Jocks in shock as Irn-Bru set to slash sugar and girder content Angry Scots are protesting against plans to slash the sugar content of their beloved national soft drink Irn-Bru and folk have begun stockpiling the beverage said to be a hangover cure. As of this month, Irn-Bru will be made with 50 per cent less sugar. Currently a can of has just under 140 calories, which will reduced to 65 …
I don't think you are supposed to drink it when you are sober. It requires a balanced state of ongoing inebriation, recovery from a post-pub dinner of curried haggis and chips plus deep-fried Mars bar. Only then can you really appreciate it's potency.
For everyone else, it is made from the sweetness of Scottish wild thistles, combined with a pinch of rust from the Forth bridge and the tears of England supporters who have just endured another thrashing at Murrayfield.
@macjules. Oooooh! fighting talk. Let's see. The Six Nations is coming up.
Actually, Scotland are in great shape and I'm always torn when the Calcutta Cup kicks off. English born, some residency and education in Dumblane and Leith. PP
PS: Post WW2 England won 47 ish Scotland 16. 8 Drawn.
@AC
Never heard of it.
They used to have good TV adverts. Good enough to make you try it once. Not good enough, in my mind, to make me drink the stuff a second time (too much vanilla in it for my taste).
See, for example, this classic or this older advert. Or this more recent one (a bit close to the bone for some people).
"Good enough to make you try it once. Not good enough, in my mind, to make me drink the stuff a second time (too much vanilla in it for my taste)."
I've had a couple of cans (while in the U.S.!), and it was okay. To me it seemed to taste like a variant of cream soda, and if I liked cream soda more I might have had more.
Come to think of it, it did seem overly sweet, so reducing the sugar content might be a good idea, although cutting it in half seems a little drastic. On the other hand, I was also sober at the time.
May I introduce you to the Soda-Pop then John? Take a half pint glass, add a measure of Tia Maria, a measure of Cointreau and a measure of Vodka. Top up with Dent Special Lemonade* and it tastes just like a cream soda. It gets you drunk from the feet up, because you feel fine until you try to stand up after the third one, but I've never yet had a hangover with it.
*It's toxic waste yellow and fizzy. Other brands of Lemonade do not work. Picture of said lemonade: https://goo.gl/images/gHcYC4
I like it and wishing a cold caffeine hit I will choose it instead of a cola. However I have not consumed a sugar laden soft drink in many years and cannot taste Aspartame so I'm a Scot who is not scunnered by this. So long as they don't touch the recipe for the diet version. Then It's taps aff and face paint on, pal.
Just be very careful not to spill it on the soft furnishings, it stains. Our lounge room carpet is orangey pink. I strongly suspect this is why.
I also applaud Barrs though I strongly suspect they are motivated more about their price point in advance of the sugar tax than any thought for the health of their consumers.
The Biological reality is that sugar is a non necessary foodstuff. Outside of insulin dependent diabetics who get things wrong and the latter stages of marathons and the like (NOT halfs or anything shorter) it has no place in our diets. Alternatives are available. Soft drink consumption is not compulsory.
> The Biological reality is that sugar is a non necessary foodstuff. Outside of insulin dependent diabetics who get things wrong and the latter stages of marathons and the like (NOT halfs or anything shorter)
That (well, mountain running & mountaineering) is exactly what I stock my Bru for. Living outside Bighty it is not exactly easy to come by so I use it as a little reward after the first three hours (and after winter training runs), and that is PRECISELY because of the sugar.
Except that now, in all their wisdom, governments are finding it fashionable to slap a tax on the sort of stuff that we endurance athletes quite legitimately use. May as well just switch to amphetamines, at least they're not taxed. :(
And about as equally legal, the way things are going.
People said the same thing about Lucozade, but they still haven't done it.
It started as a suggestion, then it was a voluntary thing, and now it's 'if you don't drop most of the sugar from your sugary drink, you'll be paying an extra tax per 100ml'.
Because according to some people*, sugar is the new tobacco.
Steven R
*neo-puritan fuckwits
"It'll be fun when the government eventually realise artificial sweeter is linked to dementia...."
