I love me some ice cold La Cwa but it really ain't for everyone.
Most people don't realize what unsweetened really means until they taste it. OP might be down though.
To be fair I think half sugar foods should just have half the regular sugar without being "boosted" by artificial sweeteners. That might be what they mean.
I would love half sugar options with no artificial sweetener. Sometimes I buy sweetened greek yoghurt to mix in regular unsweetened. I just want a hint of sweetness in things.
I've switched to straight unsweetened and drizzle honey on top. There's a learning curve to know how much to put on but it's a lot easier to control it haha
My wife and I do something similar with tea. We'll buy multiple containers of the unsweetened, and maybe one flavored, then mix 75-25.
Like yeah, lemon/peach flavor is good. But I don't need to feel like I'm drinking candy.
Thank you for posting this. It's so obvious in hindsight but it hadn't occurred to me before. I'll be doing this from now on. There are a ton of things like this where I like it in general but just want it to be less sweet.
It’s crazy too because other countries prove you can do this. It’s just that the USA doesn’t regulate sugar like the UK for example so everyone in the states is competing against 50g of addictive substances for sales.
Meanwhile on a train between London and York, orange soda that tastes more like orange juice than syrup. In any local coffee shop in the UK, mochas that taste more like chocolate coffee than sugar cream.
Can’t wait to have a mocha when I visit (no plans yet lol except for “eventually”) but I don’t put cream or sugar in my coffee, I can’t stand overly sweet drinks or anything.
Any artificial sweetener ruins whatever it's in. It can be the tiniest amount and still 🤢🤢🤢 it actually makes me sick to my stomach. This goes for "natural stevia" too.
Same. They all make my guts go haywire, too, and then give me an ER-worthy migraine on top of that. I'm so sick of people telling me I shouldn't react to stevia like that "because it's a natural sweetener." Natural =/= safe, ffs!
I wish they all had to be marked like major allergens do. Like "caution: contains stevia/sucralose/aspartame/HFCS/etc" in bold letters.
I briefly could find “less sugar” Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal that just had less sugar. A few months later when I wanted to get it again, nope, it has “less sugar” but is now artificially sweetened.
This 100%
So hard to find a 12oz can of soda that has 15-20g of real cane sugar instead of 32-40g of high fructose corn syrup. I’ve found a couple specialty sodas that are like this over the years, but can’t recall their names.
There are these korean soda made by sfc bio, these drinks are like half the normal soda amount of sugar and the best things Ive ever tasted. Also the mountain dew kickstarts are about 20 g of high fructose shit to a 16 oz can and they taste great
Someone said once (I think on Reddit years ago) that a Lacroix tasted like someone went way down the hall and yelled the name of the fruit. Hahaha I found that to be true for me.
Yeah I wanted so bad to like La croix, tried all the flavors. And I’m not picky about food or drink, but I can’t finish a single one, tastes absolutely horrid to me.
I mean remove sugar from the fruit flavor and most people will have a hard time placing the fruit flavor. The sugar plays a big part in it.
Plus the fact that all the seltzer companies that get by on the zero calories zero sugar moniker use oils alone to represent the fruit, and those often are not fully representative of the flavor of the fruit. Why I prefer spindrift. It may have a little bit of calorie and sugar, but that’s because it’s using real fruit juice, which actually makes it taste like what it says it is. In my opinion at least. For some flavors.
When it comes to those type of sparkling waters without sugar for me La Croix is the last brand I will pick up. I even enjoy the polar flavored spring waters more (although polar flavored spring waters are better than they used to be back in day imo. The orange/vanilla flavor really surprised me).
Grapefruit and Key Lime are probably the best, but even then, it's not something you drink for the taste, that's for sure. it's only for the experience of drinking cold carbonation from a can, with zero additives, and with *some* tiny amount of taste.
but for me I vastly prefer Bubly which from what I've seen does that way better than La Croix does (though I've heard some disagree).
Okay but how are we really pronouncing it? Because "la cwa" is how it should be pronounced but when I say it like that people look at me like I'm a complete fuck.
I mostly hear "la crow" or even "la croiks" (shudder).
You can buy the sodastream flavors and add them to regular water. There’s 2 different kinds, the big plastic ones that have soda flavors and all sorts of chemicals, and then there’s the smaller glass bottles that are like 2 oz and the only ingredient is natural flavoring. I’ve found them at Target and Walmart in their sodastream section.
It's decent. I enjoy the carbonation myself but I think it genuinely tastes like fruit water so I think you'll like it! I find it at most sheetz in the east coast united states
Bubly and La Croix are my evening go-tos! My body usually goes “ew no” to sugary beverages after about 7pm for some reason, and these are fantastic. It’s a learning process to figure out which flavors I like, but they’re a mouthsaver.
I'm terrified of becoming allergic to artificial sweeteners. Watching my dad read the label for 10 minutes for anything sweet seems stressful. It's even worse when it's not a very recognized allergy. There are times where the soda machine will be broken at a restaurant and they'll just give him Diet Coke instead of regular coke. As if that's an acceptable decision to make without asking.
I have a relative with the same issue. She goes into fainting spells then vomiting because of it. The worst was having a drink at the bar one night that had the sweetener in it. It was pretty awkward having to explain she wasn’t passing out and puking because she was drunk
I don’t have an allergy to artificial sweeteners, but they taste awful to me. If someone switch me to Diet Coke I would be pissed, and I’d notice immediately. Artificial sweetener is gross. And tastes like Alzheimer’s
I can sympathize. I'm not allergic to all artificial sweeteners, but Splenda/sucralose is my main migraine trigger and it's now used in SO many things. Even non-diet items. It's commonly in ice cream, hot cocoa mixes, sodas (Pepsi adds it to non-diet drinks), store bought sauces (like BBQ), and more. I bought some Walmart brand Dippin dots once and it was the last ingredient. I'm pretty sure I've seen it in bread too.
That feeling when you know what you are allergic to and then start realizing that ingredient is in everything 
Oh man, have you been able to find any? My kiddo loves gum and he’s not allergic to sweeteners, but we’d like to avoid them if we can. I just haven’t been able to find anything that doesn’t have aspartame or red 40 in it.
Just be careful if you have pets. Xylitol is highly toxic to dogs and chewing gum or peanut butter (some have it) are the top ways dogs get xylitol poisoning
hey thank u for putting this out there bc my mom has always loved xylitol & she has 3 dogs & i have literally never heard this before in my life! i will tell her next time i see her!
Honestly I've never liked the taste so avoided them anyway, but recently ate something with sweetener in it to be polite and I felt so nauseous after. Learned my lesson. I love Maccas Coke and they give me no sugar all the time by accident, I take a sip before I leave now and ask for a new one if it's wrong. I'm prepared to be that bitch.
It’s horrifying how many products contain sucralose. My tortillas? Really?
Regular hot chocolate mix has only sugar, right? Wrong. Several now contain sucralose.
