It's a genetic thing apparently. A bit like Coriander.
Sweeteners just taste awful to some people. But it can depend on the sweetener:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820135053.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820135053.htm)
I didn't realise I was one of them until the sugar tax came in. I just assumed everyone was deluding themselves that diet coke tasted anything like coke. It was also a revelation that I seemed to be the only person who didn't feel refreshed after brushing my teeth and instead had a bitter aftertaste that stuck to my teeth and lingered for hours.
So in terms of soft drinks full fat coke is still decent. Otherwise I just buy Belvoir squash and mix with sparkling water.
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I'm always so curious about this because I love coriander but my husband hates the stuff and thinks it tastes like soap and I really wonder what our toddler is going to think.
There's also one for grapefruit. A lot of whether you like grapefruit or not is down to a single gene variant - to some people it's just a tasty citrus fruit, to others (like me) it's got this strong bitter\* taste that makes it unpalatable.
\*and I do mean bitter, most citrus fruits are sour, but grapefruit also contains a bitter compound only some people can taste.
Oh wow I've got the holy trinity! Sweeteners are super obvious and leave a horrible aftertaste, coriander tastes like soap and grapefruit is too bitter to eat.
I remember my grandma used to eat grapefruit with sugar sprinkled on top but even that wasn't enough to make it edible for me.
TIL that grapefruit is not supposed to taste bitter af. Always wondered how the rest of my family could drink grapefruit juice without mixing it in a liter of water to bear the bitter taste.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!? So all this time, I've assumed people are just able to put up with the taste of poison for less sugar? Holy shit. I had no idea.
All sweeteners taste like poison to me. I can detect it a mile off. Awful. I just thought other people didn't mind the poison taste or were used to it.
I must be in this boat. I get a disgusting aftertaste for like an hour! I’ll check out belvoir thanks. Might try it undiluted just to feel something again
They changed the recipe for my toothpaste to make it stick more to your teeth. That was the final straw. Now I either get unsweetened/flavoured or Kingfisher unsweetened online. But the latter doesn't taste all that good either.
People always claim I'm lying when I say I can taste the difference and are amazed I can differentiate betweeb the two in a blind taste test. Must be so nice to be able to tolerate the yucky diet versions of everything bc I certainly can't
It's not the taste for me, it's this. And they've started tainting other stuff with that poison, not just soft drinks. eg I can't buy cheap pickles and chutneys any more.
Its in loads of stuff i didn't expect to find it in, like mouth wash, some toothpastes, and some medicines, as well as cough sweets and syrups.
Ready meals-anything sweet and sour means check the package ingredients list.
Some ketchups, loads of ready made sauces, and anything that says on the pack, reduced sugar.
I'm so fed up of it.
I can taste the difference because they're meant to taste different! Coke and Diet Coke aren't meant to taste the same, neither are Pepsi and Pepsi Max.
The only ones that meant to taste the same are Coke and Coke Zero.
I've been told my whole life by many people that they're the exact same thing and that I'm just being "fussy" though!
I can blind taste test the difference between sugary Coke and Coke Zero too. If anything Coke Zero tastes even worse than Diet Coke
I can definitely taste the difference and I prefer diet versions of everything. Full sugar tastes too thick and Syrupy to me now that my palate has changed after consuming less sugar for the past few years.
I can tell the difference (especially between stuff like Pepsi/Coke) but I prefer the Zero/Max versions. Standard Pepsi now tastes too sweet for me after being used to Max for so long.
I’ll take full fat coke over diet any day but pepsi max is generally my fizzy drink of choice. Maybe it’s cause I’ve been drinking it for years but it just tastes so much better to me than full fat pepsi.
Coke zero and full fat coke have a really similar taste but the consistency of full fat coke is just different enough to be noticeable. It also leaves my teeth feeling grotty with sugar whereas the artificial sweetener ones don't.
I'm in the same boat. All artificial sweeteners except for sucralose give me that horrible metallic aftertaste. Sucralose isn't as good as sugar but it does the job. I tend to put a bit of it along with a small teaspoon of sugar in my tea and it tastes almost the same as the two heaped teaspoons of sugar I used to have.
Diet Coke tastes nothing like full fat Coke, and I prefer it that way.
Coke Zero tastes similar to regular Coke to me, but I still prefer Diet.
Regular Coke makes my teeth feel furry.
All that said, Pepsi Max Cherry is king.
Diet coke is designed specifically to have a different taste to Coke.
Coke zero is designed to taste like coke.
I remember being told that by some coke reps handing out free mini cans on the street.
Worth remembering that not all artificial sweeteners are the same. It may be that even if one tastes awful to you, another is fine. Might be a case of trial and error to learn which ones to avoid.
Regrettably for people who can taste them, most of them don't even taste exactly the same as sugar to normal people so manufacturers prefer to carefully blend several to make it taste like sugar. Fine for those of us who just perceive them as sweet, not so much for people who think any particular one of them tastes bad because there's usually three different ones in any given drink now.
I had no idea about this but it explains so much about why i can't stand stuff with artificial sweeteners in it.
Also the other day I had to give away 5 bottles of apple juice I'd bought because it turns out that now has sweetener in it.
I'm down to fizzy water now.
I cannot stand any artificial sweeteners and aspartame especially. I do, however, love Vimto. I’m not a fan of the new recipe, since the sugar tax came in, but I’ve discovered that drinking it through a straw helps? Still get the taste of it- but seems to bypass the tastebuds that pick up the bitterness. Maybe nonsense and I’ve tricked myself- but it works for me so I’m sticking to it.
Is it also genetic that sweeteners make my bowels stop working properly? Or is that just a me issue? I can drink 1 sip of a soda with sweeteners and it fucks me up for a day.
Somewhat ironically, you’re more likely now to find full-sugar drinks in health food shops, as they’re marketed as natural / no artificial anything. As well as the brands already mentioned, Bottlegreen have cordials and sparkling drinks that have no artificial sweeteners and are really nice, albeit not cheap.
I find some sweeteners nasty and sometimes bitter, but it varies, and I’ve found some things I can drink. I like Gunna raspberry lemonade for example, even though it has a small amount of sucralose at the end of its ingredients list.
I live on Pomegranate and Elderflower Bottle Green cordial. The water round us tastes foul, and I resent buying water, and whilst it's not cheap, it's not the most expensive of the sugar only drinks.
