Pop Culture podcast: The lowdown on sugar – 5 February 2024
5:33PM Feb 4, 2024
Speakers:
Kat Brown
Helen O'Hara
Keywords:
sugar
drink
non alcoholic
taste
wine
alcohol
soft drinks
products
good
work
podcast
talking
crisps
helen
artificial sweeteners
people
industry
week
great
sounds
Welcome to pop culture the podcast that brings soft drinks to the top of the menu. I'm Helen O'Hara, film journalist, author and lifelong teetotaller, non
Kat brown journalist and newly published author, Helen. Like to thank me. Other people. Oh, and I'd like to thank you, Helen, because you came in pink and orange to match my special suit.
I mean, you told us what colours you were going to be in cat. So it was always going to happen. But yes, just to catch people up cats book. It's not a bloody trend was published yesterday as we record this on February 1, and we had a fantastic book launch party last night, I drank Cinderella all night, which is always a good time. And it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And you had a fantastic suit, which was not just pink and orange was it it was also the metaphor
that was metaphor. It was beautiful, made of silk, one of my neighbours, not literally physically but in the same place that I live is the designer shoni Wilkinson, he does loads of stuff for stage for screen. And she also does does fashion sort of downs it a bit. But she asked if I'd be interested in collaborating on a project by which I mean, I will see that's the extent of my collaboration, bit inspired by ADHD. So obviously, that's the subject of the book. And she was really interested in how she could perhaps use details or frayed hems, or different things to sort of bring that to life and a project that she has called ADH design, which has not yet wore it last night and just felt a million dollars. Everybody that came up to sort of have a look at it and everything just adored it too. So it was just really, really wonderful to look $2 million. Also just a lot of art, darling. Love it. Love that for me. Yeah, it
was it was great. And what were you drinking, you had a fabulous mug and you were drinking out of it.
My lovely friend Helen Whitaker, who is the author of several really excellent novels gave me this gorgeous mug that she had got from Etsy, which said published author, and it had the date of the book's release on it and it was just so lovely. So I drank out of that all night I was drinking beavertown Laser crush alcohol free IPA, which is a really nice light but comfy beer that was just perfect for last night and like you with ginger ale or I could just sip away on them. And that was fab the thing that we also had that was not drinks related or suit related but was bloody amazing was you and a bunch of our friends club together and got Amy Richards who's Amy's bakes on Instagram, you can see some pictures of that on ours as well to make a cake of the book which was the most amazing thing that I've ever seen and eaten. I was very lucky that there was a little bit of leftover with the result that I had some for breakfast this morning. Quite an interview with The Times with a very pink tongue. That is as it should be blue tongue blue tongue as it should not be exactly. I'm very tired. This is all very silly. No, it was lovely party and lovely to launch it and very grateful to backstory and Balam partly that just having a really nice soft drink selection.
They really did. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful place and lots of cheese. Also, you know, you don't have to have wine and cheese, you can have soft drinks and cheese. There's no law, they can't stop you.
For the last two or three weeks I keep waking up at one o'clock in the morning for two or three hours and for some reason earlier this week, I was fixated on one Earth snack so you could serve in a bookshop without like ruining all the books and then like the night before I just ended up absolutely fixating on cheese so sort of went to the shops and came back armed with cheese straws crisps and then what I can only describe as a small mountain cave of very mature shadow, which I chopped up into chunks. Thank God everybody bought into it and they ate the surprisingly large amount of cheese.
Yes, but that was me mostly. Yes. Also for your service Hello here I'm just here to help also you had something I know this is kind of peripheral to soft drinks, but also I feel like it's relevant and that is you had very good crisps they weren't just any crisps they were very very nice grapes. And one of the things that was nice about them and if you're listening to this and you work in food development, please please pay attention right now. One of the things that was great was they were the kind of crisps where lots of them are folded over and it has long been my contention that folded over crisps taste better than two Chris piled on top of each other. I don't know why but they do. The best crisps are folded over crisps and I don't know why no one makes them that way. But the ones you had last night were heavy on the folded crisps and I was just in hog heaven
I actually went to different shops specifically to buy the crisps that is because it is my opinion my humble opinion that the coop does the greatest crisps I was very restrained. I did not buy the salt and vinegar which again are the best Salt and Vinegar crisps in creation partly because they are also the most violent crisps that my husband tells me that not everybody loves having their mouth like brutally assaulted assaulted by Salt and Vinegar so I just went for ready salted.