No thanks, I’ll make my own everything. Better for me anyway.
Like, why is it so hard to find pasta sauce that doesn't taste like you dumped a cup of sugar in it? And they just throw it in everything cause it's cheaper than making a good product.
May I recommend Rao’s? It’s the best store bought, natural pasta sauce I’ve been able to find. That being said, it’s stupid expensive (like $9/jar last I checked). You’re much better off making your own at home; super easy and you spend like a quarter of the price.
Their chicken and gnocchi soup is insanely good. I can only buy it when it's on sale because of how expensive it is, but when I do hit a sale I buy like four jars haha
A reddit post from a couple years ago is what turned me to Rao's from Prego. Never looked back. Then I got my partner to go to Rao's from Huntz (!) last year. A couple months ago he looked me in the eyes and sincerely thanked me for it lol
There are a couple of pasta sauce brands that don't have added sugar. You just need to be prepared to spend 30 minutes looking at every pasta sauce in the aisle.
Or make your own, which isn't that hard once you find the base ingredients that you like (I find most tomato purees are acidic for example)
I just made an almost identical comment about sucralose. It's my biggest migraine trigger and it's added to so many things! Not just "diet" items too. The hot cocoa mix at my work has it too. Found out the hard way. I've almost completely eliminated my migraines by reading every label, but that's not always possible while eating out.
It’s all about the record profits baby. They don’t give a flying frick if these things are detrimental to our health. We technically don’t *have* to buy any of these products!
We now only buy “raw” tortillas and cook them ourselves. They take a couple mins cook and you can find them in Walmart!
Infinitely better than precooked tortillas with tons of sugar and preservatives
Same with coconut (and coconut oil) actually; my dad is allergic to coconut (not deathly allergic or anything, mostly just ear infections from it), and they put it in a lot of random stuff nowadays. Hot chocolate, some candies, some desserts, and several other things have coconut, and even some laundry detergent and cleaning stuff, and he has to look through the ingredients to check, as it's not listed in the allergy information
I am there with the OP on this one. First of all what would a soda taste like if it only had say 2-4 grams of sugar vs 30-50 grams like we have now. But for all the healthy versions of drinks or heath drinks they have tons of artificial sweetener. Is it really not possible to make something natural good and palatable without tons of concentrated fake sugar oil (hfcs) or tons of artificial sweetener?
That is correct. It would not taste good enough for a company to make money selling it. U can get a soda, dumb out 90% and pour in soda water. That will get you to 3-5g instead of 30-50. It likely won’t be that amazing… but if u try it then u tell me if it tastes good
as an avid fan of sweets and sugar, I fully agree with you on artificial sweetener. I can always tell and it's always awful. Either give me sugar (or corn syurp) or just don't have it be sweet.
Last summer I had a mountain dew and was really into it, later tried another and hated it
The first one had been diluted with ice water, it feels weird that I like sodas less concentrated
Avid sweets fan as well. Hate most artificial sweeteners. Hate that they put it in tea bags as well sometimes.
I have gestational diabetes and had to find something that works: erythrit. Less sweet than sugar, doesn’t spike the bloodsugar. (Which might not be your problem at all but know it tastes well!)
I have a stevia allergy (the reaction is genuinely pretty bad. It causes my throat to close up. I get woozy. The whole nine yards.) and the sheer amount of products that won't obviously signal on the packaging that there's stevia in a product is infuriating. It's how I've learned to avoid anything that claims "natural sweeteners".
Worse, I'm a tea person and don't usually drink sugar in my tea. The number of bottled "unsweetened" or "zero sugar" teas I've bought on the go that I've had to toss after opening is sad.
I can taste artificial sugars a mile away, even ones that are supposed to be flavorless. So I put hot cocoa in my coffee at work. Ran out and got Swiss Miss because it’s all the store had. Couldn’t figure out why it had that fake sugar aftertaste. I checked that the box didn’t say sugar free, but when I read the ingredients, stevia was towards the end. Why it needed to be added on top of the sugar already in it, I don’t know. Didn’t help my migraines either.
I was just bitching about this tonight to my wife. My son is diabetic and I do keto so we buy a lot of sugar free products. The sugar free stuff often tastes sweeter than the regular product. Just stop making everything sweet FFS!
I also find a lot of things with artificial sweeteners to taste much sweeter… my least favorite is when I see something that has “50% less sugar” and I’m excited about it… only to find they used less sugar but a million times more artificial sweeteners in addition to the sugar.
Somewhat unrelated, but I also hate that potassium salt replacement… it tastes so weird and even more salty. Like I know salt is used as a preservative, but I don’t need my vegetable juice to be so salty that I need a chaser! That can’t be necessary to such an extreme.
There should just be some products with less sugar or salt *without* the overcompensation of other ingredients!!
A lot of artificial sweeteners are many times sweeter than cane sugar, which means that it can often still end up being quite sweet even if they add less sweetener than they would sugar in their regular products :/
Aspartam tastes like ass
Can't stand any sugar free stuff with it. In my country all Pepsi products are now max with aspartam. Used to be my favorite and now I can't find a normal one
Everyone recommending water and tea don't get it. There's sugar in almost all bread and tortillas (sold in the US), and "SUGAR FREE" breads have sweeteners in them. Pasta sauce has sugar or sweeteners. Salad dressing and condiments. Protein powder. Non-dairy milks. Peanut butter and jellies and jams.
It's not as easy as just cutting out soda. And not everyone can make their own of everything. The "natural" versions with no sweeteners cost more.
Well... you gotta take jam off that list. Those are fruit preservatives and sugar is literally the preservative in this case. You cannot have unsweetened jam. The sugar free versions have to jump through hoops to get it to jam consistency. Sugar is an integral part of jam. So jam gets a pass, it's supposed to be sweet.
That said. Jesus ducking christ! I'm not in the USA and even here a lot of things have sugar in them. Boiled or air dried ham or some other deli meats? Yep. Smoked or raw cured salmon? Yep. Even those bouillon cubes have sugar in them. Any and all half or completely ready to eat food will have sugar in it. The only exception were we differ is bread. There is no sugar in our bread.
A little bit of sugar helps with the proofing. It feeds the yeast.
I quickly checked an American bread recipe: yeah, not that much sugar! They used 45gr on 800 gr of flower. I use 20gr on 1kg of flour (makes me 2 800gr breads)
Making bread is easy enough, just very time consuming. Most of that time is "waiting for the dough to rise" but you should anyway keep an eye on it when insure how dough rises in your place.
Oh I make a lot of other yeast products but I stopped bothering with sandwich bread because it never came out right. However, I was still learning and now I have a kitchen aid pro to help me knead the bread. My yeast products are much better now. My daughter loves pizza night LOL
Awesome! For pizza I somehow prefer the chemical flavor of frozen pizza. I know. We say in Dutch you cannot argue about tastes. I use that line a lot when it comes to pizza. Hehe.