Thankfully artificial sweetners have never been fingered as a cause in the increase of diabetes cases...oh wait...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329872-600-artificial-sweeteners-linked-to-glucose-intolerance/
some godawful artificial sweetener
What - like xylitol? (Oooh - it's an 'ol', it must be artificial and really, really bad for you[1]!).
First made from boiling down birch bark when the Scandanavians couldn't get sugar during WW2.
[1] Well - it is bad for you if you are a dog. In humans it causes virtually no insulin-response. In canines, it produces a very large insulin response - enough to send the dog into a fatal diabetic coma. Which is why we don't use it any more..
Aspartame... that stuff tastes fucking revolting, and instantly gives me belly ache/explosive shits. Why can't they just REDUCE the amount of sugar, why do they need to add that shite to it.
I stopped drinking Lucozade for it, Aspartame should be saved for 'diet' / 'light' drinks. Oasis, Lilt, Dr Pepper, they all have aspartame in now instead of sugar, I am running out of soft drinks to purchase on the rare occasion I do actually fancy one, is nothing sacred!?
Total energy content matters, and there is evidence accumulating on the bad effects of a high-carb, low-fat, diet. There's a clear correlation, and there has been some pretty smart testing done to tease out the direction of causality. There are a lot of diet fads which go to extremes, based on slight evidence, and they go bad. The big change I have seen is the rise of "energy" drinks, and Irn-Bru might just be exotic enough to sell for some of the same reasons. A sugar cut isn't a bad thing, but whenever somebody goes for something obvious and simple, I suspect they are wrong.
I don't know why people have this idea that Irn-Bru is unknown in England. Maybe they live so far south that they get their info from the French.
"I don't know why people have this idea that Irn-Bru is unknown in England. Maybe they live so far south that they get their info from the French."
Yep, we always had access to Irn Bru right back from being a kid 50 years ago. Then again, Newcastle is further North than some parts of Scotland.
"People said the same thing about Lucozade, but they still haven't done it."
Lucozade are able to rely on the "but we're a sports drink" excuse ... that's why when fizzy drinks were banned from schools by son's school was still able to have a lucozade vending machine to help everyone "rebuiild their energy levels" after sports (though , of course, most sales would be in break and at lunchtime)
> Lucozade are able to rely on the "but we're a sports drink" excuse
And so is Irn Bru, Coke, Red Bull (beurgh!) and pretty much anything with lots of sugar and caffeine. The difference being you pay half the price at the cost of having to shake the gas off before you drink it.
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
It started as a suggestion, then it was a voluntary thing, and now it's 'if you don't drop most of the sugar from your sugary drink, you'll be paying an extra tax per 100ml'.
Typical strategy, used on smokes, alcohol* in the last twenty years. Surprised we're not on the same on salt, transfats,
* probably also on corporal punishment and seatbelts too.
We'll be touching our toes at the behest of barely sane middle-aged 'battle-axes' every morning before we know it.**
** Yes, another 1984 reference.
In most tribal cultures, what is'nt forbidden is mandatory. We're almost full circle in what isn't mandatory is taxed to buggery or outlawed.
Still, I look forward to sugar speakeasys, a vibrant gang culture, and lots of new urban myths that will keep hollywood in sort of new material for the forty years after the madness is finally put to a stop.
"Surprised we're not on the same on salt,"
We are. There are already Govt. threats in place over the salt levels in food. I find when eating out I need to add salt. Same when cooking. I need to add salt when using some pre-made ingredients when in the past I'd not have done. Tinned beans (of all types, not just baked beans) tinned tomatoes etc. all seem to have very low salt levels. Even OXO cubes seem to lack any salt nowadays.
Can't the 'traditionalists' just add a teaspoon of sugar to it when they open it? I suspect that 'Irn-Bru Classic' will be on sale in the summer.
As an eight-year-old I tried this with a bottle of diet cola fresh from the soda stream at a friend's house after school (the regular Cola syrup had run out and the diet stuff tasted even worse in the days before Aspartame (which is bad enough). His mum was not happy with the results. Nucleation was not my friend that day
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
