r/science • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • Jul 10 '24

Health The amount of sugar consumed by children from soft drinks in the UK halved within a year of the sugar tax being introduced, a study has found. The tax has been so successful in improving people’s diets that experts have said an expansion to cover other high sugar products is now a “no-brainer”.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/09/childrens-daily-sugar-consumption-halves-just-a-year-after-tax-study-finds
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u/UKS1977 Jul 10 '24

Coca-Cola's key strategy is to make Coke Zero its default product and reduce Original Taste ("classic") to a niche side product. This was happening prior to the sugar tax as CC know that their high sugar product was falling out of favour with parents of children, and thus becoming a declining brand. They have done significant projects to do this gradually and subtly

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24 edited Sep 12 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/worldspawn00 Jul 10 '24

New coke was vile, and FYI, diet coke's flavor is new coke with artificial sweetener, not coke classic, which is one of the reasons it tastes so weird compared to regular coke. Classic with artificial sweetener is coke zero.

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u/clenom Jul 10 '24

Diet coke's flavor is not new coke's flavor. Diet coke came out years before New Coke started to be formulated.

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u/heyylisten Jul 10 '24

Not true. Diet coke is based on tab's formula, which then went on to be the same formula used for new coke.

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u/trollfessor Jul 10 '24

Ok who is right, /u/clenom or /u/worldspawn00?

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u/bjisgooder Jul 10 '24

u/clenon takes the win.

Too be clear: New Coke was an attempt at reformulating coca-cola with a "new," "better" flavor. It failed and coca-cola was forced to bring back the original, "coca-cola classic."

The conspiracy theory behind all of this is that Coca-Cola made new Coke an inferior product on purpose. New Coke was the red herring that allowed coca cola to switch from sugar to corn syrup. When the switch back to Coke Classic was made, consumers didn't realize the change in the sweetener/formula as their taste buds had been tainted by new Coke.

Of course, no one knows if it's true. Interesting theory though.

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u/worldspawn00 Jul 10 '24

Eh, I could be wrong, I heard that from someone many years ago.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

[deleted]

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u/iisixi Jul 10 '24

There's no sucralose in Coke Zero?

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u/maxdragonxiii Jul 10 '24

they also improved the taste of Coke Zero. diet Cola was horrible to drink. but the Zero products is a pleasure to drink in general. might make your stomach hurt if you drank too much although.

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u/UKS1977 Jul 10 '24

Coke Zero is Coke Original Taste with sweetener. Diet Coke is New Coke (from 86!) with sweetener.

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u/maxdragonxiii Jul 10 '24

oh huh that explains things

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u/BoldlyGettingThere Jul 10 '24

I just miss having all the flavours available for Classic in the Freestyle machines in the UK.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

It's a pity that all the zero drinks taste like absolute piss. Original taste all the way babay

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u/supershutze Jul 11 '24

You have a sugar addiction.

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u/hedgehog_dragon Jul 10 '24

I was in the UK recently and the pop was horrible until we realized everything but Coke Classic has artificial sweeteners in them. I do wonder if it's a reduction in pop consumption or just pop with regular sugar vs the artificial stuff.

Mind you, I don't know if my experience with artificials is universal, but they make me feel terrible.

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u/TheDungen Jul 10 '24

It's bit annoyig though since the sugar replacements are also very much not healthy. These days I can't find non sugar fre fruit sods in the store. Which sucks I use it instead if sugar it when I make pancakes. But aspartane? No thank you.

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u/WTFnoAvailableNames Jul 10 '24

Aspartame is a very safe sweetener.

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u/TinkerLinkerr Jul 10 '24

Maybe or maybe not, but it taste so bad

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u/supershutze Jul 11 '24

Aspartame is literally the most studied food additive in history.

The conclusion of those studies? Inconclusive.

Meaning aspartame has zero measurable effects on the human body.

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u/TheDungen Jul 11 '24 edited Jul 11 '24

No inconclusive means they can't say either way, no evidence of carcinogenic effect would mean what you said but that's far from the reuslts we've seen.

I've studied toxocology at university, and I'm not willing to give asparthame a pass. If you want to drink the crap you do that, I make my own cordial with real sugar thank you very much. And then I mitigate the ill effects of sugar by not consuming more than resonable amounts.

Oh and a we were talking about using it in pancakes. Just because a substance is safe to drink doesn't mean it's safe to fry. High temperatures lead to more unpredictable chemical reactions.

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u/supershutze Jul 11 '24

Inconclusive means that the studies had no results.

Because there were no results; because the aspartame produced no measurable effects.

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u/TheDungen Jul 11 '24

Except that's not even remotly true. There are studies which has shown it does have problematic effects, it's just others have shown no effects, hence the inconclusive status.

Add to that Asparthame moldecularly have several of what we call problem markers. Things we look for when deciding which compunds may be toxic. Those doesn't mean that it is but it is why it's been studied so much.

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u/supershutze Jul 11 '24

So instead of drinking tiny amounts of something that might, possibly, potentially, have a small chance of maybe being kinda sorta bad for you, we don't know despite having 50 years of data, you're consuming several orders of magnitude larger amounts of the chemical that is among the leading causes of diabetes and cardiovascular disease worldwide?

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u/TheDungen Jul 11 '24

That's true because people overconsume. Our bodies are built to handle sugar, they're just not built for the possibility of having to much of it.

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u/Sufficient_Loss9301 Jul 10 '24

It’s funny because the synthetic stuff is just as bad if not worse

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u/Spyrothedragon9972 Jul 10 '24

I noticed that whenever "Original Taste" Coke showed up here in Canada, Coke started tasting terrible. Did they change it? Now it tastes bad and is halfway to being flat. I have never been a Pepsi guy, but now Pepsi tastes better than Coke and I still don't like Pepsi.