---
title: "40 Years of Sugar-Free Beverages: A Carefully Orchestrated Conspiracy by Brands"
description: "Summer often arrives the moment you open the freezer. Gulping down a can of cola and then holding your head to feel the 'small but certain pain' of the chill is a joy unique to summer. Before the heat mode kicks in, merchants selling drinks and happiness have already engaged in fierce competition for the prime shelf space. In the past, carbonated sugary drinks, represented by Coca-Cola, could dominate with their stimulating sweetness. But as young people's tastes become pickier and more complex, the bottled beverage business has become challenging. Jianlibao..."
author: "爱喝快乐水的DT君"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2020-05-19"
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# 40 Years of Sugar-Free Beverages: A Carefully Orchestrated Conspiracy by Brands

> Summer often arrives the moment you open the freezer. Gulping down a can of cola and then holding your head to feel the 'small but certain pain' of the chill is a joy unique to summer. Before the heat mode kicks in, merchants selling drinks and happiness have already engaged in fierce competition for the prime shelf space. In the past, carbonated sugary drinks, represented by Coca-Cola, could dominate with their stimulating sweetness. But as young people's tastes become pickier and more complex, the bottled beverage business has become challenging. Jianlibao...

Summer often arrives the moment you open the freezer.
Gulping down a can of cola and then holding your head to feel the 'small but certain pain' of the chill is a joy unique to summer. Before the heat mode kicks in, merchants selling drinks and happiness have already engaged in fierce competition for the prime shelf space.
In the past, carbonated sugary drinks, represented by Coca-Cola, could dominate with their stimulating sweetness. But as young people's tastes become pickier and more complex, the bottled beverage business has become challenging.
Old brands like Jianlibao, Wanglaoji, and Nutrition Express have faded from sight, as if they belong only in childhood memories. Replacing them as summer favorites are freshly made teas like milk tea, as well as tea drinks and low-sugar or sugar-free carbonated beverages in packaged form.
Paradoxically, while young people are keen on high-sugar, high-calorie milk tea, they have abandoned sweet bottled drinks in favor of sugar-free, low-calorie products.
Have you ever wondered why this contradiction exists? What influences our choice of beverages? What kind of business lies behind this? In this issue, DT Jun will uncover the secrets behind these 'random' consumer choices.
**-01-
****Do people really love sugar?**
When summarizing today's beverage trends, we find that whether it's packaged tea drinks or carbonated beverages, it seems only those labeled low-sugar or sugar-free on the ingredient list get a chance to be favored.
The concepts of 'sugar withdrawal' and 'sugar cutting' popular on Weibo and Xiaohongshu have led some consumers to consciously reduce sugar intake, viewing it as the first step toward health. Data from China Commercial Industry Research Institute shows that under the health trend, 80% of Chinese consumers now pay attention to the ingredients of food and beverages, especially the sugar content in drinks.
(15.5% of participants said sugar-free drinks are more attractive to them, second only to seasonal limited editions. Source: Curiosity Daily)
In a convenience store randomly selected in downtown Shanghai, a considerable number of tea drinks and mineral water occupy the more central positions on the shelves.
**Carbonated drinks, long seen as a source of joy, are few in number and tucked away in corners.**
Today, the tea beverage market, representing health, is very active, especially in countries with tea-drinking habits. Japanese beverage giant ITO EN noted in its 2017 financial report that tea drinks held a share of over 939 billion yen (approximately 61 billion RMB).
Besides tea drinks, sugar-free carbonated drinks are also rising rapidly. FamilyMart's China merchandise department told DT Finance, 'FamilyMart's summer beverage SKUs will still be dominated by tea drinks and sugar-free carbonated drinks, and we will continue to add new products in these two categories this summer.'
In the eyes of convenience stores, replacing traditional cola and Sprite in the forefront of fashion are new-style carbonated drinks like soda water and fruit-flavored sparkling water.