I mean as ready salted goes it was delicious. So So yes, we had a lovely time and your book is off to a fantastic start. It has already been reprinted. The demand is high you were on proper Amazon charts like in the hundreds, not the 1000s. That's a big deal. So, you know, big, big times I
felt very excited when I was looking at the charts at three o'clock this morning, whilst despite the fact that this book is now launched, I apparently still cannot sleep. So really looking forward to seeing what insane obsession I get during my two hours of wakefulness tonight,
that used to be a really common thing, apparently, in the sort of 1617 century apparently, everyone just woke up in the middle of the night. And they just leaned into it and just sat up and chatted
that, honestly, that is something that I've really had to do, I had, I slept really badly when I was younger anyway, probably for anxiety. And I just didn't get to sleep for hours and all the way through university. And one of my friends told me something a few years ago, which I've now now just means that when I do have that wakefulness or I can't get back to sleep, I just don't stress about it so much, which is half of the horror of insomnia. And that is just whether you're asleep or not just resting is still good for you. And literally, I might be looking at the news on my phone whilst I'm doing it. Not super restful. It's not super restful. But honestly, by that point, I've done my close your eyes and tried to get back to sleep. And then I'm like, I'm just bored. I'm just going to read until I get tired again. But yeah, just lying there. And just knowing that recharging and resting is still happening is good. Still not as good as a really good night's sleep. But I hold great hopes that eventually I will become too tired not to sleep through the
night. Has that changed since giving up drink? Yeah, massively, right. That sounds
ridiculous to say I'm now no longer scared of bedtime. Right? When I was drinking. And to be honest, before I was drinking, I found I think they also just before I was treated before I had a lot of therapy and understood what on earth was going on with my brain, I found the dark hours really upsetting, like really panic inducing everything. I suppose it's like cliche, everything seems worse at night. And again, don't make any big decisions at night. You know, don't listen to what your brain is necessarily telling you at light. I think the only time that I sort of managed to come to some kind of understanding with nighttime hours was at university, and my final year when I was just like, oh 4am Still not sleep better write an essay. So at least that was a fairly efficient way of getting things done. And
at least in university, if it is for me, somebody's probably up anyway. I mean, it's not quite as as alienating and as lonely as I think. Absolutely. But I'm not eradicated. Even
during this weird period of book stress, insomnia, the feeling is completely different to when I would wake up in the middle of the night because all of the sugar from the booze had just suddenly gone. Hello, where I'm not waking up in my head is turning circles or anything like that. There are just periods when people have crap sleep, but it would just be I can't even imagine how horrendous it would have been if I had, I can't even really imagine what the party would have been like, if I'd been drinking, I probably would have insisted that we all went out to several bars afterwards. And given that this was in suburban South London,
whereas the messages in our friend group afterwards were like it was only a 15 minute walk home. This was fabulous. Which maybe says a lot about how old and boring we are. But I like to think it just means we're managing our time. Well, I feel
it's a very good life work balance when you go to a party and then you're in your pyjamas. 15 minutes after leaving the party. That was by 9:20pm Everybody, you really can have
it all. Well, it was not the only party I went to this week actually told me more not to show off. But I went to my six year old nephew's birthday party at a soft play of the season. It really was for all of his friends. Certainly it was an interesting experience for me just because I haven't really done that soft play party before when I was younger. We did have birthdays in leisure centres but certainly in Northern Ireland at that time. We didn't have the big soft plays that they do now these gigantic three storey tall Wonderland so envious of things to climb over and fold on and all the rest was it like funhouse had come to life but better, pretty much and the volume was such that my extremely talkative three and a half year old niece at one point had to take a timeout and go to a different room because she said it was just too noisy because everyone was having such a blast. And of course that's only the parents I mean, the kids were quiet as Quiet quiet as mice. It was an insight into that tiny world of younger people there were a lot of fruit shoots in evidence there were a lot of refillable water bottles with cartoon characters on Did you
have any air UPS their air ups are very big with my underrate new water air up seas all again, I feel like somebody's coming from the prehistoric era discussing like new advancements in water, but seen as children now seem completely unable to go anywhere without a water bottle, which again, I just feel like we were just all allowed to become dehydrated.
Honestly, we must have been wrinkled. I don't know how we survived. So
air ups are cartridges that you add in to a particular water bottle and they give the impression of flavouring the water actually flavouring the water so it's one of those things that tricks your nose.
You know the world those cold brew teas that sort of came out I think there was a Twinings line and they sort of they were advertised as cold brew and they would give your water to some nice, you know fruity flavour without putting in loads of sugar and fruit juice and everything else and I'll be honest I considered them until the day that I looked at the ingredients on the back of the pack and saw they contain beetroot. And I realised well the impression that the tea is brewing is obviously just coming from dry bits of beet root releasing their juice into the water. So I kind of gave up so I wonder if it's a bit similar like it's there are things in whatever it is that give you the impression that something is happening to your water without actually imparting taste to that water.
Exactly that the only thing that I know is that they are wildly trendy. I've got three nieces and nephews that live in London cooler than I could ever have dreamt of being. That's it with the youth of the New London moment.
I was really pleased though. I will say now that the Leisure Centre was fantastic in terms of you know, they had food for everybody. They had ice cream afterwards. It was one I wanted some but apparently I was too old, which seems like age discrimination actually. But they did still bring out jugs of squash. Oh, that made me feel like maybe there's something good and true and never dying in the world is that we still get jugs of squash frantically being refilled at birthday parties.
So that was lovely. That was really reassuring and something for me to bear in mind for my next book launch.
Slowly just bring on the squash jugs of squash everywhere. But what are we drinking today cat?
So Helen singers, you blew my mind last week by talking about the fact that you've just gone from zero to Martini the brand today, which incidentally, I noticed your Italian fiance has very kindly drunk the rest of
he was drinking it neat. I mean, he was just knocking it back like it was squash and I was sort of you know, being quite restrained and having some soda water or something with it. But yeah, he just knocks it back and absolutely
crackers. Oh, well. It's empty the bottle that is marvellous. So anyway, I thought enough pussyfooting around the issue, we should move on to getting you to try some of the alcohol free wine or beers and that sort of thing. And then the PRS for Wednesday's domain, which have popped up on my Instagram, which we mentioned last week. So Oh, can we send you a couple of bottles? And I was like, yes, that would be marvellous. So today, Helen, we're going to try alcohol free wine. Do you want to go white first or red?
Should I ease myself in with white? Is that the less scary option?
I mean, neither of them is scary.
I think the scariest they won't,
they won't bite you. Well, actually, no, that's not true. Because in fact, the only obstacle so far has been that the bottle is beautifully wrapped in a sort of wax seal, which actually was a bit difficult to get off. But also it has the hardest quarks that I've encountered in my life.
Those words have I have not encountered many quarks. I do usually own a corkscrew, we should say My house has been upside down because we've been getting some work done. And the corkscrew unfortunately was stowed somewhere and we have no idea where so I just ran out got a corkscrew. And now we have Wednesday's domain open so we're here I am trying wine. So this is not point 5%. Is that right? Yes,
they do two versions. This is the pecan version which is sort of white wine. So this is a D D alcohol iced coffee. That's such a difficult word to say One day I will must that if anyone were doing a podcast where I could practice D alkalized. White wine based drink so the wine is Aaron Blanco. Haven't heard of that, but exciting. So we shall try. But the idea is it's Wednesday. Only Wednesday but you want to reach for a glass. Should you shouldn't you pros cons queue this perfect midweek tipple sup away with all of the pleasure. None of the regret just bright eyed and bushy tailed for Thursday. I really want to be bright eyed and bushy tailed.
That would be good. Yeah, have a go. All right, here we go. Clink.
