The UK is about to add a tax to producers of drinks that contain sugar. Depending on the amount of sugar per 100 ml, the tax will be levied at one of two rates (in British pence, of course.)

Supposedly this is to counter obesity.

This is a mistake.

Here is a nature article on this topic. I will add a few quotes for those of you who cannot reach the original content. As always, emphasis mine. Note: NAS = non-caloric artificial sweetener.

Suez and colleagues added an NAS supplement (saccharin, sucralose or aspartame) to the diets of mice, and found that the sweeteners altered the animals’ metabolism, raising blood glucose to significantly higher levels than those of sugar-consuming mice. This was true both for mice fed a normal diet and for those on a high-fat diet — a model for a situation in which NAS supplements might be used to control weight. Because variations in diet have been shown to directly lead to changes in the populations of bacteria that occupy the gut, the authors examined whether these bacteria were responsible for the metabolic changes that they observed. And, indeed, when they used antibiotics to deplete the gut bacteria, they found that this eliminated NAS-induced glucose intolerance in mice fed either diet.

Let me summarize, having read all three articles when this came out:

• all three artificial sweeteners actually raise blood sugar levels.
• this is caused by a change in gut bacteria in the test animals.

Now for the dumb questions:

• will drink makers in the UK, to save tax money, reduce the amount of sugar in their products, and adding artificial sweeteners instead?
• are many of us already doing this to ourselves, e.g. with ™ Coke Zero, and other ‘sweetener’ choices?

and finally,

• Nature is a UK-produced science journal, actually one of a large family of top-rated science journals. Is the UK bureaucracy unaware of the UK’s own research results?