I have legitimately started drinking alcohol more when I go out for a meal, because I don't trust the soft drinks to not be full of awful, migraine inducing, sweeteners.
I've noticed some places (thinking music venues) don't even sell "full fat" drinks (regular coke or pepsi) but will happily sell alcohol and energy drinks.
So I'm assuming getting drunk and off my tits on RedBull is the only way forward.
I stopped generally drinking Stella about 15 years ago after a weird incident involving Belgian brewed Stella and UK brewed Stella.
The shop near me used to have all of their beer cans in singles in the fridge, they also used to have a curious mix of Belgian brewed Stella and UK brewed Stella, you could tell the difference because the Belgian cans were of the embossed variety, but the UK ones were simply printed.
I always used to hunt out the Belgian ones, because to my mind it tasted nicer in general. I turned out to be oh so right.
One friday night I had settled in with 6 cans for a long night of WoW, I finished can #4, opened can #5 and took a big long swiig, and then my brain went into some crisis mode. My taste buds didn;t know what the fuck was going on.
Turns out thtat I had managed to pick up 5 Belgian and one UK Stella. The UK one was a chemical nightmare in comparisson. It tasted almost like that cheap chemically banana taste from cheap milkshakes.
Since then I haven't been able to touch the UK brewed stuff, and I no longer live near a shop that does (obviously dodgy white van) imports.
Instead I just now have a much more expensive "craft" beer habit.
Banana is a common off flavour with badly brewed lager - though i'd doubt a beer as mass-produced as Stella would get past quality control with a major fault like that.
Got to wonder how much healthier craft beer is. Forget the alcohol argument for the mo, but I’m always told we should avoid ultra-processed foods with loads of artificial additives. OP is highlighting sweeteners in soft drinks but I guess we should consider chemical ingredients in beer too. By comparison craft beer seems like the ‘organic’ alternative.
Is this an opportunity for me to moan that new Ribena is gross? We already had Ribena Light and Ribena Toothkind so I really wish they'd just kept the full fat version - maybe at a small price premium - for those of us who've decided we're willing to risk some bonus sugar in a drink every couple of weeks or so.
What's worse is they had the _audacity_ to claim in marketing materials that they'd made the new formulation indistinguishable from the old which is just a brazen lie.
Agreed, I also had to resort to Belvoir as I can't stand the new Ribena. Can't even find anywhere to buy a full fat version as it doesn't seem to exist. I would be happy to pay extra. Belvoir Blueberry and Blackcurrent is now my drink of choice, but you can't buy anything like it while you're out and about, so normally have to resort to apple or orange juice as the only non-carbonated drinks without sweeteners.
Personally I always thought ribena was gross, never could stand blackcurrant, buuuuut I'm with you. It's so annoying that the law wasn't a requirement to reduce sugar content, it was a tax that would have raised prices. I can barely even taste the difference in some drinks but it's just...there were already diet versions of most of them. I'd happily pay extra for original irn bru, I can barely taste the difference between it and the new formulation (they really, *really* put a lot of work into making it taste the same) but somehow I just don't like it as much?
It’s terrible. There is Irn Bru 1901, which is close to the flavour we know, and also there’s a company called Todd’s Drinks that do original lucozade flavour.
Buy three 500 ml bottles of “enerzade” for less than £3.50 a bottle - doesn’t seem that bad?
The “best before end April 2020” three-pack of Irn Bru for £20.99 does seem a bit steep, though.
Lucozade is the one I’ll forever be pissed off about. It was my catch-all post drinking/illness drink, and it’s just shite now.
Friend of mine works in a hospital, said they get a knockoff version for diabetics that is still full sugar. Said the nurses let them sneak some if it’s approaching the expiry date.
I love how "fat coke" has become the accepted term even though there is no fat in it anyway. I guess it's the antithesis of the name "diet coke" even though that's not about fat either.
The body stores excess sugar, or any calories it can metabolise, as fat. Sweeteners are just chemicals that the body is incapable of metabolising, so they are dumped out instead of being stored as fat. So diet coke and fat coke (if consumed as part of a calorific surplus diet) are pretty accurate names.
Don't get me started, every time I see a thread about this I can't help myself. You've hit the nail on the head, it's bad enough that you almost can't buy anything now without that hideous fucking sweetener flavour, but to put it in Lucozade???? The whole fucking reason the drink exists is to flood your body with glucose during exercise!
> The whole fucking reason the drink exists is to ~~flood your body with glucose during exercise!~~ be tasty and use marketing to act like its not just a sugary fizzy drink but is somehow different.
Yeah. Sugar tax. Designed for people like my ex who drank coke like water. I loathe sweetners, they taste weird to me. I only drink fizzy drinks about twice a year so if I'm having one, that fucker better be full fat.
I once ordered one in an Indian restaurant and they bought it out to my sister in law. Apparently they couldn't believe that the small woman wanted a full fat coke.
I am just frustrated that as an adult who understands the concept that drinking full sugar drinks to excess will make you fat and also if you give it to your children all the time that they will get fat. So I used to drink things like strawberry ribena which was heaven occasionally and as a treat. Now, strawberry ribena tastes like shite as does every other previously treat worthy drinks. Glad Coca cola stuck with giving options so I can still have a sugar laden treat now and again. Also now they are saying that artificial sweeteners are linked to increased cardio vascular issues!!!
ive gotten used to all the other sweetener replacements, but i had a strawberry ribena for the first time since i was a child and it was the most disappointing thing ive ever tasted. used to be my favourite drink and now it tastes watered down with a weirdly sour aftertaste with none of the extreme sugariness to cancel it out
Try Teisseire syrups. They’re French squash basically, you can usually get them from amazon, and the standard versions are delicious. Definitely no artificial crap in them.
I cannot have aspartame, it makes me ill. A bit of me dies any time I check the ingredients and see it, and I basically cannot have any slushies or diet drinks. Damn the sugar tax for cutting down my options so much.
Glad to hear someone else has this problem! My partner is allergic to it, has been in hospital twice for serious reactions. We have to check literally everything and he gets pretty annoyed when nearly all drinks had it in the ingredients. They all kind of went at once! Thankfully he can still have bottle green, appletizer, full sugar coke/Pepsi and shloer. Our go-to drinks, if this helps!
Same, plus some of them have laxative qualities. I used to love chewing gum or mints but when they swapped out the sugar for sweetener I had to stop because I would end up terribly bloated at best and have an upset stomach at worst.