It smells like wine. Huh? Okay,
it doesn't taste. Well. Okay, so when I have sipped wine, it's been like someone has gone Oh, dry. This is really nice odour so why does it taste white at all? Where I've been at a wedding and um, you know, to the champagne to my lips to show wheeling, and there's definitely more, there's something more cutting to those wines than there is to this, like the first impression is wine and then almost turned into juice in your mouth. Is that right? Is that? I don't know, that's your wine. You've been a wine drinker. So Well, that's
it. I think I'm in a weird position because I'm still expecting this to be wine on some level. Whereas you're coming to this with the frankly horrendous experience of basically having wine shoved in your face. And to be honest, if they were that drunk, I would very much doubt it was lovely wine. This definitely feels this has like a stronger character to it than a lot of D alkalized. or non alcoholic white wines. And I do tend to sort of steer clear of them. If you were somebody who drank this might be something more like a sort of oaky Chardonnay, there's quite a lot going on there. It's not the sort of, it's not a sort of crisp. I'm on holiday, having a posh lunch somewhere wine. I mean, it's it's very convincing. It's
it's quite drinkable. It sort of feels like there's an outline of wine, and then there's schouler in the middle, but less weight than schouler on your dream. Even though I mean even think, you know, interesting
now we are using glasses that belong to your grandmother keep her off the sherry trifle. And actually, when I smell this, I'm getting like a little bit of sherry, for some reason, which is slightly
is that the okie nurse is that because Sherry oak
barrels, possibly but I might,
I'll be honest, I went on a tour of the Bushmills distillery because I come from there in Northern Ireland. And they used I think Sherry barrels for some vintages. And that's why I think they're rogue, I have no specialist knowledge in this area. Actually,
I think if you were really looking for like a proper wine replacement, some of the non alcoholic, white wines can be so thin that they can just be a bit depressing, which is, again, why they often get mixed with loads of ice and people that really can't tell and it's kind of but I think if you do want to have a proper wine taste, yeah, I think that would I think that would do it for you. And
we shouldn't say it's, it's we're drinking it cool, but not chilled or anything. So I don't know, what should it be. Do you think tasting it? Should it be colder? And
then it's normally if you have a really horrible wine, then you want to serve it as cold as possible. And there are some reds that are meant to be served cool, like some Beaujolais and that sort of thing.
That I mean, this is yeah, that's
fine. This would be quite a good Sunday lunch having to drive home afterwards. Wine. Not Wednesday one, so yeah, brilliant. Okay, so
that is the Wednesday's domain. Which one?
This one is pecans. Do you want to try the What did you say Helen?
I was I was starting to say be canto and then I was like, No, that's wrong, isn't it?
Do you want to try the red one?
Let's try the red. We're on a roll now. Well, I've actually brought up four glasses just so we can do this. We can be very fun to hear
the enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm is like oh, this Gary drink is
scary. This now this smells much more intimidating.
This smells like a bag of sweets.
It sort of didn't taste very much of anything as it hit my mouth. And then there's this like woodiness or something. And I really don't know what words I should be using. Like I should have paid much more attention to all those wine tasters growing up so I could just go just go with your gut
Helen Welly boots and tires. This tastes so much better than it smells because it smells dreadful. They say very clearly on the bottle. This is supposed to be like a light bodied red. And again, as I have mentioned endlessly, and you can tell I'm just hoping for like a non alcoholic mailbag one day, that will never happen. But it is very difficult to get that oomph that middle bit of red wine that must stop smelling it Good grief. But it is Woody. And there is there is stuff there. Sorry, that sounds so vague, but it's just so many of the alcohol free wines are just so thin that you swallow them. And it's like, is there anything there? And it's like, no, it's just ghosts. This isn't as robust as the white which is odd because whites are very rarely robust, unless they are sort of 90s flashbacks, but you know, that's, that's okay.
Okay. I mean, it's weird to me, because I'm, again, not a wine drinker, and I definitely don't think I've ever had red wine except in food. So what it actually reminded me of is literally grape skins. You know, sometimes I have, especially when I was maybe a kid and I was just sort of playing around, I'd be sort of, you know, peeling grape skins and eating those separately, and that sort of graininess and the kind of dryness of the skin is what I'm getting. It's it's like we were saying the other week about what was it that tastes like it doesn't want to be wet. Cranberries, cranberries taste like the cranberry juice tastes like it doesn't want to be wet. It feels a little bit like that. It feels like that dryness is heading my mouth, even as I'm literally sipping a liquid. Yeah,
provided that I just never use my nose whilst drinking the red version. This would be a very decent thing to have, like midweek I probably wouldn't keep it for like special occasions, because it is just quite nice sipping thing. And again, I think because I'm always expecting wine or the 10th of that. If you don't get exactly that then that can be disappointing. But as DJ Paulette said the other week, you know, you just have to change your mind a bit about what you're expecting. You just have to find a drink that you like. And actually, this isn't full body but it is dry. Maybe this is an answer to last week's red wine question. All right, got it still smells so bad.
I mean, to me, it doesn't smell terrible, but I'm just smelling. No, it's akin to fruit.
It's because it smells so weirdly sweet. Okay,
so is it the association of that smell with very sweet bad wines you've had in the past? You think?
Yeah, and also it's just it just doesn't smell like wine. I mean, usually if you when you take the Corker of a bottle of wine a it doesn't take as long as it took you and it looks from these, that also you smell the cork and then you can get a sense of the wine. And you just obviously don't get that here. But you know, that's, that's great. That's sort of leaving a bit of roughness on the top of my very whiny nickel terms.
I'm learning done.
There was a non alcoholic wine story this week that really tickled me which is tests Those who to be honest seem to be doing amazing PR for just promoting their own non alcoholic stuff had a story in The Times which is that the number one best selling non alcoholic wine is Kylie Minogue. No alcohol sparkling Rosie.
Oh my god. Well, we're
going to have to try that at some point only sales of that as apparently gone up by 75% on this time last year, but damn, damn, damn, that sounds like I'm uncertain about non alcoholic Rosie's, but I will I will stop being uncertain and just go yes, let's
do it. Embrace the non alcoholic Rosae Yep. So maybe we'll just we'll just have a Kylie week next week. And I think we're also going to try making some drinks. So you were telling me about an episode of Off menu you listen to with what sounds like an incredible drink.
Oh, it was so good. It's it only went up a couple of weeks ago. It's the Jamelia episode when they were on tour last year. And he is one of the funniest people I've ever heard not to be a professional comedian. Be she absolutely roasts the ASOF each of them which is just delightful. But also she flags wondering called carrot juice, which again becomes a bit in itself. It's not just carriages. But then she changed that for sexy juice, which is pineapple juice. Condensed milk has to be condensed milk, nutmeg, and cinnamon and I are thinking, Yes,
I think we should probably try that. It sounds wildly unhealthy, and I can't wait.