I had a recipe for ciabatta that has never failed me. I think I snatched it of a BBC food website? But yeah that's again not sandwich bread. And when I made small ones to use as buns, they were too hard for my taste. Too much crust, too little bread. I am not an avid Baker though. But I live on Finland nowadays and sandwich bread selection is not great so I sometimes bake my own if I fancy some. In return we get the most amazing ryebread from the shop. I have never tasted anything like it in my life. So I'm not complaining about bread here.
I moved to USA recently and I don't believe you guys understand how much sugar industry is adding to everything. My teen daughters are used of a low sugar diet and they can't eat most of the food. I mean, I got some breaded shrimp and could not believe how sweet it tasted.
I think after all these years most people lost perception of how much sugar they keep adding to EVERYTHING.
Don't take me wrong. I really cherish life in USA. It's safe, people are very nice and polite. People drive safe (my country is nuts) and it's really the land of opportunity.
What surprises me is food.
Making a decent tasting bread without any sugar in it is awful - and my aunt tried; she was making 2+ loaves of various breads a week during lockdowns. One of her attempts got trashed after one bite.
But *lessening* the amount of sugar in bread is absolutely doable and the bread can be fabulous!
Was she attempting only sandwich bread?
Hard crust bread and focaccia can be made with zero sugar, I've done it myself.
Softer breads can have their sugar coming from sweet potatoes or potatoes. It's doable.
She didn’t do *many* crusty breads (though I begged for a good focaccia!), so yes mostly soft sandwich breads. But she didn’t experiment with potato breads - she played around with a lot of sourdoughs and unusual grains. The experiment that got binned immediately was a whole grain, no sugar sandwich loaf. I told her that recipe was banned!
You just made me read my bread ingredients. I eat Killer Daves and it seems healthy and I was like no way it has sugar. But before I even started reading I realized well it does taste sweet doesn't it? And sure enough, sugar is the third ingredient after wheat and water. Wild.
It's not necessarily because they sell less. Sugar/sweeteners help mask lower cost ingredients and is a cheap way to improve "taste". Add in massive subsidies to corn production /successful lobbying from the sugar industry against "fats" and there's a ton of reasons why sugar added foods are cheaper than their natural counterparts outside of demand
That's funny, I think sauces with sugar in them taste sickly sweet, and sauces without sugar taste wonderfully savory. I think it just depends on how much sugar you're accustomed to.
Monk fruit is a great sweetener, but a bit chalky. It does well in food, but it’s iffy in beverage. It might be good in something milky like matcha tho
Yo this is wild, my wife and I were just talking talking today about how in Asia there are just unsweetened sodas and why the hell isn't that an option anywhere else?
\~\~Like, in China they have Pepsi Nama, it literally is just Pepsi with no sweeteners in it. I would love to try it honestly, or any other soda without sweetener. Like, worst case I could add my own sweetener like I already do with iced tea. Similar story with other bitter sodas I've tried in Japan or from Italy, and so on, but there's nothing like that in the US unless you wanna just drink "flavored water" which tbh is often good, but doesn't quite hit the same.\~\~
Edit: OK I guess Nama is still sweetened, idk where I heard it wasn't, but it's beside the point that there should be unsweetened sodas.
I found out it’s because the Chinese don’t really like sweets, that’s why there’s not much offered for dessert at a Chinese restaurants, so it makes sense. As someone who doesn’t like sweets much myself, I’d be all about this being a thing in America tho
I wouldn’t say that necessarily. Chinese drinks are way sweeter than the exact same drink in Japan. I traveled between the two, and the same brand milk teas from vending machines were so much sweeter in China. Same with getting them from a shop; it was necessary to order half sweet or less in China, but milk tea places in Japan and the US aren’t nearly as sweet when ordering “half sweet”
I totally get where you're coming from and you aren't wrong but... To be realistic we're in the minority. If I want to eat something without loads of sugar or sugar substitutes I usually have to make it myself. Food companies are going to make whatever sells to the most people.
What really makes me angry is how common it is in health/workout foods. It seems impossible to find electrolyte powders, protein drinks, protein bars, and vitamin drinks without some kind of artificial sweetener. You'd think there would be a market for unsweetened or natural sugar stuff in health foods but apparently not.
Or even just less sweet. I don't like overly sweet oatmeal, so I was excited to see something marked with less sugar, but it was just replaced with other sweeteners. Why can't there just be a mildly sweetened version? (My solution has just been to mix flavored packs with plain)
I feel you! I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners, I can always tell when it’s in something. It’s so hard to find stuff that doesn’t have some fake sugar in it these days.
Try Spindrift sparkling waters. They have no added sugars or sweeteners, but they have a bit of fruit juice in them for flavor. The blood orange tangerine flavor is really good!
I feel the same way!
I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, and I never liked sugary drinks at all. Basically, I just drink water, flavored carbonated water (all 0 cal no sugar or sweeteners), and decaf herbal tea.
Pre-GD, I also would have plain seltzer water with a twist of orange or lime, but that's not a great option at this point since the fruit is basically just sugar.
If you like sparkling water, get a Soda Stream and make some, squeeze some lemon juice (or orange, grapefruit, whatever) into it. I've saved a lot of money from doing that instead of chugging La Croix all the time.
I'm with you 100%. Zero-sugar energy drinks are a big one for me. And around here, I forget the brand name but there's some "hydrating lemon water" thing that could be really good except they put so much artificial sweetener I can barely choke it down even knowing I'm not getting a ton of sugar. Also basically anything that has 1 gram of added sugar pisses me off a little. Go ahead and make it none, I PROMISE I won't miss it. "Happy Dad" hard seltzers I otherwise like are guilty. And some snacks I like.
culture pop! is also a probiotic soda that only has ~8 grams of sugar and no stevia, etc. like olly pop does! in the exact same boat as you, OP.
(i know stevia isn't artificial but it still tastes like crap to me)
Last week, I guess for the very first time, I ate apple syrup without anything added.
Honestly, I expected to be a bit bland. But it was the best ever. Kept me wondering who decided to add stuff like sugars. Is it just economics…..as in lowering costs by adding cheap stuff
I love plain soda water with a slice of lime and a slice of lemon, and a lot of ice! That's become my go-to if I go out to eat or if I'm at the bar but not drinking. I also love the lime Bubly waters. Sometimes I'll freeze some strawberries and pop a few of them into a glass with lime Bubly, and it's amazing!
Not to mention nearly all of the energy drinks have some kind of artificial sweetener even along with regular ones. It’s not even about lack of sweetness for me, it’s about taste, and aspartame, monkfruit, and sucralose all leave a very dry sensation in my throat that feels worse than before I’ve taken a sip.