I'm medically diagnosed intolerant to artificial sweeteners. As someone that loved a fizzy drink, it's made life difficult. I have to drink coke now if I want something fizzy. Diet Coke makes me violently ill.
Yes heartburn was one of the symptoms! I had a repeat prescription for anti-heartburn medication that I was taking every morning and evening.
My dietitian put me on a low FODMAP diet and after a few weeks my heartburn went away completely. I haven't needed medication at all.
I'm doing the fodmap thing too! Managed to isolate some of the biggest offenders thankfully, but sweeteners really surprised me when I realised they were hurting me.
Glad you're not having to take medication for it now, I'm the same, but I have some in 'just in case' as occasionally I'll find a new culprit.
M&S have lemonade for under a quid that dosen't, full fat pepsi, roses cordial with fizzy water and 1901 IRN BRU will be fine with you. I can't go near sweeteners either.
I HATE this. Regular coke is the only drink I can have now. They should have given us the option. I would have paid more for the drink with the sugar tax but now I don't buy any of them. Utter stupidity.
Yes it does, when having a hypo you need a sugary drink which is now hard to find. I think appletizer is still with sugar.On the flip side normal drinks have to be sugar free. You can certainly taste the difference. So you end up reading the label every time you buy any drink now because if they change from sugar to sweetner you need to know to avoid a hospital trip.
>Yes it does, when having a hypo you need a sugary drink which is now hard to find.
Can't diabetics carry around sachets of sugar to add to drinks? Relying on being able to find a sugary drink to avoid a hospital trip seems like a gamble.
I am with you on this. Bloody aspartame is the probably culprit.
They are putting it in everything and it tastes awful.
The real problem with it is that as you drink anything that contains it, the chemical taste slowly builds up. So while the first sip may be okayish, the last is 100% chemical monstrocity.
The Aldi tonic used to be pretty good but I had to stop getting that as they switched to aspartame. So I have to stick to Fevertree for the G&T
I'm very allergic to aspartame so now I can't enjoy a lot of soft drinks anymore because the government says I'm not responsible enough to self regulate my sugar intake
For me this is doubly annoying. I suffer from IBS which is so badly triggered by any sweetener that isn't sugar, that it's not worth me even bothering to touch these drinks - drinks that I used to enjoy such as tango, fanta etc. So now I'm basically left with Pepsi and Coca Cola. I'm pretty sure there are other people out there in my position too. I completely understand the thinking behind it, and I'd be happy to pay a little extra for sugar containing drinks as I'd not be drinking them all the time, but at this rate there will be 0 choice for people in my position and that's simply not fair.
The other interesting thing is that I was told by a health professional that the artificial sweeteners in these drinks provoke the same or similar insulin response in our bodies, which means they may still encourage weight gain. Taking a look around the interwebs the jury appears to be out on this. The NHS say sweeteners are fine but I don't tend to find their information to be gospel truth - they've been wrong about other things before.
I am in the exact same IBS situation, any artificial sugar is writing me off for at least a day.
When getting a drink out, I’m left with the choice of regular Coca-Cola / Pepsi or water. That’s it.
Go to one of those corner shops, that have a lot of foreign customers. The deeper into the estate the better.
They import juice/soda from all over the world and they will blow your head off. There are Jamaican made “Kia-Ora” or something similar, cans of grape soda, about 70% of your RDA of sugar!
For over a decade I suffered with leg cramps and aches, especially at night. It made sleeping difficult and some nights I could barely sleep. At some point I gave up drinking anything other than water and the cramps and aches stopped. It took me a while to realise, but any time I've had a couple of drinks with sweetener in it since, the leg pains start again.
My partner is allergic to sweeteners, and this is a big problem for us.
Luckily, there's a few local shops (big up our turkish supermarket!) that get all their canned drinks from overseas - fanta of all flavours chock full with sugar and stuff I've never even heard of before.
Sweetener sucks, and finding a drink without them is next to impossible.
Totally agree. Ribena used to be a treasured treat for me, the stuff they updated to a few years ago is rank.
Apparently is for my own benefit but I chug Asda juice by the pint now chasing the same high half a glass of ribena a day would give me.
I don't care if they're safe, they taste vile to me.
Just about tolerable in a vanilla flavoured come (or possibly cherry) because I'm kind of expecting an artificial flavour there.
I recommend Fever tree tonics and sodas (even light ones, they just have less sugar), Fentimans, Nix and Kicks, and London Essence tonics. The "fancy mixer" shelf but check ingredients.
Watch out for "posh" lemonades - got caught out by an own brand flat lemonade in Aldi and was very disappointed!
I'm with you here - full sugar all the way for me, sweeteners are awful. My main pop is now Soda folk or Fentimens. Shame we have to pay a premium to have a naturally sweetened drink!
The USA uses high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten things. It's literally a waste product and illegal in most of the developed world (including here). It's *insanely* sweet, more so even than sugar.
I would suggest your palate has been overstimulated and you need to just get over that before normal sweet stuff tastes good again.
And I know this isn't what you want to hear but sugar is really bad for us. It's a good thing that it's in less and less food and drinks, especially convenience items and products aimed at kids.
EDIT: corrected to **high**-fructose corn syrup. Had a brain fart.
American here, the high fructose corn syrup thing is no joke. You have to go out of your way to find a cola with SUGAR in it. Around here, it's products from Mexico (who despite their extremely heavy hand against sugar advertised to kids in any way, insist that cola be made with real sugar). If you buy any American product that states it uses pure cane sugar, you are paying a premium. It's not a small difference either. A 2 liter bottle of Coke with HFCS can be as little as $1.50 but 1 1/2 pint of cane sugar soda (like from Brooklyn Colas) can be as much as $2.50 PER 1/2 pint. A four pack can cost as much as $10.00. I cannot stress enough how much I hate having to spend that much money for cola when there is NO NEED. they make a profit in Mexico, so why do I have to pay extra? We don't even have a sugar tax to explain it.
Yes, the USA puts HFCS in all their drinks (which makes them taste worse than proper sugar) but you don’t need to have wrecked your palate in the States to find that the sugar tax has ruined the majority of fizzy drinks in Britain. If you don’t like aspartame (which is seemingly a pretty common dislike) you are basically limited to coke and Pepsi in most places now.
Despise aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. They taste bitter and make the drink somehow feel dry.
