The other side of reducing sugar in foods

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.

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!

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

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

What about good old water?

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

Got it in 1, Maw.

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

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.

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?

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?

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.