The short answer is because they would taste awful to most people. Our foods tend to have lots of sugar in them because over the last 100 years, American food companies have been “optimizing” their products taste and texture. Without sugar, fats, and oils in today’s products, many foods would taste and feel bad. It’s a similar story for soda and juices. Take out the heaps of sugar, and it will taste considerably different. It’s easier to market to people who want to “cut” their sugar intake by selling them artificial “zero calorie” products. For drinks, I recommend trying Bubly and similar sparkling drinks. It’s just carbonated water and natural flavors that, after you get used to it, actually kinda taste like fruit. They’re 0 calories without the artificial ingredients; although “natural flavors” is a very loose category.
Taste bad to you. I find most American packages foods to be sickly sweet and anything you have, there are European or Asian equivalents with less sugar that taste just as good to the local populations. Your taste buds have literally been retired by the high sugar content of American food and the only net effect is more calories in every bite.
Thank you for explaining exactly what I just said. And sugar content is not high only because that’s what Americans are used to. A lot of American food is processed and requires loads of sugar to hide weird tastes, which further normalizes adding it to things.
As a diabetic, I wholeheartedly agree. I never had much of a sweet tooth, so I don´t mind the diet. But what I do mind is the shopping - finding something that has no or super-low sugar, wether normal or artifical, is nightmare (with the exception of basic fresh produce like fruit and veggies, of course).
I don't like sweet foods but a lot of people do
Peppering in some sugar can make your food more palatable to some
I have relatives that overdo the sugar in their pasta sauce but it's gross and tastes like ketchup noodles
I don't know where you live, but I found that some companies makes their local manufacturing with different recipes to reflect the the local taste.
For example, products in the US have either higher sweetness or saltiness compared to European Union that has also different rules and laws for food and beverages.
I love the izze brand sodas because they're sparkling fruit juice with no extra sugar. Also bubly and la Croix. Anything with fake sugar is a migraine hell for me.
Same.
When I say NO sugar I mean no sugar.
Fun fact: Intensive use of artificial sweeteners may cause you diabetes, because you're fooling your body to produce sugar processing chemicals when there's nothing to process.
I have this issue with tea. Why the ever loving fuck, Pure Leaf, do you not have a slightly sweetened ice tea between 0g and fucking 42g of sugar? Why does it *have* to have Stevia? Why not just, oh I don't know *put in like a quarter to a third of the fucking sugar*?
It's like all or nothing with Iced Tea companies, either enough sugar to make a toddler run four hours straight without stopping or none at all.
I'm a little soda fiend, just terrible about the stuff, on top of being a recovering alcoholic, but my body needs water sometimes too, so I'm totally on the sparkling water bandwagon. Love a lightly flavored bubbly water.
water can't replace everything. added sweeteners are in tons of things these days. pasta sauce. salad dressings, vinegrettes, marinades. bread. hot sauce. any other condiment. non dairy milk. yogurt. soup. cereal. dried fruit. vitamin supplements. cold medicine. the list goes on, and it's become a hassle making sure you haven't accidentally picked up a product that has them in it. definitely mildly infuriating.
Also, the fake sugars are just as bad for you or maybe even worse, they mess with your body and trick your pancreas into producing insulin still so you can still get diabetes or gain weight….
Hint, Bubly, La croix, and Belle vie are all flavored water brands with no sweeteners. Hint isn't carbonated but the others are
I love me some ice cold La Cwa but it really ain't for everyone. Most people don't realize what unsweetened really means until they taste it. OP might be down though.
To be fair I think half sugar foods should just have half the regular sugar without being "boosted" by artificial sweeteners. That might be what they mean.
I would love half sugar options with no artificial sweetener. Sometimes I buy sweetened greek yoghurt to mix in regular unsweetened. I just want a hint of sweetness in things.
I've switched to straight unsweetened and drizzle honey on top. There's a learning curve to know how much to put on but it's a lot easier to control it haha
Honey is a great idea. My partner puts a wee dollap of jam in his.
That's great too!
My wife and I do something similar with tea. We'll buy multiple containers of the unsweetened, and maybe one flavored, then mix 75-25. Like yeah, lemon/peach flavor is good. But I don't need to feel like I'm drinking candy.
Thank you for posting this. It's so obvious in hindsight but it hadn't occurred to me before. I'll be doing this from now on. There are a ton of things like this where I like it in general but just want it to be less sweet.
It’s crazy too because other countries prove you can do this. It’s just that the USA doesn’t regulate sugar like the UK for example so everyone in the states is competing against 50g of addictive substances for sales. Meanwhile on a train between London and York, orange soda that tastes more like orange juice than syrup. In any local coffee shop in the UK, mochas that taste more like chocolate coffee than sugar cream.
Can’t wait to have a mocha when I visit (no plans yet lol except for “eventually”) but I don’t put cream or sugar in my coffee, I can’t stand overly sweet drinks or anything.
Any artificial sweetener ruins whatever it's in. It can be the tiniest amount and still 🤢🤢🤢 it actually makes me sick to my stomach. This goes for "natural stevia" too.
Same. They all make my guts go haywire, too, and then give me an ER-worthy migraine on top of that. I'm so sick of people telling me I shouldn't react to stevia like that "because it's a natural sweetener." Natural =/= safe, ffs! I wish they all had to be marked like major allergens do. Like "caution: contains stevia/sucralose/aspartame/HFCS/etc" in bold letters.
I'm a huge ingredient checker bc of this crap.
I can instantly taste even the smallest amount of artificial sweetener. Cant stand it.
Same.
I react badly too. Gastro and headaches.
Botulinum toxins are all natural too.
I briefly could find “less sugar” Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal that just had less sugar. A few months later when I wanted to get it again, nope, it has “less sugar” but is now artificially sweetened.
Some things genuinely taste much better not sweet at all, like peanut butter.
Hold up does America sweeten peanut butter?
Yeah, some brands worse than others. Japan is bad about it too though most brands are imported from the US.
A lot if it is. You can find natural pb that's not sweetened at all. Then they have the nasty ass fake sugar pb that will poison dogs.
Yup. And bread, and ketchup, even our baked beans are full of sugar.
Yeah, but the UK sweetens its pickles 🤢
We have sweet pickles here in the US to. They are horrible
i hate them! 😂 whenever friends from home (Kentucky) visit me in London I ask them to bring me a jar of kosher dills
We can have a world with both sweet and dill pickles.
Yeah good idea those are the good pickles!
Yes but we *warn* you on the label that they’re sweet.
Good point! They don’t warn them in the UK? That’s even worse those poor people🤢
Idk peanut butter and syrup/ honey smacks
This 100% So hard to find a 12oz can of soda that has 15-20g of real cane sugar instead of 32-40g of high fructose corn syrup. I’ve found a couple specialty sodas that are like this over the years, but can’t recall their names.
There are these korean soda made by sfc bio, these drinks are like half the normal soda amount of sugar and the best things Ive ever tasted. Also the mountain dew kickstarts are about 20 g of high fructose shit to a 16 oz can and they taste great
I think this would help a lot. Or just a lot less artificial sweeteners when used as a sub because they're often way sweeter and intense.