The entire market, from top to bottom, emphasizes sugar-free and health. So, have consumers really lost interest in sugar? **This is clearly a false proposition.**
In the Douban group 'Delicious Drink Research Institute' with 110,000 members, we collected the 157 most popular posts in April. From the titles of these posts, we see that milk tea and milk are still the most concerned beverage types.
Online discussions about beverages also mostly revolve around freshly made tea drinks. Internet-famous brands like Heytea, Lelecha, and Naixue Tea create high-sugar, high-calorie drinks and also generate high-heat topics. For example, the 'Duorou Yangmei' (a fruit tea) hit the hot search list as soon as it was launched, and it was still hard to get a cup days after release.
And the sugar and calorie content of a cup of Duorou Yangmei is likely comparable to traditional sugary drinks.
**Consumers' health requirements for beverages seem to apply only to packaged drinks.** Carbonated sugary drinks, which have a bad reputation, often become the first 'revolutionary target' for consumers moving toward a healthy lifestyle. For the ingredients and sugar levels of freshly made teas, young people often show a magnanimous attitude of 'of course, we choose to forgive them.'
How did this contradictory situation come about? What fundamentally influences people's attitudes toward sugar?
**-02-
****Why do big companies promote sugar-free drinks?**
Just like the pursuit of healthy eating, it's hard to pinpoint when the wariness of sugar began. As daily diets become increasingly surrounded by industrialized food, people's fear of sugar has gradually grown.
Industrial production has led to a crazy increase in sugar production and consumption, but people have gradually discovered that refined sugar brings many health risks, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and so on.
Reducing or eliminating sugar has long been a top issue for food and beverage giants. Coca-Cola launched its first sugar-free product, Diet Coke, as early as 1982, and introduced Coke Zero in 2005. Both use artificial sweeteners like acesulfame and aspartame to achieve the 'health indicators' of sugar-free and low-calorie. In addition, Coca-Cola and its rival Pepsi have been acquiring and investing in smaller brands with healthier images, such as probiotic drinks, coconut water, sparkling water, and tea drinks.
But at the same time, traditional carbonated drinks still account for a significant portion of big companies' revenue. And many consumers have questioned that sugar-free cola doesn't taste as good as the original.
(Coca-Cola's 2019 annual report shows that carbonated drinks account for more than 50% of sales)
Finding and manufacturing better sweeteners is not an easy task. Are big companies' relentless efforts to launch various low-sugar drinks and reformulate their classic recipes really out of concern for consumers' health? Is this a profitable business?
In fact, **continuously launching low-sugar drinks under the banner of health is not only necessary but also highly beneficial for big companies.**
In today's health-conscious era, low-sugar and sugar-free drinks can almost become the new face of these beverage giants, helping them consolidate their market position in the following three aspects:
1. By offering healthier drinks, they can wash away the bad reputation of only producing 'junk food' and reshape a quality brand image that responds to the call of the times.
2. Introducing new growth points adds highlights to the brand's development story, thereby gaining greater support from the capital market. American food writer Michael Pollan pointed out that nutritionism allows the food industry to avoid being constrained by slow consumer population growth, and its depicted bright business prospects help companies meet Wall Street's expectations.
3. The book 'Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us' also offers a viewpoint: 'Whether it's low-tar cigarettes, low-calorie beer, or low-fat potato chips, these healthier products do not pose a threat to the main products. In fact, if these new products are developed properly, they can attract new customers to learn about the overall brand, **thereby increasing sales of the company's traditional high-calorie, high-fat products.**'
In other words, under the product line extension strategy, Coca-Cola's zero-sugar cola is likely to attract a group of new consumers and, in turn, promote the sales growth of original cola.
In 2016, Coca-Cola replaced its seven-year-old slogan 'Open Happiness' with 'Taste the Feeling.'