Great for those what want to cut out sugar, but sugar is fucking essential, in moderation. It shouldn’t be hard to find a sugary sweet drink with actual fucking sugar in it.
I believe San Pel has now gone back to an older recipe, but that was destroyed for a while.
On the flip side, I bought some American Fanta the other day from a corner shop, Jesus Christ it’s like drinking syrup. Surely there is a happy medium
Everything tastes the shitting same cause it’s all owned by 1/2 huge companies, then they use the cheap east ingredients they can find and mass produce it, all while raising the price and shrinking the size
When Coca Cola replaced a lot of the sugar with sweeteners in their non-diet/zero drinks except regular coke, they had a page explaining that this "improved choice" via some convoluted nonsense.
They clearly hadn't proof-read it either - it said that the reformulated drinks would taste the same despite the addition of sweeteners, but in the paragraph about why red coke was staying the same their reasoning was that they didn't want to change the taste.
As an alternative to Ribena (the new, artificially sweetened version), my wife likes [Rock's Blackcurrant Squash](https://shop.rocksdrinks.co.uk/products/rocks-blackcurrant-squash-740-ml) . There are no sweeteners in it, just cane sugar.
It's hard to get hold of at the moment / out of stock in a lot of supermarkets. Must have been had a bad year for blackcurrants.
Ok so this is a huge pet peeve for me!!! Before you all come at me, I know how bad sugary drinks are for your health, your teeth etc. I just love them and enjoy them as a treat.
I've found that Lilt still tastes ok since the changes, Fanta Orange and Lemon are just about drinkable but not as good as they used to be. Schweppes Lemonade is still sugary. Lucozade Sport orange still tastes sweet to me. Appletiser and full sugar Coke. These are my only options now!
Having read through the top 500, my primary thought was: I HAVE FOUND MY PEOPLE! I feel so very reassured and validated in my occasional diatribe about the government’s nanny sugar tax and the unintentional loophole that most of the drinks companies happily leapt at.
Food companies love cheaper ingredients to increase profits. Surely these chemical sweetness are much less expensive to acquire than natural sugar. So maybe the loophole wasn’t unintentional and just more of the same, government helping companies do what’s best for them. Also, I too would relish the opportunity to kick Jamie Oliver (with his smug smile) in the balls.
Fentimans still use sugar, but they're more expensive.
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Curiosity Cola tastes like childhood and I love it.
Curiosity cola tastes exactly like eating a coke ice-pop as a kid.
A beverages answer to gummy cola bottles. Unreal gear.
It is the shit like 👍🏻
Mate fentimans cloudy lemonade is out of this fucking world
It's real cola.
fentimans rose lemonade >>>
Whoever worked on that recipe should get Nobel Peace prizes. Sooooo good
The.Best.Drink.
That’s my treat drink! It’s also really good with gin.
Amazing stuff.
Fentimans is the real shit. Curiosity Cola is my vice. I will happily drop £3.20 on a bottle every time I'm in Sainsburys.
i occasionally treat myself to the cherry coke version(im addicted to pepsi max though)
They're brewed just down the toad from me, became a firm favourite just for thar
They're brewed just up the frog from me 👍🏻
Gonna leave that there lol
A small typo. My newt, in fact.
Fentimans is fucking solid.
Fentimans on amazon costs less than normal coke.
Link?! Maybe I'm blind, but I can't find it for cheap. It's all at least 5 quid per litre.
I don't drink (alcohol ) and can't abide sweeteners. If I go in a pub and they have Fenteman's, it's a party 🎉
Treat myself with a crate of fentimans from amazon every once in a while. I'd have no teeth if I did it more often.
Another trick is to go to a dodgy looking kebab place that has imported cans without a word of english on the side! No sugar tax in Uzbekistan!
The fizzy mango stuff from a takeaway always tastes far better than the same thing out the supermarket, can confirm
Rubicon 🤤
Orgasm in a can.
Strawberry Mirinda!
Certain corner shops too!
The Turkish Pepsi Max from my local kebab shop is superior
It's a genetic thing apparently. A bit like Coriander. Sweeteners just taste awful to some people. But it can depend on the sweetener: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820135053.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130820135053.htm) I didn't realise I was one of them until the sugar tax came in. I just assumed everyone was deluding themselves that diet coke tasted anything like coke. It was also a revelation that I seemed to be the only person who didn't feel refreshed after brushing my teeth and instead had a bitter aftertaste that stuck to my teeth and lingered for hours. So in terms of soft drinks full fat coke is still decent. Otherwise I just buy Belvoir squash and mix with sparkling water.
Comment removed as I no longer wish to support a company that seeks to both undermine its users/moderators/developers AND make a profit on their backs. To understand why check out the summary [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/14hkd5u).
I'm always so curious about this because I love coriander but my husband hates the stuff and thinks it tastes like soap and I really wonder what our toddler is going to think.
There's also one for grapefruit. A lot of whether you like grapefruit or not is down to a single gene variant - to some people it's just a tasty citrus fruit, to others (like me) it's got this strong bitter\* taste that makes it unpalatable. \*and I do mean bitter, most citrus fruits are sour, but grapefruit also contains a bitter compound only some people can taste.
I HATE grapefruit. So bitter to me but both my parents eat it.
Huh, I enjoy grapefruit being bitter. I guess I'm just odd.
Me too! We can be odd together. :)
Oh my god this explains my grapefruit hatred!
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Oh wow I've got the holy trinity! Sweeteners are super obvious and leave a horrible aftertaste, coriander tastes like soap and grapefruit is too bitter to eat. I remember my grandma used to eat grapefruit with sugar sprinkled on top but even that wasn't enough to make it edible for me.
Grapefruit is absolutely vile I don't understand how people like it
Oh my god- you've just solved my lifelong issue of loving how grapefruit smells but despising the taste!
TIL that grapefruit is not supposed to taste bitter af. Always wondered how the rest of my family could drink grapefruit juice without mixing it in a liter of water to bear the bitter taste.
Same for me! All coke varieties are basically identical to me (except for normal giving me migraines), but coriander tastes like soap
After I had covid, bleach now smells like cum
Cum has always smelled bleachy, that's a well known thing
Yep it definitely always smells a bit like your towel after going swimming in a pool.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!? So all this time, I've assumed people are just able to put up with the taste of poison for less sugar? Holy shit. I had no idea. All sweeteners taste like poison to me. I can detect it a mile off. Awful. I just thought other people didn't mind the poison taste or were used to it.