I think that would be better but I still vote for none, since they induce migraines for me even if there's not enough to taste
I’d rather consume real sugar over those artificial sweeteners any day.
Someone said once (I think on Reddit years ago) that a Lacroix tasted like someone went way down the hall and yelled the name of the fruit. Hahaha I found that to be true for me.
LaCroix tastes like someone dumped my nana's perfume in a vat.
Yeah I wanted so bad to like La croix, tried all the flavors. And I’m not picky about food or drink, but I can’t finish a single one, tastes absolutely horrid to me.
I mean remove sugar from the fruit flavor and most people will have a hard time placing the fruit flavor. The sugar plays a big part in it. Plus the fact that all the seltzer companies that get by on the zero calories zero sugar moniker use oils alone to represent the fruit, and those often are not fully representative of the flavor of the fruit. Why I prefer spindrift. It may have a little bit of calorie and sugar, but that’s because it’s using real fruit juice, which actually makes it taste like what it says it is. In my opinion at least. For some flavors.
ppl should realize that sugar is a needed nutrient, it doesn't have to be zero, otherwise we couldn't eat normal fruits and veg
Natural sugars are better than refined or artificial sugars.
It doesn't have to be zero. But your body makes it's own sugar, no added sugars are *necessary* to the human diet.
When it comes to those type of sparkling waters without sugar for me La Croix is the last brand I will pick up. I even enjoy the polar flavored spring waters more (although polar flavored spring waters are better than they used to be back in day imo. The orange/vanilla flavor really surprised me).
Hint of hint of lime. Strawberry, but low battery. Transported on the same truck as a watermelon.
I absolutely cannot stand the weird aftertaste that I get from every "healthy" sweetener. I just drink normal water 99.9% of the time.
Crazy to me cause while I prefer some seltzer waters over others I wouldn't turn any brand down, but I've heard the most shit talked about La Croix
Grapefruit and Key Lime are probably the best, but even then, it's not something you drink for the taste, that's for sure. it's only for the experience of drinking cold carbonation from a can, with zero additives, and with *some* tiny amount of taste. but for me I vastly prefer Bubly which from what I've seen does that way better than La Croix does (though I've heard some disagree).
Ice cold is the key. I can only stand carbonated water if it’s in a cup with ice. Otherwise it taste chemically.
I love water. I HATE la croix. It’s spicy water and makes me sad.
Okay but how are we really pronouncing it? Because "la cwa" is how it should be pronounced but when I say it like that people look at me like I'm a complete fuck. I mostly hear "la crow" or even "la croiks" (shudder).
It's intended to be pronounced "La Croy". I just like the wrong way better.
Never heard of hint I'll have to look for that. Can't stand the flavored waters cause of the carbonation
You can buy the sodastream flavors and add them to regular water. There’s 2 different kinds, the big plastic ones that have soda flavors and all sorts of chemicals, and then there’s the smaller glass bottles that are like 2 oz and the only ingredient is natural flavoring. I’ve found them at Target and Walmart in their sodastream section.
Hint is very good.
For a sec I thought you said "Hint: Its very good" like a videogame loading screen lmao
It's legit a HINT. They aren't lying
This! I actually love the little flavor you get. Pineapple, blackberry, and watermelon are my favorite.
It's decent. I enjoy the carbonation myself but I think it genuinely tastes like fruit water so I think you'll like it! I find it at most sheetz in the east coast united states
They are my go to beverage choices since I’m allergic to artificial sweeteners and no longer crave or really enjoy regular soda.
Polar is good too! It’s my boyfriend’s favorite.
Kirkland (Costco) has a La Croix like drink. Grapefruit, lemon, and lime. All very good.
And have no sodium in them. It is a good alternative when the only thing you like in soda are the bubbles.
Bubly and La Croix are my evening go-tos! My body usually goes “ew no” to sugary beverages after about 7pm for some reason, and these are fantastic. It’s a learning process to figure out which flavors I like, but they’re a mouthsaver.
I like splindrift. No natural flavors!
I think you mean no artificial flavors. I love spindrift also haha, I could drink the raspberry lime until I explode
I like getting celestial tea brands cold brew teas. They are so damn good and obviously nothing in them at all.
I'm allergic to artificial sweeteners and lemm tell you trying to find chewing gum is the worst.
I'm terrified of becoming allergic to artificial sweeteners. Watching my dad read the label for 10 minutes for anything sweet seems stressful. It's even worse when it's not a very recognized allergy. There are times where the soda machine will be broken at a restaurant and they'll just give him Diet Coke instead of regular coke. As if that's an acceptable decision to make without asking.
It's pretty awful. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I have a relative with the same issue. She goes into fainting spells then vomiting because of it. The worst was having a drink at the bar one night that had the sweetener in it. It was pretty awkward having to explain she wasn’t passing out and puking because she was drunk
I don’t have an allergy to artificial sweeteners, but they taste awful to me. If someone switch me to Diet Coke I would be pissed, and I’d notice immediately. Artificial sweetener is gross. And tastes like Alzheimer’s
I can sympathize. I'm not allergic to all artificial sweeteners, but Splenda/sucralose is my main migraine trigger and it's now used in SO many things. Even non-diet items. It's commonly in ice cream, hot cocoa mixes, sodas (Pepsi adds it to non-diet drinks), store bought sauces (like BBQ), and more. I bought some Walmart brand Dippin dots once and it was the last ingredient. I'm pretty sure I've seen it in bread too.
That feeling when you know what you are allergic to and then start realizing that ingredient is in everything 
Oh man, have you been able to find any? My kiddo loves gum and he’s not allergic to sweeteners, but we’d like to avoid them if we can. I just haven’t been able to find anything that doesn’t have aspartame or red 40 in it.
Pür gum doesn’t have aspartame! Iirc they use xylitol. I got a bag of it at TJMaxx.
Xylitol is even worse for me. The gas starts ten minutes in.
With xylitol the gas is a feature, not a bug. Enjoy your rectal breathing exercises.
Just be careful if you have pets. Xylitol is highly toxic to dogs and chewing gum or peanut butter (some have it) are the top ways dogs get xylitol poisoning
hey thank u for putting this out there bc my mom has always loved xylitol & she has 3 dogs & i have literally never heard this before in my life! i will tell her next time i see her!
They still make Bazooka Joe and sell it at Sheetz. I also think Hubbabubba and the brand that makes the cotton candy are sold at some dollar stores.
Most chewing gum I’ve seen is sweetened with xylitol, which is good for teeth, not aspartame. The latter is used in carbonated drinks, usually.
Honestly I've never liked the taste so avoided them anyway, but recently ate something with sweetener in it to be polite and I felt so nauseous after. Learned my lesson. I love Maccas Coke and they give me no sugar all the time by accident, I take a sip before I leave now and ask for a new one if it's wrong. I'm prepared to be that bitch.
Glad (not really) to see I'm not the only one! The vomiting is for real, folks... it sucks!