I know I haven't made fudge for so long. But I feel like drinking half a tin of condensed milk will probably make up for that.
There's some kind of maths going on there. I'm not sure it's accurate maths, but I love it.
Speaking of sugar. In fact, we should probably stop speaking about sugar. We have a sugary based guest today. And we we
do yes, let's let's jump to him. So our guest today is a guy called Richard Kirk. Now Richard got in touch with me. As soon as we launched pop culture, and basically offered his expertise. He said, I've worked in development for the soft drinks industry for about 12 years. He's now working for an ingredient supplier. And I wonder if you might be interested in talking about some of what goes on behind the scenes of the industry. I've been involved in the marketing, the development, sensory testing, manufacture, quality testing, and now selling ingredients. And he's seen a number of industry shaping events, including new food labelling regulations, the sugar tax, Brexit and so on. So we agreed with Richard, we're not going to say where he works, just because he's not here to speak for his employers either past or present. It's not a big secret. I mean, if you want to look it up, you can totally look it up. I'm not going to, you know, say don't. But it's just not something we're getting into, because he's talking from a much more general point of view, as a very experienced, and this is a real phrase, beverage technologist what I know what a job title and he is also, by the way, a musician and composer so he is a multi talented guy. But here's what Richard had to say about sugar especially. So Richard, just to give people a bit of context about you, you are a I believe senior beverage technologist you've worked in the beverage industry for for quite a few years now. And you've worked on soft drinks, carbonated drinks, exotic juices I saw were mentioned on your LinkedIn, which was wonderful colour flavour, the whole thing. So you you kind of have a bit of a broad overview of the industry is that is that fair to say? Yeah, I
hope so. So as a product developer, and now as technical services for a an ingredient supplier, I have been involved in development of drinks from kind of soup to nuts. So a brief will come from somewhere usually marketing department saying we want this. And then I've been involved in pulling together all of the ingredients to get a recipe that's then goes to consumer testing, then to try and manufacture and then eventually manufacture and on the shelves. And then the always slightly confusing emotional experience of seeing litter you're responsible for on the on the streets of wherever you live, because the development team will that will engage with everyone from marketing, sales, quality production, I've sort of experienced a lot of the of the industry from various angles. That's my pitch to my credentials for being
made. How much litter Have you seen, I'm not concerned about this. I mean,
obviously litter that you saw coming off the factory line you feel more emotionally attached to but it is in fact a way of, of finding out how successful your product has been is the letter survey. So when when you're seeing it, you go higher, that's people are buying it, which is why it's a sort of It's a confusing emotional response because you feel I've made some litter, but in between someone has chosen a thing that I've worked on, exchange money to enjoy it and then throw it away. Yes,
it's pride, shame all mixed up together very confusing. So tell me about some of the sort of the questions I guess that go into this. What are the challenges of launching a new drink? Or I guess, you know, tweaking a formula if that happens, as well. We've all heard stories about New Coke or at least you know, what, what are the what are the sorts of factors that people have to have to worry about when they're launching a new soft drink?
So it's the new products who it's for, and what's the The what's the sell? Is this about tasting? Great? Is this about some health benefits? And what are the ingredients that are going to support that? Ultimately, then what claims can you legally make on the pack, which is often something that can come up a bit late in the process? When the design process working really, really well, that's sort of baked in from the very beginning. And that gives the developer the very best chance of meeting the requirements when dealing with existing products. It's how much can we change? Or how much money can we save? Or what can we do and nobody notice, a lot of my work has been making sure nobody notices, which is sort of less glamorous, but very sad and Amazon at the time, and that can be as simple as switching out suppliers of ingredients to, as I'm sure we'll talk about sugar reduction, which is kind of big thing that the industry went through. And he sort of still still going through around the introduction of the sugar tax that was kind of a major shift in the whole industry. So
remind us when that was because I obviously remember flawlessly exactly when that was, but some people may not have for any
listeners, that was not completely obsessed. In 2018, the UK introduced a sugar tax, which meant that any products with more than five grammes of sugar per 100 mils would be would be subject to tax and that there was then a sort of mid mid band somewhere around eight bricks. Sorry, I've used the word bricks, but eight grammes per 100 mils of sugar above that was, was fully taxed below the eight was there was a sort of medium threshold that most people seem to decided was was a fool's errand, you're going to reduce you might as well reduce all the way. And then what's become a bit of a standard for a bunch of people is somewhere around five grammes.
So you talk there about the sugar tax and levels of sugar breaks, which is an amazing, amazing, sort of shorthand for them, which I'll be using now. But are we talking about different types of sugar here, or, you know, is that all sugars is that specific kinds of sugar? Is that traditional sort of white sugar? What does that mean?
So it's monosaccharides it is the law, which means that for most, most purposes, it means sucrose, so sugar beet or, or sugar cane, but also fructose, which is a way that we should get to kind of molecular, it's the sugar that you find the grapes, which is, so it's a bit sweeter, which can I do small amounts of sugar reduction while while maintaining the sweetness. So Brix, by the way, is a term that is enormously misused across the industry to mean three, I think it's three different things. Strictly speaking, it is a measure of the amount of dissolved solids in okay. And it can be you can directly measure it with the machine. And so, because most of the dissolved solids until, say 2018, when the sugar tax came in, for most products, that is the vast majority of dissolved solids with sugar, it can be used as a bit of a shorthand for the amount of sugar. But the free weights used in though, as a shorthand for the amount of sweetness. So the amount of sugar that you're raising. You can talk about aiming for 10 bricks, the sweetness, that really means emulating 10 grammes of sucrose per 100 mils. it fascinating. So I apologise if I will accidentally use that for each of them interchangeably, meaning a specific thing and then hoping everybody
that makes sense. Okay. So, you know, we have an idea, I think, I think in our heads, that sugar, or at least too much sugar is bad for you. I can tell you from reading way too many diet books in my life that a lot of them will in particular pick up sugar and drinks as quote unquote, empty calories. And they really sort of railed against sugar and drinks in particular are something that people could do with cutting down on. So there must be a lot of pressure on guessing in the industry, even aside from the sugar tax to give people options that, you know, have less sugar in them. I'm guessing this has been going on for a while.