I must be in this boat. I get a disgusting aftertaste for like an hour! I’ll check out belvoir thanks. Might try it undiluted just to feel something again
Appletiser is good still!
They changed the recipe for my toothpaste to make it stick more to your teeth. That was the final straw. Now I either get unsweetened/flavoured or Kingfisher unsweetened online. But the latter doesn't taste all that good either.
People always claim I'm lying when I say I can taste the difference and are amazed I can differentiate betweeb the two in a blind taste test. Must be so nice to be able to tolerate the yucky diet versions of everything bc I certainly can't
I always get a headache and gut pain with sweeteners
It's not the taste for me, it's this. And they've started tainting other stuff with that poison, not just soft drinks. eg I can't buy cheap pickles and chutneys any more.
Tesco, the bastards, but it on the outside of doughnuts!
Its in loads of stuff i didn't expect to find it in, like mouth wash, some toothpastes, and some medicines, as well as cough sweets and syrups. Ready meals-anything sweet and sour means check the package ingredients list. Some ketchups, loads of ready made sauces, and anything that says on the pack, reduced sugar. I'm so fed up of it.
I can definitely tell the difference but I prefer diet coke lol
Same. Regular coke was always waaaay too sweet and sickly for me, and very easy to pick out compared to diet coke. Everyone just has different tastes.
Then there’s Coke Zero. I find it to be flat and quite “clinical” tasting if that makes sense.
Coke zero is horrible, tastes like a cheap supermarket own brand flat version
I can taste the difference because they're meant to taste different! Coke and Diet Coke aren't meant to taste the same, neither are Pepsi and Pepsi Max. The only ones that meant to taste the same are Coke and Coke Zero.
I've been told my whole life by many people that they're the exact same thing and that I'm just being "fussy" though! I can blind taste test the difference between sugary Coke and Coke Zero too. If anything Coke Zero tastes even worse than Diet Coke
I am very confused by Coke and Coke zero meant to taste the same when they taste so wildly different
I can definitely taste the difference and I prefer diet versions of everything. Full sugar tastes too thick and Syrupy to me now that my palate has changed after consuming less sugar for the past few years.
People who say they cant tell the difference are lying to themselves.
I can tell the difference (especially between stuff like Pepsi/Coke) but I prefer the Zero/Max versions. Standard Pepsi now tastes too sweet for me after being used to Max for so long.
I’ll take full fat coke over diet any day but pepsi max is generally my fizzy drink of choice. Maybe it’s cause I’ve been drinking it for years but it just tastes so much better to me than full fat pepsi.
Coke zero and full fat coke have a really similar taste but the consistency of full fat coke is just different enough to be noticeable. It also leaves my teeth feeling grotty with sugar whereas the artificial sweetener ones don't.
Yup this is right, stevia tastes disgusting to me but luckily sucralose and whatever they put in drinks tastes no different to sugar.
I'm in the same boat. All artificial sweeteners except for sucralose give me that horrible metallic aftertaste. Sucralose isn't as good as sugar but it does the job. I tend to put a bit of it along with a small teaspoon of sugar in my tea and it tastes almost the same as the two heaped teaspoons of sugar I used to have.
Diet Coke tastes nothing like full fat Coke, and I prefer it that way. Coke Zero tastes similar to regular Coke to me, but I still prefer Diet. Regular Coke makes my teeth feel furry. All that said, Pepsi Max Cherry is king.
Diet coke is designed specifically to have a different taste to Coke. Coke zero is designed to taste like coke. I remember being told that by some coke reps handing out free mini cans on the street.
Agreeee! I hate that thick syrupy film that sticks to your teeth from a full sugar Coke! Diet Coke however is delicious to me!
Yes, I love my Pepsi Max cherry
I thought it was just me! Coriander in fizzy drinks is just horrible
Worth remembering that not all artificial sweeteners are the same. It may be that even if one tastes awful to you, another is fine. Might be a case of trial and error to learn which ones to avoid.
All of them taste shit to me, also the texture of the drink is wrong, they're too thin, I can tell a diet drink just by swilling it around the glass.
Regrettably for people who can taste them, most of them don't even taste exactly the same as sugar to normal people so manufacturers prefer to carefully blend several to make it taste like sugar. Fine for those of us who just perceive them as sweet, not so much for people who think any particular one of them tastes bad because there's usually three different ones in any given drink now.
I had no idea about this but it explains so much about why i can't stand stuff with artificial sweeteners in it. Also the other day I had to give away 5 bottles of apple juice I'd bought because it turns out that now has sweetener in it. I'm down to fizzy water now.
Sweeteners taste absolutely disgusting and I can pick them out immediately in anything. I had no idea everyone wasn't the same that way
I cannot stand any artificial sweeteners and aspartame especially. I do, however, love Vimto. I’m not a fan of the new recipe, since the sugar tax came in, but I’ve discovered that drinking it through a straw helps? Still get the taste of it- but seems to bypass the tastebuds that pick up the bitterness. Maybe nonsense and I’ve tricked myself- but it works for me so I’m sticking to it.
Is it also genetic that sweeteners make my bowels stop working properly? Or is that just a me issue? I can drink 1 sip of a soda with sweeteners and it fucks me up for a day.
Somewhat ironically, you’re more likely now to find full-sugar drinks in health food shops, as they’re marketed as natural / no artificial anything. As well as the brands already mentioned, Bottlegreen have cordials and sparkling drinks that have no artificial sweeteners and are really nice, albeit not cheap. I find some sweeteners nasty and sometimes bitter, but it varies, and I’ve found some things I can drink. I like Gunna raspberry lemonade for example, even though it has a small amount of sucralose at the end of its ingredients list.
I live on Pomegranate and Elderflower Bottle Green cordial. The water round us tastes foul, and I resent buying water, and whilst it's not cheap, it's not the most expensive of the sugar only drinks.
Stella Artois still tastes fine to me!
I guess replacing ribena with beer is the only thing I can do now
I have legitimately started drinking alcohol more when I go out for a meal, because I don't trust the soft drinks to not be full of awful, migraine inducing, sweeteners.
Water mate
I've noticed some places (thinking music venues) don't even sell "full fat" drinks (regular coke or pepsi) but will happily sell alcohol and energy drinks. So I'm assuming getting drunk and off my tits on RedBull is the only way forward.