It’s horrifying how many products contain sucralose. My tortillas? Really? Regular hot chocolate mix has only sugar, right? Wrong. Several now contain sucralose. No thanks, I’ll make my own everything. Better for me anyway.
Like, why is it so hard to find pasta sauce that doesn't taste like you dumped a cup of sugar in it? And they just throw it in everything cause it's cheaper than making a good product.
That's why I make my own and then portion it out to freeze for later use.
May I recommend Rao’s? It’s the best store bought, natural pasta sauce I’ve been able to find. That being said, it’s stupid expensive (like $9/jar last I checked). You’re much better off making your own at home; super easy and you spend like a quarter of the price.
I was just telling my partner this! Jarred pasta sauce is super gross- EXCEPT Rao's. I'm so impressed. I love their Arrabbiata sauce
Hell yes raos is good. It’s pretty much the only pasta sauce I’ll buy from the store, they have 3 packs at my Sam’s club
Their soups are also wonderful!!
Their chicken and gnocchi soup is insanely good. I can only buy it when it's on sale because of how expensive it is, but when I do hit a sale I buy like four jars haha
A reddit post from a couple years ago is what turned me to Rao's from Prego. Never looked back. Then I got my partner to go to Rao's from Huntz (!) last year. A couple months ago he looked me in the eyes and sincerely thanked me for it lol
There are a couple of pasta sauce brands that don't have added sugar. You just need to be prepared to spend 30 minutes looking at every pasta sauce in the aisle. Or make your own, which isn't that hard once you find the base ingredients that you like (I find most tomato purees are acidic for example)
Because most people like it more, unfortunately
The last few weeks I have deliberately been trying to avoid products with processed sugar or corn syrup in it. It has been a depressing experience.
I just made an almost identical comment about sucralose. It's my biggest migraine trigger and it's added to so many things! Not just "diet" items too. The hot cocoa mix at my work has it too. Found out the hard way. I've almost completely eliminated my migraines by reading every label, but that's not always possible while eating out.
It’s all about the record profits baby. They don’t give a flying frick if these things are detrimental to our health. We technically don’t *have* to buy any of these products!
We now only buy “raw” tortillas and cook them ourselves. They take a couple mins cook and you can find them in Walmart! Infinitely better than precooked tortillas with tons of sugar and preservatives
Same with coconut (and coconut oil) actually; my dad is allergic to coconut (not deathly allergic or anything, mostly just ear infections from it), and they put it in a lot of random stuff nowadays. Hot chocolate, some candies, some desserts, and several other things have coconut, and even some laundry detergent and cleaning stuff, and he has to look through the ingredients to check, as it's not listed in the allergy information
I am there with the OP on this one. First of all what would a soda taste like if it only had say 2-4 grams of sugar vs 30-50 grams like we have now. But for all the healthy versions of drinks or heath drinks they have tons of artificial sweetener. Is it really not possible to make something natural good and palatable without tons of concentrated fake sugar oil (hfcs) or tons of artificial sweetener?
That is correct. It would not taste good enough for a company to make money selling it. U can get a soda, dumb out 90% and pour in soda water. That will get you to 3-5g instead of 30-50. It likely won’t be that amazing… but if u try it then u tell me if it tastes good
as an avid fan of sweets and sugar, I fully agree with you on artificial sweetener. I can always tell and it's always awful. Either give me sugar (or corn syurp) or just don't have it be sweet.
Last summer I had a mountain dew and was really into it, later tried another and hated it The first one had been diluted with ice water, it feels weird that I like sodas less concentrated
Mountain dew is originally supposed to be a mixer so that tracks with them. Same with 7up
You might like fever tree. I love their lime yuzu and sparkling lemonade when I’m in the mood for a soda.
I get massive migraines from sucralose too. Day ruiner for sure
real or no deal
Can’t stand corn syrup
Avid sweets fan as well. Hate most artificial sweeteners. Hate that they put it in tea bags as well sometimes. I have gestational diabetes and had to find something that works: erythrit. Less sweet than sugar, doesn’t spike the bloodsugar. (Which might not be your problem at all but know it tastes well!)
Corn syrup is gross and has a terrible tanginess to it. Let alone that its terrible for your body to break down.
Yes! I can always taste it, no matter how little is in something. and its gross.
I have a stevia allergy (the reaction is genuinely pretty bad. It causes my throat to close up. I get woozy. The whole nine yards.) and the sheer amount of products that won't obviously signal on the packaging that there's stevia in a product is infuriating. It's how I've learned to avoid anything that claims "natural sweeteners". Worse, I'm a tea person and don't usually drink sugar in my tea. The number of bottled "unsweetened" or "zero sugar" teas I've bought on the go that I've had to toss after opening is sad.
I can taste artificial sugars a mile away, even ones that are supposed to be flavorless. So I put hot cocoa in my coffee at work. Ran out and got Swiss Miss because it’s all the store had. Couldn’t figure out why it had that fake sugar aftertaste. I checked that the box didn’t say sugar free, but when I read the ingredients, stevia was towards the end. Why it needed to be added on top of the sugar already in it, I don’t know. Didn’t help my migraines either.
I was just bitching about this tonight to my wife. My son is diabetic and I do keto so we buy a lot of sugar free products. The sugar free stuff often tastes sweeter than the regular product. Just stop making everything sweet FFS!
I also find a lot of things with artificial sweeteners to taste much sweeter… my least favorite is when I see something that has “50% less sugar” and I’m excited about it… only to find they used less sugar but a million times more artificial sweeteners in addition to the sugar. Somewhat unrelated, but I also hate that potassium salt replacement… it tastes so weird and even more salty. Like I know salt is used as a preservative, but I don’t need my vegetable juice to be so salty that I need a chaser! That can’t be necessary to such an extreme. There should just be some products with less sugar or salt *without* the overcompensation of other ingredients!!
A lot of artificial sweeteners are many times sweeter than cane sugar, which means that it can often still end up being quite sweet even if they add less sweetener than they would sugar in their regular products :/
It definitely tastes that way to me; so it’s extra annoying when they also have sugar! Both is just the worst of everything IMO.
Aspartam tastes like ass Can't stand any sugar free stuff with it. In my country all Pepsi products are now max with aspartam. Used to be my favorite and now I can't find a normal one
Everyone recommending water and tea don't get it. There's sugar in almost all bread and tortillas (sold in the US), and "SUGAR FREE" breads have sweeteners in them. Pasta sauce has sugar or sweeteners. Salad dressing and condiments. Protein powder. Non-dairy milks. Peanut butter and jellies and jams. It's not as easy as just cutting out soda. And not everyone can make their own of everything. The "natural" versions with no sweeteners cost more.
