zero and Pepsi Max. I don’t get that from almost nothing else.
Yes, definitely.
and alcohol, weed, meat, and fast food.