Yeah, absolutely. And that dates back probably to the use of saccharin in beverages in the 50s. Long way back. I think one of the big things about sugary drinks is it's very easy to consume enormous amounts of sugar. Very controversial sugar, if he was a spoon his hands onto into a bowl and try to eat that amount of sugar. You get very excited, but very quickly, but it's very easy to chug it down.
Because it really does. I mean, you're talking to someone who has been known to drink an entire bottle of sugar at a dinner, you know, and that's not lightened. Well, there are no ones that are light and sugar, but there weren't at the time I was doing it. So So what are the alternatives? And what are the what are the things that we're talking about when we talk about sort of sugar replacements or sugar substitutes or I don't even know what the preferred term is?
So do you talk about high intensity sweetened Is, or artificial sweeteners, or other things, but much, much of what you see now is a combination of aspartame and a sort of 10k. So if you pick up the most diet drinks, they will contain that accommodation. In addition, I think maybe five or six, five or so years ago, sucralose became much more popular, partly because it sounds a bit like sucrose. And so consumers like it because it sounds like a sort of thing k or a sulphate potassium spar team always sounds horrible and chemically, whereas sucralose sounds a bit Cavalier so and it was very cheap, per unit of sweetness. So it was very, very popular. It also tasted awful when first used. And we as an industry have got a lot better developing with it. And now a sucralose tasting product tastes pretty good. As far as I myself, okay, tastes more like sugar. When, again, when used, right, and there are technologies that can be used to improve it on top of that, but those, those are the kind of the sort of mainstream ones. Less mainstream growing in popularity is stevia, which is an extract from a tea like leaf, originally from Paraguay, that takes a bit of working with because as a leaf, it tastes very sweet, but also has a really bitter lingering aftertaste. And a lot of the kind of the cheapest versions of CBD containing products suffer from that there are there are quite restrictive limits within the EU, and by extension, the UK, about how much you can use as well. So that you can struggle to get the same level of sweetness that we're used to, with, with with artificial sweeteners. But it does come with a sort of much friendlier claim, like sweeten from a leaf or which we'll see on some Marks and Spencers products or sweetened from a natural source that kind of claim. So that helps people feel better about consuming it while it's still being sweetened. Or at least
at least in theory. And that is one of the things we are talking about, obviously, on this on this podcast. So So basically all of them have sort of strengths and limitations, then there's a there's, it feels like yeah, a lot of the time we're talking about a combination of sweeteners to get the same effect as sugar, per se. And to and there's obviously trade offs in terms of taste in terms of costs in terms of complicated recipes, I guess, to Figure Figure out what you're doing for each one each drink.
Yeah, so sugar has a bunch of things, a kind of sweetness curve. So an experience of drinking a sugar containing drink, which doesn't have a problem, everything is sort of defined in terms of the sweetness curve of sugar, so it doesn't have a really intense upfront sweetness, and it doesn't have an unpleasant linger. It's our bodies have evolved to seek out and enjoy sugar because it's calories that body. That's what we wanted. So when it wasn't so readily available. So yeah, so we kind of somewhere between we've evolved, and we've got used to that as a as the ideal sort of gold standard sugar curve. And yet no, no sweetener has quite the same. Some, it's much more upfront somehow a kind of a real sweet linger, some, it's a sort of bitter aftertaste and so on. And different people perceive it differently. But that's kind of generally the case. And so combining them can can allow you to cover over the weaknesses of one with the other. And then there are some flavours that can help improve that as well. There's a few different approaches kind of out there, some of which use sweet molecules to at very low levels in kind of the same way that you've used low levels of salt in baking to bring out different bits of other flavour. They do that others using volatile extracts from sweet things so that they smell sweeter than they are. So things like molasses or other kind of sugary products, you can extract the volatile compounds from that and add that back in. So there's a range of approaches to helping continue to trick the body into feeling like it's getting sugar out.
So just from something you're saying that you're talking about really different levels of sweeteners, depending on the drink, obviously, that you're you're working with. So if you're working with I don't know, a strong flavour like ginger, maybe that allows you to do or demands that you use different sweeteners than if you're doing I have no idea what's a weak flavour of blueberry, you know, so you know, is it a matter of always adjusting to whatever the the main flavour of the drink is going to be?
Yes, and some of that is just to do with what you know works across the range that you're working on. Some of it is to do with with cost can be a big driver of On spar team, one of its breakdown products, there is a people who suffer from a disease called PK can't have. And so ideally, as a manufacturer, you don't want your only non non full sugar drinks to contain about anyone you want other other things out there. So, so it there's a sort of there's, there's a load of reasons. And some of them are about marketing some of their about function. Some of them are about a kind of developers preference as to how they work. And also, does it have any source of sugar in there. So there are, I'm going to use that word bricks, again, mid bricks, products, where there is some sugar, and then the rest is made up a sweetener. But the sugar tax is really made a thing but was it was always a little bit of a driver, because you could you could save money because sugar is very expensive, and fluctuates in price in a way that can can be a problem.
So would that be sorry, is that where you get sort of no added artificial sweeteners or no added sweetener kind of claims, even where a drink clearly has, let's say fruit juice in it, which is quite sweet on its own.
So if you're if you're getting a kind of no added or no artificial added claims, then yeah, that's that it's a weird little quirk of EU regulations if I remember rightly, that you can't talk about no artificial sweeteners. Because no, that's a right. No Forget absolutely delete that as wrong it covers I'm thinking of there's no such thing as an artificial colour, there are only colours of natural colours. So fruit juices are a great source of sweetness. And they can be used alongside artificial sweeteners to make a no adding. As opposed to a sugar. So you'll see you'll see sugar free or you'll see no added sugar and then somewhere on the label will be contains naturally occurring sugars. And that that's very common to kind of to help along you get a much better tasting product if you've got some fruit juice to help along. Particularly if you're I
have I have sort of been caught out by that many times where I've got Oh, no way to trigger this sounds terribly healthy. And then I look at usually the empty bottles label after drinking the whole lot and suddenly realise, oh god, I've had a Mars bar and didn't really realise.