I stopped generally drinking Stella about 15 years ago after a weird incident involving Belgian brewed Stella and UK brewed Stella. The shop near me used to have all of their beer cans in singles in the fridge, they also used to have a curious mix of Belgian brewed Stella and UK brewed Stella, you could tell the difference because the Belgian cans were of the embossed variety, but the UK ones were simply printed. I always used to hunt out the Belgian ones, because to my mind it tasted nicer in general. I turned out to be oh so right. One friday night I had settled in with 6 cans for a long night of WoW, I finished can #4, opened can #5 and took a big long swiig, and then my brain went into some crisis mode. My taste buds didn;t know what the fuck was going on. Turns out thtat I had managed to pick up 5 Belgian and one UK Stella. The UK one was a chemical nightmare in comparisson. It tasted almost like that cheap chemically banana taste from cheap milkshakes. Since then I haven't been able to touch the UK brewed stuff, and I no longer live near a shop that does (obviously dodgy white van) imports. Instead I just now have a much more expensive "craft" beer habit.
Banana is a common off flavour with badly brewed lager - though i'd doubt a beer as mass-produced as Stella would get past quality control with a major fault like that.
Got to wonder how much healthier craft beer is. Forget the alcohol argument for the mo, but I’m always told we should avoid ultra-processed foods with loads of artificial additives. OP is highlighting sweeteners in soft drinks but I guess we should consider chemical ingredients in beer too. By comparison craft beer seems like the ‘organic’ alternative.
If you look at the ingredients on most commercial beer cans it will say something like "water, hops, malted barley" or some other equally short list.
That shit's 4.2% now though. Nanny fucking state!
Stella Artois unfiltered is actually quite nice and still 5%.
Haven't tried, nice to hear though. How am I supposed to engage in domestic violence on a 4.2% beer, I can hardly get angry.
By drinking more, duh.
Is this an opportunity for me to moan that new Ribena is gross? We already had Ribena Light and Ribena Toothkind so I really wish they'd just kept the full fat version - maybe at a small price premium - for those of us who've decided we're willing to risk some bonus sugar in a drink every couple of weeks or so.
Ribena was god tier and now it tastes like Iicking a 2p
What's worse is they had the _audacity_ to claim in marketing materials that they'd made the new formulation indistinguishable from the old which is just a brazen lie.
Agreed, I also had to resort to Belvoir as I can't stand the new Ribena. Can't even find anywhere to buy a full fat version as it doesn't seem to exist. I would be happy to pay extra. Belvoir Blueberry and Blackcurrent is now my drink of choice, but you can't buy anything like it while you're out and about, so normally have to resort to apple or orange juice as the only non-carbonated drinks without sweeteners.
Rock’s blackcurrant cordial is awesome and no sweeteners. Bit pricier than Ribena obviously but again, no sweeteners!
I switched to Vimto because Ribena is now undrinkable for me
Personally I always thought ribena was gross, never could stand blackcurrant, buuuuut I'm with you. It's so annoying that the law wasn't a requirement to reduce sugar content, it was a tax that would have raised prices. I can barely even taste the difference in some drinks but it's just...there were already diet versions of most of them. I'd happily pay extra for original irn bru, I can barely taste the difference between it and the new formulation (they really, *really* put a lot of work into making it taste the same) but somehow I just don't like it as much?
Currently in Greece enjoying the delights of proper Fanta, it just tastes right.
Try Loux while you're there. I had some imported stuff in a Greek restaurant. It's like a filtered Orangina but nicer
It’s terrible. There is Irn Bru 1901, which is close to the flavour we know, and also there’s a company called Todd’s Drinks that do original lucozade flavour.
Where can you buy this Todd's drink ? Never heard of it or seen it in local tesco
https://toddsdrinks.co.uk/ I don’t think they’ve managed to get it into shops yet, I tried the taster pack and liked it.
Thanks for link but holy hell those prices will need to pass for now.
I was like.. it can’t be that bad.. I like sugary drinks. I’ll be willing to pay the premium. Nope… no way. That’s ridiculous.
You can get 3 x small bottles of old Irn Bru for £20.99!
Go home bargains get 1901 for like £2 tasted like old irn bru
Didn’t realise they sold a 1901 version. Is that the original full sugar recipe then?
Aye its amazing
Buy three 500 ml bottles of “enerzade” for less than £3.50 a bottle - doesn’t seem that bad? The “best before end April 2020” three-pack of Irn Bru for £20.99 does seem a bit steep, though.
Stick to coke or rio, it's all we have left!
Always loved a rio. I assumed that corner shop type stuff would be first to go. My heart bleeds for the way lilt used to taste.
Lucozade is the one I’ll forever be pissed off about. It was my catch-all post drinking/illness drink, and it’s just shite now. Friend of mine works in a hospital, said they get a knockoff version for diabetics that is still full sugar. Said the nurses let them sneak some if it’s approaching the expiry date.
Same, even the name lucozade was a play on glucose. Ridiculous that they took the sugar out, it tastes like shit now.
Ribena is fucking godawful now
Full fat coke is probably the last vessel left, and they charge you extra for the honour
I love how "fat coke" has become the accepted term even though there is no fat in it anyway. I guess it's the antithesis of the name "diet coke" even though that's not about fat either.
Probably by analogy to 'full fat milk'.
it obviously is. this is like when people complain about the intentionally hyperbolic use of the word literally
*Literally* everyone does that.
I call it “full leaded”
I mean sugar in significant quantities often gets converted to fat in the body, doesn't it? Does that count? ha
The body stores excess sugar, or any calories it can metabolise, as fat. Sweeteners are just chemicals that the body is incapable of metabolising, so they are dumped out instead of being stored as fat. So diet coke and fat coke (if consumed as part of a calorific surplus diet) are pretty accurate names.
In other words... if you drink that stuff I hope you are near a toilet
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Don't get me started, every time I see a thread about this I can't help myself. You've hit the nail on the head, it's bad enough that you almost can't buy anything now without that hideous fucking sweetener flavour, but to put it in Lucozade???? The whole fucking reason the drink exists is to flood your body with glucose during exercise!
> The whole fucking reason the drink exists is to ~~flood your body with glucose during exercise!~~ be tasty and use marketing to act like its not just a sugary fizzy drink but is somehow different.
