Ok at first I noticed this in things like generic rootbeer and sodas because they had an off taste that I couldn’t place … so I read the ingredients and even though it had HFCS and the normal flavorings it had sucralose or something like it listed somewhere they were diet or anything like that
Then a while back I bought some name brand grape juice (not welchs or minute maid ) that was awful and it was the same …it was cut with apple juice and had some sugar in it but also had an artificial sweetener in it and it wasn’t “diet” or anything
they even do it with Hawaiian punch now … Someone I mentioned this too said they do this with gum and certain candies now too …
In theory what they are doing is add less sugar by replacing some of it with sweetener. The first question though is why the heck does anybody add sugar to stuff which is already sweet by itself, such as apple juice.
This is happening in the UK widely and it pisses me off no end.
I rarely drink sweet, soft drinks. On the occasions I do I drink them for the taste, artificial sweeteners taste horrible. There was no warning about it and one day I had a 7-Up and went back to the counter to complain that they’d given me the “diet” version. The replacement was no better so I checked online, sure enough, pretty much every soft drink now has sweeteners in it as well as sugar. Utterly idiotic.
It seems like only coke is keeping sweeteners out of their product so that’s where my money goes now.
I worked in the beverage industry a few years ago and Nava is correct - it’s to reduce sugar (and to a lesser extent calories). Added sugar is becoming anathema to the media and to consumers the way fat did a few years ago. Consumer products are responding by figuring out ways to reduce sugar while keeping product’s taste acceptable to “most” consumers.
Just yesterday my 22 y/o daughter bought a full sugar soft drink by mistake and got very upset when she read the label and saw how much added sugar there was. “How can people possibly drink this? Don’t they know what it does to their bodies?” She poured it down the drain rather than drink it. Not saying it’s right or wrong (well it’s probably right), but that’s the reality for millennials who are concerned about health.
As far as the OP & Novelty Bubble’s “awful” comments go, no question you find the taste awful but you’re in the minority of consumers. In the studies I personally ran, a small group could pick out the sweetener consistently in blind taste tests, but most people could only note “there’s a difference in taste”, but couldn’t tell which was which. I suspect that difference is masked even more when a combo of sugar and sweeteners is used.
I was recently listening to a podcast where they tried exactly that - every panelist said without a doubt they could spot the artificially sweetened products in blind tests. Only one person (out of 5) was consistent.
I’ve been trying to replace sugary drinks with “lite” versions of them. It’s hit or miss. I happen to like the taste of sucralose; even so, not all the variations work. I like a store brand lite apple juice much better than I like the Motts equivalent, e.g. The lite Arnold Palmer ice tea/lemonade is better than the sweet version from other brands.
You have to go through a lot of failures to find the ones that work. The reward is that hundreds of calories a week magically vanish from your diet with no effort.
And if they’re using regular sugar and artificial sugar, they can still write “Made with real sugar” on the label.
@Joey P - You’re 100% correct.
Further to the point of millennials being repulsed by added-sugar products, there is a story today in HuffPost that the “hottest” alcohol drinks in Canada’s west coast are new sugar-free (not carb-free) vodka based coolers made with flavoured seltzer water. Targeted at “health conscious millennial females”.
Doesn’t appeal to me at all, but I accept I’m not the future.
It doesn’t take long to de-condition yourself from the compulsion for sweetened water. It’s just that few people are inclined to do that, because cheap, sweetened drinks (whether with sugar or something artificial) are much more prevalent than unsweetened carbonated water. The initial threshold for changing this habit is too high for most people. Also, there’s a kind of addictive nature to sugar, so people will drink more sweetened water than regular water, even after their thirst has been quenched. So when companies like the one you once worked for do taste tests, their goal is not to see what people could potentially prefer, given time, but how to maximize sales.
If I were to conduct an experiment, how much time do you think I would have to give it to see if I really started preferring unsweetened water?
Currently I only drink diet, non-carbonated beverages sweetened with artificial sweetener.
For me, it isn’t that I prefer plain water as much as I’m fine with plain water so I don’t need sugary water. I cut sugar out by drinking plain water and not adding sugar to my coffee. Once you get used to it, you don’t miss the sugary taste. In fact, some sodas are too sweet for me now. I will enjoy a sweet beverage occasionally, but the key is occasionally. Sugar should be a treat, not an everyday thing.
I don’t remember how long it took. It wasn’t a defined time for me. I stopped using sugar in my coffee, and once I got used to that, everything else fell into place.
I don’t buy soda much anymore but I was getting some the other day at the grocery and one of the several varieties of Coke available was “Coca-Cola Life, sweetened with cane sugar AND Stevia.”
Of course, they still sell their regular HFCS-sweetened version, and I assume they still sell a cane sugar (without Stevia) version. As well as the various Diet and Zero varieties that use artificial sweeteners.
I do not like coffee (not even coffee desserts), so I get through college on Mountain Dew and Jolt cola.
For a medical reason, I had to give up caffeine for about 5 years. When I was able to have it again, I was so happy to drink Mountain Dew…until the first sip.
BLEEECCCHH! Way, way, way too sweet. As were all other sweetened drinks.
My main beverage is water. No flavors, no fruit, no sweetener of any kind, just plain water (I have never found a tap water as good as the well water I grew up on, so I buy Primo 5 gallon bottles).
I like iced tea, and any sweet tea is too sweet, but at restaurants (where I drink it to avoid their tap water) make it too strong or let it get old, so I sweeten it. With saccharine. :eek:
ISTM that everything must be stronger than it used to be. Everything needs more. Sweet things must be sweeter. Spicy foods need to be flaming hot. Sour things must be more and more sour. Any scented thing needs more scent to last longer and longer. One could complain about overstimulation in society if one were to ponder this.
Doesn’t the UK have specific regulations that punish drinks that have over a certain amount of sugar? I remember there was some foofaraw when Irn Bru announced they were forced to cut back on sugar.
Yes, you are correct. Commonly it’s referred to as the “sugar tax”, but more correctly it’s the “soft drinks industry levy”. Here are the details.
This thread reminds me of discussions between couples one of whom grew up drinking whole milk and the other skim each not understanding how the other could drink that shit …
FWIW it is unclear if a switch from full sugar to even “diet” does much for weight loss (we’ve had past threads), but a switch to water and milk definitely does.