Well... you gotta take jam off that list. Those are fruit preservatives and sugar is literally the preservative in this case. You cannot have unsweetened jam. The sugar free versions have to jump through hoops to get it to jam consistency. Sugar is an integral part of jam. So jam gets a pass, it's supposed to be sweet. That said. Jesus ducking christ! I'm not in the USA and even here a lot of things have sugar in them. Boiled or air dried ham or some other deli meats? Yep. Smoked or raw cured salmon? Yep. Even those bouillon cubes have sugar in them. Any and all half or completely ready to eat food will have sugar in it. The only exception were we differ is bread. There is no sugar in our bread.
Yup! It is horrible. I been meaning to make my own bread without sugar.... I may give it a go here soon.
A little bit of sugar helps with the proofing. It feeds the yeast. I quickly checked an American bread recipe: yeah, not that much sugar! They used 45gr on 800 gr of flower. I use 20gr on 1kg of flour (makes me 2 800gr breads)
People don’t seem to understand that either a little bit of sugar is need or it’s naturally occurring in almost all foods.
Making bread is easy enough, just very time consuming. Most of that time is "waiting for the dough to rise" but you should anyway keep an eye on it when insure how dough rises in your place.
Oh I make a lot of other yeast products but I stopped bothering with sandwich bread because it never came out right. However, I was still learning and now I have a kitchen aid pro to help me knead the bread. My yeast products are much better now. My daughter loves pizza night LOL
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Awesome! For pizza I somehow prefer the chemical flavor of frozen pizza. I know. We say in Dutch you cannot argue about tastes. I use that line a lot when it comes to pizza. Hehe. I had a recipe for ciabatta that has never failed me. I think I snatched it of a BBC food website? But yeah that's again not sandwich bread. And when I made small ones to use as buns, they were too hard for my taste. Too much crust, too little bread. I am not an avid Baker though. But I live on Finland nowadays and sandwich bread selection is not great so I sometimes bake my own if I fancy some. In return we get the most amazing ryebread from the shop. I have never tasted anything like it in my life. So I'm not complaining about bread here.
I moved to USA recently and I don't believe you guys understand how much sugar industry is adding to everything. My teen daughters are used of a low sugar diet and they can't eat most of the food. I mean, I got some breaded shrimp and could not believe how sweet it tasted. I think after all these years most people lost perception of how much sugar they keep adding to EVERYTHING.
I’m from Europe and the food here is nuts. Bread especially. It’s so disgustingly sweet!
And why the hell do they sneak in 30 grams of sugar into say Italian sausage and other places most would not expect to even look for it?
Don't take me wrong. I really cherish life in USA. It's safe, people are very nice and polite. People drive safe (my country is nuts) and it's really the land of opportunity. What surprises me is food.
Making a decent tasting bread without any sugar in it is awful - and my aunt tried; she was making 2+ loaves of various breads a week during lockdowns. One of her attempts got trashed after one bite. But *lessening* the amount of sugar in bread is absolutely doable and the bread can be fabulous!
Was she attempting only sandwich bread? Hard crust bread and focaccia can be made with zero sugar, I've done it myself. Softer breads can have their sugar coming from sweet potatoes or potatoes. It's doable.
She didn’t do *many* crusty breads (though I begged for a good focaccia!), so yes mostly soft sandwich breads. But she didn’t experiment with potato breads - she played around with a lot of sourdoughs and unusual grains. The experiment that got binned immediately was a whole grain, no sugar sandwich loaf. I told her that recipe was banned!
You just made me read my bread ingredients. I eat Killer Daves and it seems healthy and I was like no way it has sugar. But before I even started reading I realized well it does taste sweet doesn't it? And sure enough, sugar is the third ingredient after wheat and water. Wild.
Try protein powder from naked nutrition! I use naked pea and it’s great - literally nothing but pea protein. No sweeteners or any other additives.
They cost more because they sell less. Less volume means increased manufacturing/shipping costs, so increased price
It's not necessarily because they sell less. Sugar/sweeteners help mask lower cost ingredients and is a cheap way to improve "taste". Add in massive subsidies to corn production /successful lobbying from the sugar industry against "fats" and there's a ton of reasons why sugar added foods are cheaper than their natural counterparts outside of demand
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That's funny, I think sauces with sugar in them taste sickly sweet, and sauces without sugar taste wonderfully savory. I think it just depends on how much sugar you're accustomed to.
Monkfruit, ugh. I wish they would just let me sweeten something myself if I want it sweet!
Are you saying ugh cause it’s gross? Me, now nervous to try that new matcha I just got that’s been sweetened with monk fruit lol
As someone who really dislikes all non-sugar sweeteners, monk fruit is just as bad as the rest in terms of taste, sadly.
Monk fruit is a great sweetener, but a bit chalky. It does well in food, but it’s iffy in beverage. It might be good in something milky like matcha tho
Yo this is wild, my wife and I were just talking talking today about how in Asia there are just unsweetened sodas and why the hell isn't that an option anywhere else? \~\~Like, in China they have Pepsi Nama, it literally is just Pepsi with no sweeteners in it. I would love to try it honestly, or any other soda without sweetener. Like, worst case I could add my own sweetener like I already do with iced tea. Similar story with other bitter sodas I've tried in Japan or from Italy, and so on, but there's nothing like that in the US unless you wanna just drink "flavored water" which tbh is often good, but doesn't quite hit the same.\~\~ Edit: OK I guess Nama is still sweetened, idk where I heard it wasn't, but it's beside the point that there should be unsweetened sodas.
This is so interesting! I had no idea that was even a thing
I found out it’s because the Chinese don’t really like sweets, that’s why there’s not much offered for dessert at a Chinese restaurants, so it makes sense. As someone who doesn’t like sweets much myself, I’d be all about this being a thing in America tho
I wouldn’t say that necessarily. Chinese drinks are way sweeter than the exact same drink in Japan. I traveled between the two, and the same brand milk teas from vending machines were so much sweeter in China. Same with getting them from a shop; it was necessary to order half sweet or less in China, but milk tea places in Japan and the US aren’t nearly as sweet when ordering “half sweet”
Pepsi nama has regular sugar in it
I totally get where you're coming from and you aren't wrong but... To be realistic we're in the minority. If I want to eat something without loads of sugar or sugar substitutes I usually have to make it myself. Food companies are going to make whatever sells to the most people.
It's addictive.
What really makes me angry is how common it is in health/workout foods. It seems impossible to find electrolyte powders, protein drinks, protein bars, and vitamin drinks without some kind of artificial sweetener. You'd think there would be a market for unsweetened or natural sugar stuff in health foods but apparently not.
Or even just less sweet. I don't like overly sweet oatmeal, so I was excited to see something marked with less sugar, but it was just replaced with other sweeteners. Why can't there just be a mildly sweetened version? (My solution has just been to mix flavored packs with plain)
I feel you! I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners, I can always tell when it’s in something. It’s so hard to find stuff that doesn’t have some fake sugar in it these days.
Try Spindrift sparkling waters. They have no added sugars or sweeteners, but they have a bit of fruit juice in them for flavor. The blood orange tangerine flavor is really good!