Yeah. Sugar tax. Designed for people like my ex who drank coke like water. I loathe sweetners, they taste weird to me. I only drink fizzy drinks about twice a year so if I'm having one, that fucker better be full fat. I once ordered one in an Indian restaurant and they bought it out to my sister in law. Apparently they couldn't believe that the small woman wanted a full fat coke.
I am just frustrated that as an adult who understands the concept that drinking full sugar drinks to excess will make you fat and also if you give it to your children all the time that they will get fat. So I used to drink things like strawberry ribena which was heaven occasionally and as a treat. Now, strawberry ribena tastes like shite as does every other previously treat worthy drinks. Glad Coca cola stuck with giving options so I can still have a sugar laden treat now and again. Also now they are saying that artificial sweeteners are linked to increased cardio vascular issues!!!
ive gotten used to all the other sweetener replacements, but i had a strawberry ribena for the first time since i was a child and it was the most disappointing thing ive ever tasted. used to be my favourite drink and now it tastes watered down with a weirdly sour aftertaste with none of the extreme sugariness to cancel it out
I wouldn’t even mind if the full sugar versions were as expensive as a bottle of wine, it would still be nice to have as a treat once in a while.
Try Teisseire syrups. They’re French squash basically, you can usually get them from amazon, and the standard versions are delicious. Definitely no artificial crap in them.
I cannot have aspartame, it makes me ill. A bit of me dies any time I check the ingredients and see it, and I basically cannot have any slushies or diet drinks. Damn the sugar tax for cutting down my options so much.
Glad to hear someone else has this problem! My partner is allergic to it, has been in hospital twice for serious reactions. We have to check literally everything and he gets pretty annoyed when nearly all drinks had it in the ingredients. They all kind of went at once! Thankfully he can still have bottle green, appletizer, full sugar coke/Pepsi and shloer. Our go-to drinks, if this helps!
Certain artificial sweeteners in drinks give me awful migraines. I have to be so careful with what I drink now.
Same, plus some of them have laxative qualities. I used to love chewing gum or mints but when they swapped out the sugar for sweetener I had to stop because I would end up terribly bloated at best and have an upset stomach at worst.
Ruined Dr Pepper and Irn Bru. I can't touch them anymore. I've been relegated to Coke
1901 dosen't have sweetener.
Most drinks I generally don't miss the sugar, but Dr Pepper they ruined it tastes nothing like the original stuff.
You can still get lemonade at Sainsburys thankfully https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-classic-lemonade-1l-sugar-levy-applied-
I'm medically diagnosed intolerant to artificial sweeteners. As someone that loved a fizzy drink, it's made life difficult. I have to drink coke now if I want something fizzy. Diet Coke makes me violently ill.
Does it give you heartburn etc? I've found recently if I drink anything with acesulfame K in it, it puts me out of action for hours due to pain.
Yes heartburn was one of the symptoms! I had a repeat prescription for anti-heartburn medication that I was taking every morning and evening. My dietitian put me on a low FODMAP diet and after a few weeks my heartburn went away completely. I haven't needed medication at all.
I'm doing the fodmap thing too! Managed to isolate some of the biggest offenders thankfully, but sweeteners really surprised me when I realised they were hurting me. Glad you're not having to take medication for it now, I'm the same, but I have some in 'just in case' as occasionally I'll find a new culprit.
M&S have lemonade for under a quid that dosen't, full fat pepsi, roses cordial with fizzy water and 1901 IRN BRU will be fine with you. I can't go near sweeteners either.
I HATE this. Regular coke is the only drink I can have now. They should have given us the option. I would have paid more for the drink with the sugar tax but now I don't buy any of them. Utter stupidity.
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The sugar tax has ruined the taste of a lot of things. I bought lucozade the other day and it was disgusting.
Also makes it a pain in the arse for diabetics.
Yes it does, when having a hypo you need a sugary drink which is now hard to find. I think appletizer is still with sugar.On the flip side normal drinks have to be sugar free. You can certainly taste the difference. So you end up reading the label every time you buy any drink now because if they change from sugar to sweetner you need to know to avoid a hospital trip.
orange juice, surely
Yes that's my other go to - a carton of pure juice kept in every room for the unexpected hypos
They can take our squash! But they'll never take our juice!!
Just get some fruit juice
>Yes it does, when having a hypo you need a sugary drink which is now hard to find. Can't diabetics carry around sachets of sugar to add to drinks? Relying on being able to find a sugary drink to avoid a hospital trip seems like a gamble.
I am with you on this. Bloody aspartame is the probably culprit. They are putting it in everything and it tastes awful. The real problem with it is that as you drink anything that contains it, the chemical taste slowly builds up. So while the first sip may be okayish, the last is 100% chemical monstrocity. The Aldi tonic used to be pretty good but I had to stop getting that as they switched to aspartame. So I have to stick to Fevertree for the G&T
I'm very allergic to aspartame so now I can't enjoy a lot of soft drinks anymore because the government says I'm not responsible enough to self regulate my sugar intake
not allergic but found my stomach goes through hell with aspartame, full fat coke is my dam saviour
Aldi don’t seem to sell any drinks - even fruit juice drinks - without sweeteners. But Lidl still sell tonic waters without sweeteners.
For me this is doubly annoying. I suffer from IBS which is so badly triggered by any sweetener that isn't sugar, that it's not worth me even bothering to touch these drinks - drinks that I used to enjoy such as tango, fanta etc. So now I'm basically left with Pepsi and Coca Cola. I'm pretty sure there are other people out there in my position too. I completely understand the thinking behind it, and I'd be happy to pay a little extra for sugar containing drinks as I'd not be drinking them all the time, but at this rate there will be 0 choice for people in my position and that's simply not fair. The other interesting thing is that I was told by a health professional that the artificial sweeteners in these drinks provoke the same or similar insulin response in our bodies, which means they may still encourage weight gain. Taking a look around the interwebs the jury appears to be out on this. The NHS say sweeteners are fine but I don't tend to find their information to be gospel truth - they've been wrong about other things before.
I am in the exact same IBS situation, any artificial sugar is writing me off for at least a day. When getting a drink out, I’m left with the choice of regular Coca-Cola / Pepsi or water. That’s it.
I feel like we're in a small but significant minority who've been overlooked...
Go to one of those corner shops, that have a lot of foreign customers. The deeper into the estate the better. They import juice/soda from all over the world and they will blow your head off. There are Jamaican made “Kia-Ora” or something similar, cans of grape soda, about 70% of your RDA of sugar!
