It’s official. Scotland is now in mourning for the passing of their beloved Irn-Bru – gone, but not forgotten.
Back in March 2017 AG Barr announced that they’d be dramatically reducing the amount of sugar in Irn-Bru as a way to avoid the looming sugar tax.
While Coca Cola has responded to the tax by upping the prices of their bottles, AG Barr made the controversial decision to change Irn-Bru’s recipe, reducing the amount of sugar from 10.3g per 100ml to just 5g per 100ml.
The news caused major distress in Scots, who ran to stock up on the old flavour before it disappeared and created a petition begging AG Barr to rethink their decision.
But it’s too late.
AG Barr has officially stopped producing Irn-Bu with the old, super sugary recipe, and started producing their new lower sugar version. And with that, our hearts are broken (actually they’ll probably be in much better shape without all that excess sugar).
Amount of sugar in soft drinks per 100ml
Red Bull10.80g7up10.60gPepsi10.60gCoca-Cola10.60gIrn-Bru5.00gVimto4.70gFanta4.60gSprite4.60gLucozade Energy Orange4.50gDr Pepper3.60g
A big part of the backlash is AG Barr’s decision to make up for the reduced sugar with low calorie sweeteners including aspartame, a source of phenylaline.
Irn-Bru has responded to everyone’s concerns with a message on Twitter, telling everyone not to worry, and that the new Irn-Bru tastes great.
‘We know a lot of people are concerned right now about the changes to Irn-Bru,’ the brand wrote. ‘We understand. But we want to reassure you of a few things.
‘Irn-Bru will still be made with the same secret flavour essence as it’s always been. So it’ll still have its unique taste. This isn’t changing and it never will.
‘Irn-Bru will still be a sugary drink. We’re reducing the sugar, not losing it altogether. There will still be about four teaspoons of sugar in a can.
‘We’ve done a shed-load of taste tests on this. In these tests, 9 out of 10 people said we’ve got an excellent or good taste match.
‘We know we can’t convince everyone right now. But when you try it, we hope you’ll agree it still tastes amazing.’
More: Food
We’ll believe it when we taste it, mates (we’re trying to get our hands on some now and will update this article with our thoughts once we’ve given it a go).
We’ve reached out to AG Barr for their suggestions on how we should deal with these testing times, and will update this post if we hear back.
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