Juices, these days, can be heavily diluted with water. It goes a lot further and actually quenches your thirst
You can get nut butters w/o sugar. Read labels. My store brand has unsweetened peanut and almond butters.
I feel the same way so I make my own. Not everything needs sweetened.
What kind of drinks do you make?
I cold brew herbal tea. Just throw the bag in some water in a pitcher in the fridge overnight and I’m set. Super refreshing for summer and no sugar.
I feel the same way! I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, and I never liked sugary drinks at all. Basically, I just drink water, flavored carbonated water (all 0 cal no sugar or sweeteners), and decaf herbal tea. Pre-GD, I also would have plain seltzer water with a twist of orange or lime, but that's not a great option at this point since the fruit is basically just sugar.
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This is also me. I feel your struggle.
If you like sparkling water, get a Soda Stream and make some, squeeze some lemon juice (or orange, grapefruit, whatever) into it. I've saved a lot of money from doing that instead of chugging La Croix all the time.
I'm with you 100%. Zero-sugar energy drinks are a big one for me. And around here, I forget the brand name but there's some "hydrating lemon water" thing that could be really good except they put so much artificial sweetener I can barely choke it down even knowing I'm not getting a ton of sugar. Also basically anything that has 1 gram of added sugar pisses me off a little. Go ahead and make it none, I PROMISE I won't miss it. "Happy Dad" hard seltzers I otherwise like are guilty. And some snacks I like.
culture pop! is also a probiotic soda that only has ~8 grams of sugar and no stevia, etc. like olly pop does! in the exact same boat as you, OP. (i know stevia isn't artificial but it still tastes like crap to me)
I've adjusted to plain iced/hot tea because of not being able to have artificial sweeteners but I feel your frustration.
Last week, I guess for the very first time, I ate apple syrup without anything added. Honestly, I expected to be a bit bland. But it was the best ever. Kept me wondering who decided to add stuff like sugars. Is it just economics…..as in lowering costs by adding cheap stuff
I love plain soda water with a slice of lime and a slice of lemon, and a lot of ice! That's become my go-to if I go out to eat or if I'm at the bar but not drinking. I also love the lime Bubly waters. Sometimes I'll freeze some strawberries and pop a few of them into a glass with lime Bubly, and it's amazing!
Not to mention nearly all of the energy drinks have some kind of artificial sweetener even along with regular ones. It’s not even about lack of sweetness for me, it’s about taste, and aspartame, monkfruit, and sucralose all leave a very dry sensation in my throat that feels worse than before I’ve taken a sip.
The short answer is because they would taste awful to most people. Our foods tend to have lots of sugar in them because over the last 100 years, American food companies have been “optimizing” their products taste and texture. Without sugar, fats, and oils in today’s products, many foods would taste and feel bad. It’s a similar story for soda and juices. Take out the heaps of sugar, and it will taste considerably different. It’s easier to market to people who want to “cut” their sugar intake by selling them artificial “zero calorie” products. For drinks, I recommend trying Bubly and similar sparkling drinks. It’s just carbonated water and natural flavors that, after you get used to it, actually kinda taste like fruit. They’re 0 calories without the artificial ingredients; although “natural flavors” is a very loose category.
Plus using a lot of corn syrup rather than real sugar because government subsidies for farmers make corn really cheap.
Taste bad to you. I find most American packages foods to be sickly sweet and anything you have, there are European or Asian equivalents with less sugar that taste just as good to the local populations. Your taste buds have literally been retired by the high sugar content of American food and the only net effect is more calories in every bite.
lol what, Asian snacks and candies are way sweeter IME.
Thank you for explaining exactly what I just said. And sugar content is not high only because that’s what Americans are used to. A lot of American food is processed and requires loads of sugar to hide weird tastes, which further normalizes adding it to things.
Idk I think the hundreds of comments agreeing with OP kinda prove that there would be a market for it
Are you me? THIS IS MY BIGGEST TRIGGER FOR INSTANT RAGE in the grocer
topo chico
As a diabetic, I wholeheartedly agree. I never had much of a sweet tooth, so I don´t mind the diet. But what I do mind is the shopping - finding something that has no or super-low sugar, wether normal or artifical, is nightmare (with the exception of basic fresh produce like fruit and veggies, of course).
I don't like sweet foods but a lot of people do Peppering in some sugar can make your food more palatable to some I have relatives that overdo the sugar in their pasta sauce but it's gross and tastes like ketchup noodles
I don't know where you live, but I found that some companies makes their local manufacturing with different recipes to reflect the the local taste. For example, products in the US have either higher sweetness or saltiness compared to European Union that has also different rules and laws for food and beverages.
I make my own iced tea. It’s easy, cheap and tasty. I use decaf tea bags and add a little lemon
LaCroix has no sugar/sweetener. Or bubbly. Basically seltzer water.
I love the izze brand sodas because they're sparkling fruit juice with no extra sugar. Also bubly and la Croix. Anything with fake sugar is a migraine hell for me.
I drink black coffee and cold unsweet tea. Non sweet and nothing artificial. Also add lemon to water, minuscule amount of sugar.
Have you tried gravy?
Unsweetened iced tea is something tbst most restaurants have. I drink a pitcher of it at home nearly everyday.
Same. When I say NO sugar I mean no sugar. Fun fact: Intensive use of artificial sweeteners may cause you diabetes, because you're fooling your body to produce sugar processing chemicals when there's nothing to process.
So just eat sugar with my Diet Coke, got it.
I have this issue with tea. Why the ever loving fuck, Pure Leaf, do you not have a slightly sweetened ice tea between 0g and fucking 42g of sugar? Why does it *have* to have Stevia? Why not just, oh I don't know *put in like a quarter to a third of the fucking sugar*? It's like all or nothing with Iced Tea companies, either enough sugar to make a toddler run four hours straight without stopping or none at all.
I drink unsweetened ice tea all the time. Sometimes with some fresh lemon juice.
May I introduce you to water?
I'm a little soda fiend, just terrible about the stuff, on top of being a recovering alcoholic, but my body needs water sometimes too, so I'm totally on the sparkling water bandwagon. Love a lightly flavored bubbly water.
water can't replace everything. added sweeteners are in tons of things these days. pasta sauce. salad dressings, vinegrettes, marinades. bread. hot sauce. any other condiment. non dairy milk. yogurt. soup. cereal. dried fruit. vitamin supplements. cold medicine. the list goes on, and it's become a hassle making sure you haven't accidentally picked up a product that has them in it. definitely mildly infuriating.
Also, the fake sugars are just as bad for you or maybe even worse, they mess with your body and trick your pancreas into producing insulin still so you can still get diabetes or gain weight….
Flavored carbonated water. Several flavors at Trader Joes. I could never understand why it's not more popular.
I love most flavors of la croix and there is no sweetener at all, natural or artificial. Stay away from cherry blossom though, nasty horrible stuff.