368
Germany plans sugar tax that includes sugar free drinks
(brusselssignal.eu)
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
Posts must be:
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
Why?? Shit’s sugar. You’re not getting most of the nutritional benefit from juice, all the fiber has been removed.
Someone paid someone else a million and now juice with 50 percent sugar is not included in this.
Stevia coke is, how weird ..
because they aren't purtity testing their legislation and added sugar and added artificial sweeteners is their current target, it's a start ffs
My guess is because it's unsweetened, and that the tax applies to drinks with added sugar or sweetener.
‘We should reduce sugar and sweetener consumption, let’s not tax this drink that’s almost pure sugar because it’s natural’ is asinine. Apple juice has virtually identical sugar content to a soda.
They’re not the same types of sugar. Your body uses glucose differently than fructose.
They are both very high in fructose. What is your point? I genuinly don't get it.
What is the difference? Both harmful same way, glucose spikes, leads to obesity
Maybe to some extent? I don't think the superiority of one monosaccharide over the other has been clearly established. There are differences, but the health impact of them are not clear. Also, "glucose vs fructose" is
not super-relevant to the matter of comparing juice with soda. At least here in the Nordics, most sodas seem to be sweetened with sugar, a.k.a. sucrose (a.k.a. fructose+glucose, see below), and maybe a splash of juice. (Based on a survey of my favorites, though I mostly drink the Zero-versions)
a bit of a false choice (see below).
Fructose often co-occurs with glucose
(Source: Wikipedia article on Fructose)
Table: "Sugar content of selected common plant foods". Note that many of the fruits' sugar content is dominated by a combination of sucrose and free fructose. Only plum breaks this trend, containing mostly glucose instead (still 47% sucrose and fructose).
"Potential health effects"
The sugar in soda contains fructose (it is in fact 50% fructose). Soda with HFCS isn’t actually that much higher in fructose than plain sugar soda, ironically; the ‘high’ just means ‘higher than white sugar’.
The “high” means greater than 55% fructose. HFCS has to be at minimum HFCS-55 according to the FDA. Many sodas mix HFCS-55 with HFCS-90 to increase the concentration. And I never said that soda doesn’t have fructose? Don’t know where you got that.
Isn't it fructose, or has it changed during the "jucification" process? I mean fructose is sugar, but way less bad than refined sugars.
That's not true, the tax apply to unsweetened milk alternatives.
This is probably the most bizzare part
The problem is processed sugar being the cheapest calories per weight you can find so adding sugar to drinks is hyper cheap while getting people (especially kids) addicted and sick. 100% fruit juices arent the problem.
No, the problem is that people have simply demonized soda. HFCS in particular. It's not about sugar, it never has been. An exception for fruit juice makes this obvious. It's the "naturalistic fallacy" in action.
How does an exception for fruit juice (containing natural sugar and relatively expensive) make it obvious that its not about added sugar and cheap drinks?
Sugar is exactly as healthy as sugar. Notice how I didn't add any words to the front? Those words don't change how (un)healthy sugar is. The law clearly isn't about health; as it is portrayed.
Furthermore, they tax artificial sweeteners as well. So, might as well use actual sugar if you are paying the tax either way!
This shows how little you know about the subject yet you keep arguing as if you had facts. Sugar is a category of compounds consisting mainly of saccharids (which again, is a category of compounds). There are literally thousands of "sugars" which vary wildly in their effects on the human body. Also, other stuff you ingest/digest at the same time influences those as well..
Nope. Klingbeil revoked that immediately afterwards.
A company (Compal) in my country (Portugal) that has been making whole fruit juice since the 70's. If they made it any thicker, you could eat it with a fork.
Spain and France also have off-brand manufacturers of this type of fruit drink. Germany could learn something
Because like all laws, corruption came into the process to make it miss the goal entirely.
Taxing almost all sugary drinks including artificial sweetners but not 100% juice is not "missing the goal entirely". That's still hitting the unhealthiest and most marketed beverages.
There is no evidence that sugar substitutes are unhealthy and in fact have proven over and over again to increase weight loss compared to full sugar or telling people to "just drink more water".
I'd agree if this targeted products with added sugar and left the artificial sweetners out of it. Fruit juice is also sold in high volumes, especially to families and people beyond their prime age. They might be less marketed, but I would argue they're not less unhealthy than soda with artificial sweetners. They might not miss the figurative goal entirely, but they sure are missing their literal goal if they are doing this to limit peoples consumption of unhealthy drinks.
Not all sugar is the same. I've read that natural fruit sugar is still way healthier than industrially refined sugar. Also fruit juice usually contains vitamins, electrolytes and fiber. So from a health perspective it makes sense to me to exempt 100℅ fruit juices. The alternative would be to only allow juice mixed with water or something else.
Jesus, the Kennedy-fication of public health is real.
Well, you read wrong. Fructose is a very short chain sugar and is absorbed into the bloodstream a lot faster than "regular" sugar, making it more unhealthy.
But it's much more sweet tasting so you need less of it. Don't know if it actually balances out though.
Read where?
I'll just link to another comment I made here: https://feddit.nu/post/22364165/21693381
I read in a magazine a few years ago, so I can't point you to that exact source. But yeah, it's surely more complicated than that
You can't expect logic from a conservative government, silly.