Yes, yeah. But it's really it's fruit sugar. So it's healthier? Probably some
fibre in there somewhere, maybe hopefully as well. We're just going to go with it. Yeah,
sure. But But
I don't know if this is too recent. I don't know if it's something you can talk about, well, what about the sort of health scares that come out about some of these, you know, artificial sweeteners? You know, over time. I mean, aspartame has obviously been the one in the headlines in recent years. Despite the risk being essentially when you look into what I think it was the World Health Organisation actually said they rated it very, very, very, very slightly toxic in the same way that many things in the environment are. But it was headline news around the world. Is that something that, you know, prompt panic among manufacturers and rethinks and you know, changes to formulas,
maybe not panic, certainly contingency plans that people will be will be saying, Okay, well, what if this ingredient in the same way that businesses will will manage risk across across the board? I think you're one tabloids news headline away from a particular problem, kind of, at any time. And that can be and that could be sugar, or it could be artificial sweeteners and, or it could be colours, or whatever, what a what a tabloid newspaper chooses to go after, and, and whether or not there's enough, you know, they'll take people with them, it can be a worry. The fact that artificial sweeteners have given you cancer is something that everyone has known since the 1950s. Despite it being not very true. I believe that kind of the source of it. And I heard this on a Science Podcast many moons ago. So I haven't been able to prove it's easy to find a consultant This is that there was some work done with saccharin in rats, cuz saccade was being used in in the 1950s in America a lot. And there were some concerns around was this well understood, and giving it to rats caused the rats to get cancer. And this This was unpublished as a kind of a panic. Some further work was done. And it turns out that the metabolic pathways by which saccharin gave rats cancer was not something that's replicated. So a lot of the time, rodents and particularly rats can be really good models for human beings. And we can get really boring information from that. But in this case, it was a red herring. And that seems to have somehow got into the Zeitgeist and so everybody knows it in the same way that everybody knows that E number says your mental despite you numbers being a list of safe ingredients that can be added to beverages and other food and other foods products safely including vitamin C, which which hasn't been sold, but everybody knows it. And so these are kind of because soft drinks manufacturers are like other food manufacturers don't get to sit everybody down and explain everything you have to sort of you have to go with how people feel, as I say, which is partly why sucralose has become so popular because it's got some Yeah, and why trams and so on. Really help businesses will be will be making contingency plans, the range of sweeteners on offer allow you to have a bit of buffer studies continue. EFSA is is currently in the process of reviewing as cut on a longer scale. It is in fact, in the process of reviewing everything all the time. That's sort of what it's there for the European Food Standards Agency continues to express scientific opinions that are eventually turned into policy or back around in particular, recommended consumption limits for everything based on people consuming enormous amounts of whatever the product is, in order to keep us safe, which broadly is good thing but can cover the stuff around artificial sweeteners at the minute is a great thing. If you work for a company that sells something like stevia which is not counted, although you need to explain that it's certainly from an actual source of not one of these artificial sweeteners, and almost always not included in the study. So even ones that are lacking explain yet, but Esther is in the process of reviewing both a Saurfang K at the start time and I believe sucrose as well. So that that always makes me feel safe or that it makes me feel worried. Because when they really find a problem, they there's been limits and restrictions long before that happens before they find that there's a real risk rather than waiting to find out if this is killing us or we stop now. So that there tends to be enough time to implement changes to it to help. So
So where do you think the industry is is going? I mean, you know, what are the challenges coming up? I mean, if this, let's say if the five bricks, I'm going to use it if the five bricks law went down to three or something, you know, is this is this something that that you think is probably in contingency planning already? Or is this something that would cause heart attacks across the across the industry?
Well, it sort of is already happening in that there are nutritional guidelines currently in Europe, Nutri score, that is being adopted by a number of countries in Europe and may well be in the UK, although you never know what the UK is going to do now, because we make our own decisions now. And so I'm not entirely sure everybody knows how they make those decisions yet. So we don't know. But it's, it's likely that we will align VAT is a system that scores foods based on their nutritional content, and is then declared on the front of the pack, and everybody will want to have the best score available, and that will drive down sugar. So the five gramme you will see lots of products have crept below that in order to hit what was now an old version of Nutri score, that will probably drive things further down. The other hand in hand with that is that sugar is expensive, and sweeteners are cheaper. And so that will also encourage people to reduce as far as, as people will, will drive reduction for manufacturers in order to continue to take cost out. But obviously, there is always a sacrifice of taste. And there is always an expectation that the product that you tasted a week ago will taste the same, and will taste the same in a month's time. And that transition, doing any kind of reduction while maintaining that taste experience for the consumer. Because at the point where you go, Well, I don't like that anymore. You just stopped buying it, you can't, it's very difficult to win you back. So in particular, for larger brands, even when they're doing reduction will often be done in steps to kind of to take people along the ride, or with messaging to explain why something big example of that becoming very controversial was in Scotland around Iron Brew, Scotland is very passionate about its own brew. And so when the sugar tax came in, there was a great deal of upset, some of which has not gone away. If you look at the social media posts of Iron Brew, you will see that there are still some people who across about that, but lots of work was done by the company manufacturing that to make sure that it tastes as close as possible to kind of 10 people.
Well, it's it's going to be a brave new world, I think has the profile of the people that the soft drinks manufacturers are sort of manufacturing for changed. You know, is there more talk now about sort of, you know, the kind of stuff we were covering on this programme about adults growing up feeling soft drinks that maybe there would have been 1015 years ago. Do you think certainly
over the last decade that the so called adults soft drink has definitely been something that people believe there's a market for I don't think anyone has cracked it. I which I guess is part of what this podcast is about is that they're out there and I think I think increasingly Eat less sweet less intense profile products are out there and on the shelves in a way that kind of yeah mainstream cabinet 10 stated that you were sort of that was what you had and you kind of had to get on with it. Innovation has always driven the market in a way I guess it has across all sorts of food industry so new things are always coming out the ones that work people emulate you get innovators, fast followers and so on insanely across any market so I think I think that that's growing and all sorts of kind of weird extra sectors appear. The seltzer market is one that some people have cracked and some people haven't going hand in hand with the hard sell to market which I think is in the UK we're very much lagging behind the US but that's something that people are trying to trying to do and you see those products sellers don't appeal to me at all. But I like I like sweet and I like high impact I have a very kind of tasty and I like it sweetener like it will feed in a way that a more mature consumers bitter becomes more important is which is something basically which is why I don't like sparkling water, which is in order of your podcast I'm currently drinking a cordial with later with with sparkling water. And as I say that, that I'm sure you might probably know
I have some of the same I have some of the same taste buds I think but I appreciate you making the effort. That's that's very well done. I'm having I'm having a mint tea as we speak but we do try to ask everybody when they come on this podcast. Do you have a sort of Hall of Fame? Soft drink? What is your favourites? What is your absolute you know you're in a fancy restaurant, they've got everything. What are you going to order? What's your go to particularly
given my experience exotic juices I really like mango juice or a mango containing products. I really liked lychee some people find it very floral. I really really like it.