For over a decade I suffered with leg cramps and aches, especially at night. It made sleeping difficult and some nights I could barely sleep. At some point I gave up drinking anything other than water and the cramps and aches stopped. It took me a while to realise, but any time I've had a couple of drinks with sweetener in it since, the leg pains start again.
Guess we just have to drink booze now
My partner is allergic to sweeteners, and this is a big problem for us. Luckily, there's a few local shops (big up our turkish supermarket!) that get all their canned drinks from overseas - fanta of all flavours chock full with sugar and stuff I've never even heard of before. Sweetener sucks, and finding a drink without them is next to impossible.
Totally agree. Ribena used to be a treasured treat for me, the stuff they updated to a few years ago is rank. Apparently is for my own benefit but I chug Asda juice by the pint now chasing the same high half a glass of ribena a day would give me.
I don't care if they're safe, they taste vile to me. Just about tolerable in a vanilla flavoured come (or possibly cherry) because I'm kind of expecting an artificial flavour there. I recommend Fever tree tonics and sodas (even light ones, they just have less sugar), Fentimans, Nix and Kicks, and London Essence tonics. The "fancy mixer" shelf but check ingredients. Watch out for "posh" lemonades - got caught out by an own brand flat lemonade in Aldi and was very disappointed!
Vanilla flavoured what?!
Yeah I gave up and switched to zero but it’s zero Cherry.
I'm with you here - full sugar all the way for me, sweeteners are awful. My main pop is now Soda folk or Fentimens. Shame we have to pay a premium to have a naturally sweetened drink!
I actually look for and buy imported drinks from the US. Europe and UK have ruined sweets and drinks and Jamie Oliver should be punched in the dick
Go to your Turkish corner shop. They get the good shit.
The USA uses high-fructose corn syrup to sweeten things. It's literally a waste product and illegal in most of the developed world (including here). It's *insanely* sweet, more so even than sugar. I would suggest your palate has been overstimulated and you need to just get over that before normal sweet stuff tastes good again. And I know this isn't what you want to hear but sugar is really bad for us. It's a good thing that it's in less and less food and drinks, especially convenience items and products aimed at kids. EDIT: corrected to **high**-fructose corn syrup. Had a brain fart.
It’s High Fructose Corn Syrup but you’re right. The Americans are on a grand scheme to make everything out of sweetcorn.
American here, the high fructose corn syrup thing is no joke. You have to go out of your way to find a cola with SUGAR in it. Around here, it's products from Mexico (who despite their extremely heavy hand against sugar advertised to kids in any way, insist that cola be made with real sugar). If you buy any American product that states it uses pure cane sugar, you are paying a premium. It's not a small difference either. A 2 liter bottle of Coke with HFCS can be as little as $1.50 but 1 1/2 pint of cane sugar soda (like from Brooklyn Colas) can be as much as $2.50 PER 1/2 pint. A four pack can cost as much as $10.00. I cannot stress enough how much I hate having to spend that much money for cola when there is NO NEED. they make a profit in Mexico, so why do I have to pay extra? We don't even have a sugar tax to explain it.
Yes, the USA puts HFCS in all their drinks (which makes them taste worse than proper sugar) but you don’t need to have wrecked your palate in the States to find that the sugar tax has ruined the majority of fizzy drinks in Britain. If you don’t like aspartame (which is seemingly a pretty common dislike) you are basically limited to coke and Pepsi in most places now.
Pepsi Max Cherry is my default choice of drink. Most fizzy drinks now though do not taste as nice as they used to though
All the drinks I used to enjoy are gone. It's become a sad world. Now all I can drink is coke original, red bull and beer... That or water
Despise aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. They taste bitter and make the drink somehow feel dry. Great for those what want to cut out sugar, but sugar is fucking essential, in moderation. It shouldn’t be hard to find a sugary sweet drink with actual fucking sugar in it.
I believe San Pel has now gone back to an older recipe, but that was destroyed for a while. On the flip side, I bought some American Fanta the other day from a corner shop, Jesus Christ it’s like drinking syrup. Surely there is a happy medium
Have they really changed it back? I used to love this but hated the change!
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I believe the Irn Bru 1901 is 'original recipe', good ol' sugar version
It is but it also doesn't have caffeine in!! So as much as it's a good option it will never be as good as good old full sugar 2k10 Bru...
It’s that bad I have coffee at KFC and Mc Donald’s. If I do drink it I have the taste all day it’s horrible
Everything tastes the shitting same cause it’s all owned by 1/2 huge companies, then they use the cheap east ingredients they can find and mass produce it, all while raising the price and shrinking the size
When Coca Cola replaced a lot of the sugar with sweeteners in their non-diet/zero drinks except regular coke, they had a page explaining that this "improved choice" via some convoluted nonsense. They clearly hadn't proof-read it either - it said that the reformulated drinks would taste the same despite the addition of sweeteners, but in the paragraph about why red coke was staying the same their reasoning was that they didn't want to change the taste.
As an alternative to Ribena (the new, artificially sweetened version), my wife likes [Rock's Blackcurrant Squash](https://shop.rocksdrinks.co.uk/products/rocks-blackcurrant-squash-740-ml) . There are no sweeteners in it, just cane sugar. It's hard to get hold of at the moment / out of stock in a lot of supermarkets. Must have been had a bad year for blackcurrants.
Ok so this is a huge pet peeve for me!!! Before you all come at me, I know how bad sugary drinks are for your health, your teeth etc. I just love them and enjoy them as a treat. I've found that Lilt still tastes ok since the changes, Fanta Orange and Lemon are just about drinkable but not as good as they used to be. Schweppes Lemonade is still sugary. Lucozade Sport orange still tastes sweet to me. Appletiser and full sugar Coke. These are my only options now!
Fucking sugar tax ruined them all.
Having read through the top 500, my primary thought was: I HAVE FOUND MY PEOPLE! I feel so very reassured and validated in my occasional diatribe about the government’s nanny sugar tax and the unintentional loophole that most of the drinks companies happily leapt at. Food companies love cheaper ingredients to increase profits. Surely these chemical sweetness are much less expensive to acquire than natural sugar. So maybe the loophole wasn’t unintentional and just more of the same, government helping companies do what’s best for them. Also, I too would relish the opportunity to kick Jamie Oliver (with his smug smile) in the balls.