{"id":287136,"date":"2025-11-28T02:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287136\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T02:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:09:11","slug":"sugar-tax-how-embarrassing-is-your-coffee-order-and-could-your-favourite-milky-drink-doing-more-harm-than-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/287136\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar tax: How embarrassing is your coffee order \u2013 and could your favourite milky drink doing more harm than good?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I order my coffee<\/a> in the morning I feel like a Labubu toting teenager. For it takes me roughly quadruple the time to order \u201can iced white chocolate matcha latte with oat milk\u201d compared to the person next to me\u2019s simple \u201cAmericano\u201d. <\/p>\n

Although delicious, my preferred beverage is not exactly a mature drink request \u2013\u00a0and now that the government has announced both milkshakes and lattes will be hit with a sugar tax<\/a> to help tackle child obesity levels, it\u2019s never been more embarrassing, infantile or unhealthy to have an eight-word-long coffee order. Worryingly, mine isn\u2019t even the worst of it; there are banana bread, carrot cake, and blondie brownie options, too. <\/p>\n

While \u201copen-cup\u201d milkshakes prepared in cafes, bars and restaurants will remain out of scope of the new sugar tax rules, it\u2019s worth noting that Starbucks\u2019s prepackaged caramel frappuccino, which has 9.4g of sugar<\/a> per 100ml, could be impacted when companies are charged in January 2028. And many speciality coffees, whether store-bought or not, are essentially adult milkshakes, with some containing more than 500 calories, which doesn\u2019t exactly make them a healthy option either.<\/p>\n

This is a quarter of a woman\u2019s daily recommended intake and the equivalent to consuming 3.8 packets of Walkers crisps, 100g of pasta with pesto, three slices of buttered toast \u2013 or 8.3 shots of tequila before lunch. Two calorie Americano, anyone? <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at many of the pre-packaged iced coffees and flavoured lattes<\/a> on supermarket shelves, it\u2019s not surprising they\u2019ve been swept into the sugar-tax conversation,\u201d reflects nutritionist and author of Unprocess Your Life: Break Free from Ultra-processed Foods for Good, Rob Hobson on the law change. \u201cThey are ultra-processed foods with ingredients like flavourings, sweeteners and stabilisers such as carrageenan, [which can irritate a sensitive gut].\u201d <\/p>\n

Hobson adds that the calorie content of these drinks is easy to underestimate as most people don\u2019t think of a drink as a snack, despite what it contains. \u201cThe key issue is that liquid calories don\u2019t trigger the same fullness signals as solid food, so you end up taking on extra energy without any real impact on appetite,\u201d he explains. Meaning, realistically, you\u2019ll want a pastry, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cReady-to-drink coffees have a \u2018light\u2019 health halo because they\u2019re seen as just coffee with milk. The reality is that many contain enough sugar to edge them into sweetened beverage territory.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"(Getty\/iStock)<\/p>\n

Previously, sugar laws have mainly affected fizzy drinks. But as the chancellor Rachel Reeves has abandoned plans to increase the basic rate of income tax, she has been forced to rely on an array of smaller tax rises on high-value properties, electric cars, gambling and tourism to generate funds. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has described these as\u201cnanny-state\u201d measures and accused Keir Starmer of increasing taxes on the \u201csimple pleasures that we all enjoy\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, when it comes to pre-packaged food and drinks, we might enjoy such simple pleasures, but the harm they are linked to is being highlighted almost daily.<\/p>\n

According to Government analysis, around 203 pre-packed milk-based drinks – accounting for 93 per cent of sales in the category – will face the sugar tax unless their sugar content is cut under the new proposals. The Treasury said young people only get 3.5 per cent of their calcium intake from dairy drinks, meaning \u201cit is also likely that the health benefits do not justify the harms from excess sugar\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy bringing milk-based drinks and milk substitute drinks into the SDIL, the Government would introduce a tax incentive for manufacturers of these drinks to build on existing progress and further reduce sugar in their recipes,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

A review, published last week, found that UPFs are linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body<\/a> and pose a huge threat to global health. In the last year on record, 64 per cent of adults living in England were estimated to be overweight or living with obesity. If we\u2019re going to eat like unattended children, the government might need to be our appropriate adult and make changes to what\u2019s allowed to be put in our food by big companies. If anything, they could be stricter. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with enjoying these drinks occasionally, but you are better off getting a simpler coffee from somewhere that is just coffee and milk,\u201d Hobson reasons. \u201cIt\u2019s worth being aware of what\u2019s in them. The sugar-tax-driven reformulation may end up being a positive step if it encourages more transparency and helps people better understand what they\u2019re drinking.\u201d <\/p>\n

When the sugar tax was announced in 2016, it resulted in the sugar content in soft drinks falling by 46 per cent. As the levy was on drinks with a sugar content of more than 5g per 100ml, many drinks now hover below the 5g threshold as a result. To up the ante, the accepted sugar content is decreasing even further, to 4.5g. This could see sugar content in some store-bought Starbucks drinks decrease by more than half. So, things will be tasting a little different come the new year. Either that, or the drink could be hitting our wallets even harder to put us off it. <\/p>\n

Shame, perhaps, should be enough to do that. Adults guzzling flavoured milk is, regretfully, deeply unchic compared to a low-calorie espresso. Maybe it\u2019s time to wake up and smell the (actual) coffee. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-287136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}