Yeah, I'm with it. Those are good. So you really aren't here exotic juices you weren't kidding.
Not not so keen on Guana Barna, which is a product I used to have to taste but never really got on with. So maybe not that sophisticated. But yeah, mango and lychee. I can Excellent.
All right. Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, best of luck with your breaks.
Thank you very much.
Alan, is it possible to be in love with somebody who works with sugar? Because I think kind of think I am with Richard.
I think that's reasonable. He's a lovely, lovely man. And thank him. Thank you so much, Richard, for getting in touch. We really appreciate it. And it's also I think something that's really helpful to hear how these decisions get made, why they get made and what goes into what we drink, literally and figuratively.
So definitely, and if any of you have helpful jobs to this podcast, I mean, you don't even have to have like a crazy sexy job title. It would be really lovely to hear from you. Because again, we don't know what we don't know. And when you guys reach out to us it is just the most brilliant and fascinating thing. So yeah, pop culture drinks podcast@gmail.com Find us on Twitter or we're on Instagram pop culture drinks podcast that's it so we have some people who have done just that this week what an excellent and obedient and just generally sexy and successful and fabulous listenership we
have Helen it's true. It's true. I can't deny it. So our first message comes from the incredibly well named cat bird. I mean already in love 100% No nose. So she got in touch from I think the US to say Starbucks, it seems is stepping into the OT alcoholic space. What a great name for him. And below is an email ad for their new coffee mocktail, and then she quotes from them. Introducing the Starbucks Reserve orange spice Espresso Martini. This delicious non alcoholic cocktail is crafted with Starbucks Reserve espresso spiritless, Kentucky, 74 spiced vanilla bean syrup, and orange bitters available exclusively at US Starbucks Reserve Roastery and stores. Now I don't know if we even have those in this country, I'm afraid. But that sounds like an interesting combination of ingredients. It
really does. The US Starbucks have been really interesting in terms of the limited edition drinks. I was absolutely furious a few years ago when I was in the States and they were doing these Pokemon based specials at certain poker stops. This was obviously when I was still playing Pokemon Go obsessively, but the one where I was staying in Vegas had never heard of this drink and I was like, but it's on the poker stop and they looked at me weirdly and I just had to leave. I love the idea of having this sort of non out more exciting not more exciting coffee is very exciting in itself but a creation that sort of takes something else on board because the texture of something like an Espresso Martini is so different to a beloved Frappuccino or another sort of sugary seasonal drink. It's silkier, darker to be more obvious about it, but it is just a sort of different feeling because of the opening hours as well. Starbucks certainly in the UK have become like destiny Shouldn't and themselves for anybody that doesn't drink or you know, doesn't want to go to an ice cream bar as well as students or authors panicking and finishing off things that they can only do when they are bribed with coffee and cake. So yeah, having those options would be great. I mean, in the UK, it does feel like something that potentially would not take off. And partly, perhaps would be too much of a faff for the staff to do. But I just love the fact that that is an option.
Yeah, it's exciting. And I think it's really encouraging that, you know, again, this is entering the conversation, people are having these discussions, and a big brand like Starbucks is getting behind them as well. So yeah, I don't know if we can recreate that particular one we might try at some point, but it sounds like an intriguing mix.
And this reminds me actually, Ian Douglas tweeted in recently to say Have we heard of Raven records bar and Camden? Yes, we still have to go there. It's the world's first heavy metal alcohol free bar in Camden. It's found at the back of a new coffee shop and vinyl Emporium. Raven records. Just what a total dream? Yeah. Yes. Also, just because, like there are lots and lots of musicians in recovery. And so really nice to have a place where they can go without, you know, being worried about not necessarily being worried. But suppose it's a bit boring to always have to think about what could have been used in it. And so nice just to have one place that is just like, Nope, just rock out. Don't worry about anything else. Absolutely.
I'll have to say. So, my empire podcast, which is another podcast that I do, we are going on tour in March, the I'll be honest, it's not all on sale yet, because we're very, very last minute about everything. But we are going to a couple of the towns that have non alcoholic bars. So I will be doing a little call in if I can possibly manage it. And and trying to test out some exciting drink.
Oh, that'd be so exciting. Take your iPhone up and hid voice notes and just be like, tell me about your boss
he's talking to me is so
exciting. I'm so pleased about that. That'd be really lovely. On last week's episode, we also very heavily hinted at us doing something so exciting that you would all hate us. And obviously the Chardon, froideur of that is it got cancelled, but we look forward to bringing you actual things that really make you haters with envy, in the hopefully not too distant future.
Amen to that. So this is a bit longer, but it's a very interesting topic. And I do want to speak about this. So this comes from Ben Standring, who writes longtime listener first time email. I love that one month in I love the podcast and thank you for all the great recommendations of drinks to try. I've been sober for five years and stopped drinking when at university now this means Ben is disgustingly young and probably handsome but it
does mean that I can lower the age limit on our adverts. Helen fantastic.
