Irn-Bru fans are seriously serious

Naveed Sattar, professor of Cardiology and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow, remembers growing up without fear of overdoing the sugar. UK obesity levels were 4%-7% in the 1980s when Sattar was a kid helping in his father’s corner shop. He often watched customers stock up on four litres of Irn-Bru a day... One Irn-Bru addict at the cardiovascular clinic Sattar runs was referred due to high blood fat levels and a recent heart attack. He regularly drank six litres a day, Sattar says, and even got up in the night for a sip. He lost eight kilos after Sattar treated him, and began enjoying proper food for the first time in years.

...Among its long list of solutions was the levy on sugary drinks. Teenagers in England, the biggest consumers of such drinks in Europe, could max out their recommended daily intake of sugar with a single 330 millilitre (ml) can. The time had come to tackle one of the underlying sources of the problem.

People might have expected drinks companies to erupt in outrage at the announcement and for the Treasury to sit in eager anticipation of a funding boost. But it was just the opposite. It was almost as if they had seen it coming. Soft drink manufacturers rapidly began looking at ways to reformulate their products around the new guidelines, often swapping sugar for artificial sweeteners. Supermarkets Tesco, Asda and drinks companies Fanta, Ribena, Britvic and Lucozade slashed the sugar content in their drinks, some by half or more.

Even with thousands of other sugary foods at their disposal, the more outspoken Irn-Bru fans think the tax has gone too far. Irn-Bru declined to comment when approached by BBC Capital. Allen followed up his cone stunt with a petition aimed at parent company AG Barr that received more than 50,000 signatures. Another man came up with his own Irn-Bru-flavoured concoction that he claims tastes just like the original. Others stockpiled the full-sugar version and now sell it illegally online.

Allen says he drinks four cans a week, which would cost him about £124 ($161) annually if he purchased each 300ml can individually. Had the makers refused to alter their recipe and passed the tax to Allen, his annual spend would have risen to about £140 ($182). “I would have rather paid the tax,” he says. “It’s brand-suicide and it’s a betrayal of the customers who have made it what it is.”

Few can match Allen’s passion, but he’s not alone. According to Kiti Soininen, head of food, drink and foodservice research at Mintel, 64% of people say they drink the same amount they did a year ago and 10% say they drink more. The extra-hot summer weather likely affected consumption a bit, Soininen says, but it’s an indicator that the UK has a long way to go.

I wonder, if they'd just paid the tax at first and then gradually reduced the sugar content, would anyone really notice ? A friend of mine swears that Cadbury's Creme Eggs taste much worse than they used to but I can't tell the difference.

(I've tried the American version of Cadbury's chocolate though, and that's genuinely disgusting)
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20181113-bittersweet---whos-benefitting-from-the-sugar-tax