Re: Lateral Thinking
Total energy content matters, and there is evidence accumulating on the bad effects of a high-carb, low-fat, diet. There's a clear correlation, and there has been some pretty smart testing done to tease out the direction of causality. There are a lot of diet fads which go to extremes, based on slight evidence, and they go bad. The big change I have seen is the rise of "energy" drinks, and Irn-Bru might just be exotic enough to sell for some of the same reasons. A sugar cut isn't a bad thing, but whenever somebody goes for something obvious and simple, I suspect they are wrong.
I don't know why people have this idea that Irn-Bru is unknown in England. Maybe they live so far south that they get their info from the French.