So one thing that always makes me sigh he says is related to alcohol and food, notably in supermarket food and then meals out. Why do you think that supermarkets and restaurants are being more inclusive to non drinkers by improving their alcohol free drinks options, but a lot of their food will still contain alcohol. This is more frustrating as I fall into another category of people, the vegetarians. Sidenote, January is always fun when dry January and Vegas January come around and that's just another month and a lot of vegetarian premium food in supermarkets is premium because it usually contains alcohol, red wine or white wine in tomato or Green Bay sauces or brandy or poured or rum and desserts. Christmas is notorious as a period when all premium products essentially just add lots of alcohol and boost the prices. Equally going out for a meal with family or friends. Most menus offer a small number of vegetarian options and you always know there'll be a lack of variety and many places will try and add alcohol into dishes either to make up for the lack of meat or to add in a quote unquote premium element to justify a higher meal price. How do you think is best to solve this? That's all the best from Ben slash someone who would like high quality mince pies slash Christmas cakes slash great vegetarian dishes without the alcohol content. And he says cooking off the alcohol does not cook off all the alcohol and final extra side note just came back from my Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican. And it was a delight. Good lad. Correct? We agree. Yes. So I mean, this is not something I had clocked actually and I'm ashamed of myself for not particularly noticing. You know, as I say, I usually don't pay a lot of attention to alcohol and food just because it tends generally not to be strong enough that I notice it. I do notice it in my granny's trifle. I really did.
I really am starting to think of your granny as nanny OG of the trifle. Well,
she was she I mean she very much Wasn't she was very much more of a Granny Weatherwax except in regards her trifle, but that was heavily heavily sherried So you know, I would I would obviously eat it because I loved my granny and everything else in the trifle was delicious. But I will I was honestly not my favourite dessert and I did tend to default to any of the other desserts that were around because as a family we we don't do one dessert meals. No no. If we're getting together for family gatherings are at least three on the table and a gigantic bowl of whipped cream. So that was never a problem. But if you are already limited to a very small number of dishes on a menu, and then there is alcohol in them that I can see being a real issue
that's really annoying. It's intersections around things where everything just sort of trips up slightly. It's as you say, when you when you're vegetarian, okay, that's one thing, but then when you're vegetarian and actively looking not to have alcohol in your food, then that's another I'm sober, but I've never got drunk off food. So I sort of have that work around. I think it's mostly so that I can still have tiramisu. Helan of sureness, sure. But at the same time, I would not order something where I didn't know you got like a shot of Amaretto and had that on ice cream? Yes. One actually one way as regards the mince pies that is super useful is particularly around anything seasonal is to literally just follow the halal food bloggers because that there is such obviously an overlap between not being able to have alcohol in food and not wanting to have alcohol and food. And so lots of the bloggers do really really helpful roundups, particularly around Christmas food, other festive foods and everything because you're right a surprising number of the supermarket mince pies contain cognac or and again it is just so that they can charge that bit extra by having that booth fee slightly fiery taste to the mincemeat there are always non alcoholic ones. It's just that bit more of a faff to find them Sainsbury's had some this year but they weren't like classic mince pies, they were one of the we've messed with the mince pie format that was apparently too boring. Now, the other way of doing it is to go via the Indies. There are loads of beautiful bakeries online that specifically do alcohol free Christmas cake mince pies and all of the other sort of festive goodies, which is so nice. I mean, that extends to other times of year as well, it is just that bit more of a faff than you want. Unfortunately, this is something that we see in all kinds of other areas. I mean, I'm a very, very tall woman. And so shopping is already a bit tedious. But on one of the tour forums that I'm on, you get lots of plus sized people going there is nothing for me because if I find anything tall, then it tops out to an 18 or 20. Yeah, the only real answer is that unfortunately, we are still in a stage where we do have to pass around this information and be like, Oh, this is amazing. This restaurant here has loads of fantastic veggie options. Plus, also there's no booze on it. I mean, in London, certainly restaurants have become much better about putting menus online, largely because it's another form of advertising for them. But also I think vegetarian food has just become so much more interesting in the last certainly 10 years, that if the people that you are going to restaurants with are meat eaters, then if you can persuade them at all to go to a veggie restaurant or try something else that it's that easy for experience thing and then once they give it a go they'll think that they invented vegetarian food and a super clever about it. But big commiserations it is a, it's a faff in an effort that we don't want to have.
Absolutely. I do think it's also worth writing to defending supermarkets etc. Because I'm not saying it's going to work overnight. But the more people that feedback on this stuff is at some point, it's got to reach a sort of critical mass. I think that's what's happened with you know, vegan food. Five, certainly 10 years ago, vegan food was nowhere near as readily available as it is now gluten free the same thing. And so there is the potential for change. It just hasn't happened yet. I totally agree in this area. There's there's a way to go.
Yeah. And a tip on writing those letters as well. It's very tempting to send an email, but a letter, a handwritten letter to the CEO is much more difficult to ignore, than an email from 250 people all saying the same thing.
Yeah, absolutely. Just thinking when you're talking about sort of intersectional eating problems, we have a friend who is, is gluten intolerant, and dairy intolerant and kosher. And it is extremely difficult for her to find meals anywhere. Really, when she does she embraces them close to her chest and goes regularly to that place. So I mean, there is a real business case for it. People will absolutely be loyal. And if for those options, you just have to give them. Yeah,
exactly. Unfortunately, as we see in the tool, clothing community, the numbers just are not there necessarily. But then it goes around the other way as well. We've seen that practice had to close a load of their veggie veggie brats because the numbers aren't there. I mean, also just pret seems to be going through a mad phase of pricing everything completely insanely so interesting to see what happens there. But really wishing you some some good eatin. Yeah,
absolutely. All right. I think that's pretty much all we have time for this week. So yes, like we say there might be something just outrageous and infuriating happening next week, which we'll see how it goes. But otherwise that is all for this week. So if you have A favourite drink and menu that you'd like to celebrate or shame. Any burning questions or comments about soft drinks in general or particular then you can email us at pop culture drinks podcast@gmail.com or on Instagram at pop culture drinks podcast. And we also have a lovely bookshop storefront where you can shop for our favourite non alcoholic books, including those by us which may or may not be related to alcohol and those by our guests. So if you go to bookshop.org and search for pop culture, the soft drinks podcast that will pop right up. Oh, nice, Helen. And that is it for this episode, do consider subscribing or leaving his lovely five star review on your podcast provider of choice. I'm sure you're probably busy by now reading cat's book, but if you're not, it's not a bloody trade is now out everywhere. There's an
audiobook as well if you literally just want me in your ears more,
which your brother bought, which is the most sweet thing I've ever heard. I don't think my brother bought my audio book. So it was
the fact he was like I can't believe I've paid to listen to my sister talk for eight hours. Amazing.
Amazing. In any case, we will see you back here next week for more soft drinks related chat. Thank you Kat.
