ENGLAND SUGAR STORY FULL
ENGLAND SUGAR STORY CRACK

Start-ups are trying everything from creating sugar with a low glycemic index that prevents the body from absorbing as much glucose, to altering the surface area of sugar molecules and building designer proteins.

In 2011 that ban was once again lifted when research showed you’d need to drink 800 cans of saccharin-containing soft drink each day to reach the carcinogenic dosage that triggered the disease in rats. Then 39 years later, in 1977, it was banned once more after tests linked it to cancer in lab rats. In 1911, 32 years after its chance discovery, saccharin was deemed unsafe and banned in the US, before being reinstated when sugar shortages kicked in due to the First World War. But despite 11,000 people signing a petition calling for the brand to revert to its old recipe the company stuck to its guns and more than two years later sales have begun to recover.Įven where sweeteners able to ape the many roles of sugar in function, debates rage on as to whether any of them are actually any better for us. Sales plummeted £25 million in the months following the relaunch. It’s why when Lucozade swapped out sugar for aspartame and acesulfame K in 2017 the low sugar recipe was criticised, compared to bleach and branded a flop. Sugar alternatives often fail to match the mouthfeel of sugar too, leaving a bitter aftertaste or chemical coating on the tongue. “Instead, they get a calorie-free chemical concoction and so send us off searching for nutrients elsewhere.” “Perhaps it's because our bodies expect a hit of energy and nutrients when they taste sweetness,” Norton says.

ENGLAND SUGAR STORY FULL

The main sugar in nature is found in ripe fruit which is full of nutrients and was abundant in late summer and autumn – great for helping our ancestors survive a lean winter when other sources of food energy were lacking.” Synthetic alternatives, such as saccharin or aspartame, might be significantly sweeter but they don’t trigger the same rush of dopamine in the brain. “It hits the same reward centres in the brain that light up with drugs and other substances that give us a high,” says Sally Norton, a consultant weight loss surgeon for the NHS.” It’s hard-wired into our DNA to be something we crave. “On top of all that the customer has to like it,” says Pollock.Īnd sugar delivers a rush that current alternatives can’t match. Taking out sugar from any one product means replacing each and every one of these functions. It gives breads their crust, biscuits a toasted texture, and acts as a cheap bulking agent. It's also a texture modifier, providing soft drinks with their viscous consistency, a base for fermentation, and a colouring agent. “Reducing sugar content means that instead of an 18-month shelf life, a product might last only nine or ten.” It’s a highly efficient preservative, explains Ashley Pollock, a specialist in food and drink innovation at business consultancy Ayming. Its ubiquity in food and drink goes far beyond taste, the molecule plays a role in colour, consistency and how long a product can last on the supermarket shelf. One of the biggest obstacles is that sugar delivers more than sweetness. Why, more than a century after scientists stumbled upon the first alternative, does replacing sugar still feel like an insurmountable task? In chocolate that fell to as low as 0.3 per cent. But with only months to go progress has been painfully slow and hopes of hitting the target have been described by Jebb as “wildly ambitious.” In a 2019 report, the average reduction in products from 2015-2018 was just 2.9 per cent. By the end of 2020 any product that falls into one of the ten categories identified by health authorities as contributing most to sugar intake among children (a list which includes confectionery, yoghurts, pastries and breakfast cereals) must reduce sugar content by 20 per cent or risk more draconian steps, such as an extension of the 2018 tax on soft drinks.

ENGLAND SUGAR STORY CRACK

To crack down on our national sugar intake, in 2016 the UK government handed the food and drink industry a deadline.

England sugar story