**This was the first time it officially announced that it would no longer emphasize how to make people happy.** Reflected in actual production and R&D, beverage giants have long stopped studying how to create sweeter drinks with richer taste, but instead find sugar substitutes and new raw materials (coconut water, sparkling water, milk, lactic acid bacteria) to develop lower-sugar products, and then use powerful marketing to convince consumers that their low-sugar drinks symbolize a healthy and trendy lifestyle.
This low-sugar, sugar-free strategy has been successful. In fiscal years 2018 and 2019, the sugar content of Coca-Cola's carbonated drinks decreased by 1.7% and 4.0%, respectively, while sales volume increased by 1.6% and 2.2%.
From 2017 to now, Coca-Cola's four main product lines have all seen growth in the Asia-Pacific region. The low-sugar strategy has made the carbonated drink line, which has the deepest pockets and the strongest push, the best performer. The benefits of the product line extension strategy are fully demonstrated here: launching appropriate new products at the right time can promote overall sales growth.
Thus, following the example of big companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the trend of de-sugaring packaged drinks has swept the globe, including the domestic market. When shelves are filled with low-sugar and sugar-free drinks, beverage manufacturers find it hard not to force themselves to keep up with global trends.
This is also why in recent years, we have hardly seen any innovation other than low-sugar drinks. And the sweet drinks developed by beverage companies a decade or even decades ago have gradually faded under the new wave. Even though original Coca-Cola, as a representative of carbonated sugary drinks, still has many fans, it can hardly represent a trend anymore.
**-03-**
**Sugar-free drinks have removed the joy component,**
**so let milk tea repay it double**
While the packaged beverage industry is vigorously carrying out the de-sugaring movement, the popularity of freshly made tea drinks leaves us with a huge paradox.
The reason is quite simple. **That is, human nature is inherently fond of sweets; our love for sugar is etched in our DNA.**
'If we don't think about the dietary habits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, it's hard to explain why we find it so hard to resist the sweetest, oiliest foods. At that time, they lived on grasslands or in forests, where high-calorie sweets were rare and always in short supply,' wrote Yuval Noah Harari in 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.'
In fact, it's only been a few decades since humanity fully escaped hunger. The memory of food shortages and famine still lingers in the human brain. Therefore, when faced with sweet foods like sugar that provide high calories, we often find it hard to resist.
Mintel's research report points out that although consumers say they want to eat healthier, only 16% are actually willing to pay a bit more for natural sugar substitutes when shopping. Compared to sugar, substitutes are more expensive but often less satisfying in sweetness. At the same time, many studies have questioned the healthiness of low-sugar drinks—**artificial sweeteners may alter the brain's recognition and feedback of sweetness, leading you to eat more sweets.**
So, when we buy low-sugar drinks from convenience stores and supermarkets, we easily fall into a self-satisfaction of 'I'm drinking healthily,' but then we are easily pleased by freshly made teas piled with fruits and sugar.
This doesn't seem to be a win-win situation for brands and consumers. We are obsessed with the 'health illusion' brought by sugar-free, while unable to suppress our love for sugar, which we convert into purchases of milk tea.
'We didn't used to think about what healthy eating was, because we thought everything we ate was healthy.' This quote comes from a respondent in the 2009 documentary 'Food, Inc.'
Faced with a myriad of choices, we don't seem to have become healthier. At the same time, we pay more costs to read nutrition labels, hoping to find those seemingly healthy products. And for delicious foods that are not healthy but can bring joy, we are also accustomed to paying more for them.
(Internet-famous milk tea often costs 30 yuan, yet a large number of consumers rush to buy this calorie bomb. Source: Heytea)
Can health and happiness coexist? This might be the biggest dietary dilemma for modern people. However, one thing we need to be clear about is that no matter how beautiful the slogans are, the modern food industry clearly cannot solve this problem for us yet.
What we should be wary of is perhaps not just sugar.
Source: DT Finance (ID: DTcaijing), Author: A Mi
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