[ssl232]

> On a particularly dumb note, ciders are limited by law to 0.64g per 100ml, or 3.2 volumes. Above that level they cease being ciders and instead become a sparkling wine. This is very important because natural cider is taxed at $0.226 per gallon, while sparkling wine is taxed at $3.30 or $3.40 per gallon depending on how the carbonation is added. This is a difference of roughly 30 cents per standard bottle, or $1.79 per six pack; enough of a difference to make similar products more attractive on the market place shelf.

I've seen this with chocolate too. The definition of chocolate in the UK and EU apparently requires one of the ingredients to be sugar, making sugar-free chocolate unable to be called chocolate unless it actually contains sugar. A friend of mine runs a keto chocolate company and he has to include a small amount of coconut sap to actually be allowed to market it as chocolate, even though he's trying to minimise carbohydrate content.

On the one hand, this seems a rather silly law, but on the other hand, how else do you define what a particular product is? Is it down to how it's marketed? Because then companies will just market it as something else that still hints it's the thing it's not, to avoid the tax and potentially gain more price-conscious customers.

[manarth]

  > "how else do you define what a particular product is?"
  > "companies will just market it as something else that still hints it's the thing it's not"

Through extraordinarily detailed discussions of its characteristics (e.g. when it goes stale, does it go hard, or soft?)

Jaffa "Cakes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status

[willyt]

That kind of exemplifies a very British problem that we have with very vague and increasingly slow bureaucracy. There’s often no clear cut answer to a question. I think it’s one of the reasons why we get the least amount of productive work done per hour in Western Europe. In our national mythology we think of ourselves as a low bureaucracy country compared to say France, but in actual fact in those countries you will quickly be told no if something is not permitted whereas here there’s a lot of equivocating until, after 6 months of uncertainty you reach a seemingly random semi compromise result.

[paleotrope]

That's an interesting observation.

[iandinwoodie]

After reading that, I have a new appreciation for the page’s opening sentence: “Jaffa Cakes are biscuit-sized cakes …”

[Ndymium]

Do you mean unsweetened instead of sugar-free (though that would sound... odd)? Because I know several brands of sugar-free chocolate in Finland that are sold as just that, sugar-free chocolate. They usually contain maltitol, aspartame, or some other sweetener.

[sleavey]

Possibly there needs to be something classified as a sweetener, yes, but the definition of "sugar-free" is apparently also anything with 0.1g or less sugar per 100g, so may it be that there is still a bit of sugar in the sugar-free brands you mentioned?

I'm no expert on this.

[Ndymium]

Looks like in the EU "sugar free" is limited at 0.5g sugar per 100g or ml of product: https://ec.europa.eu/food/safety/labelling-and-nutrition/nut...

I checked one and it contains 0.1g of sugar per 100g, but it's not added sugar, it's contained in the other ingredients. I don't know if it's possible to make it with absolutely 0g of sugar. But there is no separate ingredient "sugar" there.