> You also talk about taxes as being the same without acknowledging the quantity of tax.
I used Wikipedia [1] as a source for the sugar tax and this [2] as a source for alcohol.
According to that, its 18p per litre for a sugary drink above 8g per 100ml (like the Coke Classic I used for the example), and 19p per litre for a beer between 2.8 and 7.5 % ABV. Let's call the one penny a rounding error. Cigarettes can't really be compared, because you can't compare apples to apples quantity-wise.
> Why are you ignoring other changes in ingredients in your story?
Because I don't have savant-level memory and don't remember the entire ingredients list of treats I liked 10 years ago, and the reduced sugar levels were the thing that jumped out at me.
How much research do you expect someone to do, to throw out a quick opinion on something? If you're going to set the bar that high, and are then going to attack an argument on the grounds of "not enough research" without even presenting a counter-argument, you're not really creating an atmosphere that's very conducive to friendly conversation.
So, your way of forming your belief was to Google for "why do snacks taste different?" and then believe the first result that came up, which was a weird theory about penny-pinching big sugar megacorps. You then further perpetuated that theory by restating it, without giving your source.
You also threw in the statement "And this is coming from the US one of the sugar capitals" as if that made the weird theory any more credible. The fact that I had been discussing sugary drinks in the UK should make it more questionable whether anything that's happening in the US is even relevant to the discussion.
And my way of forming my belief was to attribute the difference in taste to the blinding obvious, namely that they've replaced the source of sweetness in a drink that's supposed to taste sweet as evidenced by the ingredients list on that particular drink's packaging.
Independent thought can sometimes be correct, and total bullshit can often be stated in a way as to include numbers and references.
Linguist oddity. Sweets is never used to refer to a drink in the US so your statements about "the war on sugar" appeared to apply to non-drinks.
If talking about non-drinks a tax on sugar in drinks is always not the answer. I didn't know why you made the leap and missed evaluating your phrasing to see why the expansion of complaint occurred.
I guess I assumed you were following the original post which was talking about sugar in general.
Honestly your independent thought was "I don't like Pepsi Max as much as a different drink" without listing the other drink or mentioning whether the store even offered alternatives.
Fundamentally I saw "I ordered a cola and didn't like that I got a low sugar one by default"
You then expanded on that independent thought to imply a lot of things that are not in fact dependant on that independent thought.
Remember you said "sugar drink = cigarettes" from a taxing standpoint
I used Wikipedia [1] as a source for the sugar tax and this [2] as a source for alcohol.
According to that, its 18p per litre for a sugary drink above 8g per 100ml (like the Coke Classic I used for the example), and 19p per litre for a beer between 2.8 and 7.5 % ABV. Let's call the one penny a rounding error. Cigarettes can't really be compared, because you can't compare apples to apples quantity-wise.
> Why are you ignoring other changes in ingredients in your story?
Because I don't have savant-level memory and don't remember the entire ingredients list of treats I liked 10 years ago, and the reduced sugar levels were the thing that jumped out at me.
How much research do you expect someone to do, to throw out a quick opinion on something? If you're going to set the bar that high, and are then going to attack an argument on the grounds of "not enough research" without even presenting a counter-argument, you're not really creating an atmosphere that's very conducive to friendly conversation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#United_Kingdo... [2] https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/alcohol-tobacco