The other side of reducing sugar in foods

I agree Monica, both about the taste and about the labelling.
It’s actually quite hard to find cordial now that doesn’t contain artificial sweetener.
I rarely drink cordial myself but if I do, I’d rather have sucrose than aspartame, stevia or sucralose.

The other thing to watch out for is sucrose being replaced with fructose.
The other day MrA inadvertently bought some ‘reduced sugar’ Fever Tree tonic water, instead of our usual kind.

Yes, it doesn’t contain artificial sweeteners, as it proudly proclaims in the label.

Yes, it only has 4.5 g sugar per 100ml instead of 8g.

But that’s because the ‘natural’ sugar it contains is fructose, which is twice as sweet as sucrose, so you only need half as much.

What they don’t tell you is that fructose (unless it’s in whole fruit) is actually much more harmful than sucrose, because instead of being broken down in the stomach, it goes straight to the liver where it’s stored as fat.

Can’t we aim to re-educate our palates so we dont need things to taste as sweet, rather than just replace sugar with whatever?

It's annoying isn't it? Only this morning there was a report about the excessively high sugar consumption among children, which has prompted Public Health England to launch a campaign to "encourage parents to choose foods and drinks with lower sugar content". Initiatives like this are driving food and drink manufacturers to switch preemptively to artificial sweeteners in more and more products.
But where does that leave those amongst us who cannot bear the taste? Or who don't trust the safety of aspartame and similar artificial sweeteners? I fear we shall be left with no choice before long.
I totally agree with Maw that we should be aiming for foods with a less sweet taste. Why, for example, is sugar added to breakfast cereals such as cornflakes, Rice Crispies, bran flakes and so on?

I had a rant on FB about coca cola company selling Innocent smoothies. At present I have not been able to get the information at all.

Got it in 1, Maw.

Nellie Google Robert Lustig - 'Sugar the bitter truth' for more about fructose metabolism & why it's damaging.

These are the levels in some.

Coca Cola - 10.6g
Innocent Pomegranate Magic Smoothie - 13g
Innocent Pineapple Banana Coconut Smoothie - 12g
Innocent Invigorate Super Smoothie - 11g
Innocent Mango and Passion Fruit Smoothie - 11g
Naked Green Machine Apple Banana Smoothie - 11g
Naked Blue Machine Blueberry Smoothie - 11g
Tropicana Vitality Apple and Pineapple Juice - 11g
Tropicana Berry Boost Juice - 11g

Source: Supershoppers

What about good old water?

I drink water , but sometimes it tastes of chlorine , and last summer there was a taste of mould ! The water engineer type person told us we are at the end of the line and to run it for longer , this was during the so called drought . OH liked diluted orange , but even it had sugar in . I looked at the "natural" orange juice , supposed to be part of 5 a day , but it has a load of sugar too

I used to love Ribena but I agree that the new formula tastes horrible.

aggie I would suggest buying a filter jug. They are not very expensive. Our tap water here is really dreadful and having lived previously where the tap water was lovely, the difference was very noticeable and tasted of chemicals.

My Brita Maxtra filter jug turns this vile water into beautiful soft drinking water. I drink herbal teas and whereas ordinary tap water used to leave scum on the top of the tea (very visible when one doesn't have milk in it), my filtered water leaves no residue.

I drink plenty of water, I just enjoy a hot cordial now and again. I usually buy Puxley's or Belvoir, which both taste a lot less sweet than Ribena, which I never buy because I find it too sweet, but this bottle was a from Santa, nothing I bought for myself and it had 'hidden' artificial sweeteners and tasted quite unpleasant.

Just enjoying a mug of hot Puxley's Blackcurrant before I go to bed. Even the strictest puritan, is allowed the odd little indulgence!

I use a water filter jug, as we can smell the chlorine, especially over bank holidays!

I drink hot plj, pure lemon juice. It is sharp, but you get used to it. You could always stir a little honey in it.

seacliff Do you rinse your mouth out well after the PLJ? I drank that a lot in my 20s and eroded all the enamel on my front teeth and had to have expensive crowns. No one (or certainly not me) knew about acid erosion in those days. The same applies to drinking apple cider vinegar in water.

The answer is a nice cup of tea.

The answer is a nice cup of tea.

Ooh yes please - white with two sugars for me

Some years ago it was said aspartame was bad for us.

Lots of scare stories out there about artificial sweetners. Most not true. Rumour has it they were started by the likes of Tate & Lyle.

For health reasons, I've given up sugar (for nearly a year now), including anything that contains more than 5% sugar, e.g. baked beans (!) and can't bear anything sugary now. had one bite of a mince pie at Christmas and that was more than enough for me. Yuck. We can train our palates to like less sugar - surely that's a more sensible approach than using artificial sweeteners.

Anything with carbohydrates in has “sugar” in it. Fruit, spuds, pasta, all add sugars to your system. The trick is to limit carbs and eat more protein. Whoops, that’ll mess up your cholesterol.
I think we should be careful of added sugar be it refined sugar, fructose, honey or whatever else they call it. That will probably mean cooking from scratch judging by the ingredients list on the back of a packet!

I hate the taste of Aspartame and it is toxic. It exacerbates conditions such as Fibromyalgia so I always check labels and avoid it like the plague. We fitted a filter tap in the kitchen so use water from that tap for drinking and cooking. The filters last for 3 years so are more cost effective and convenient than filter jug.

MawBroon and CarlyD7 that is exactly what Prue Leith said yesterday. If you reduce the sugar content you re-educate your palate and you won’t want as much.

Our local council advise putting tapwater in a jug with no lid in the fridge for a few hours. Apparently the chlorine dissipates....

One other thing is that we are buying sweeter and sweeter fruit and vegetables. The sugar content of the most popular varieties is very high. The sweetest tomatoes, grapes and apples sell best. Likewise grapefruit- no one eats the sort of grapefruit we had in our youth.
I read an interesting paper on this about three years ago and it seems that sweetness sells so well that farmers are growing the sweeter and sweeter varieties - giving us less choice and making sweetness the new "normal".
I never knowingly buy foods with artificial sweeteners in though as they are generally unpleasant, however I do sometimes long for tangy apples and sharp oranges of the sort that in my childhood would have been offered with sugar!

Yes Pittcity we did that when we lived in America and it does work.