So, free refills on alcohol is okay, but not sugar???
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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You can have free refills your beer but not your alcohol free beer lol
You can have free refills of coke if a bit of alcohol is added...
It also says no added sugar, so they should be able to refill my vodka orange as much as they want because the sugar in orange juice is natural.
What a wonderful law.
TLDR:
The article states that this is only for sugary drinks. Non-sweet drinks are without any limits.
The notice reads: “Want Coca-Cola Classic? It’s one glass only.
“Based on new government laws, we’ve had to limit Coca-Cola Classic to one glass per customer.
“Still thirsty? Help yourself to any of our low-sugar fizzy Bottomless Soft Drinks.”
Under the new rules, any soft drinks that are low in sugar, for example ‘Zero’ alternative versions of most popular soft drink brands, can be drunk to one’s heart’s content.
I imagine that manufacturers of artificial sweeteners are in for a good time.
I don't fundamentally have a problem with this personally, but it's one more nail in the coffin full of nails that is the labour party. Their timing is impeccable, as ever.
Obesity is one more thing destroying the NHS, besides politicians gutting it for parts, and not for the sake of your freedom but for the sake of keeping people addicted to product.
I am failing to understand how come a choice of a person or bad parenting should be enforced. Like if a person wants to drink more of sugary drinks he likes, it is purely up to him, right? Or parents letting their children drink as much as they want. That shit is purely on a customer. Why would anyone regulate that? Focus on other things like littering, public smoking and drinking, drug selling. This hast to be one of the least important things to regulate.
Why the drinking and dug selling? That shit should be right there with the sugary drinks and snacks.
They can drink as much as they like. There's nothing stopping someone buying another drink.
Obesity is a huge public health concern that should be treated seriously and we should be steering our culture into making better health decisions.
Because 64% of adults are overweight or obese, with 26% being in the heavier classification. Thats a doubling in a decade. It’s costing the NHS £11 billion per year, and 13% of hospital admissions in 2023 were due to being overweight. The cost to the economy through sick days, reduced productivity and premature death is around £100bn per year.
Obesity now kills more than drinking or smoking in England and Scotland. There is already a bill in parliament for a phased total smoking ban.
Yeah turns out people were incapable of making good decisions on their own. Which is fine, unless you're asking everyone around you to pay for it.
Me and you (hopefully) both understand that that is not a human mistake rather than mega corpos profit-hungry strategies to hook people up on sugary drinks. Instead of limiting peoples choices, we should strafe to punish companies for their aggressive strategies towards customers. As simple as regulate how much actual sugar goes in a drink. People will complain and hopefully drink less if it is less sweet. The ones who would keep drinking would ingest less sugar. Win-win for humanity, lose-win for corpos. This new rule looks like is fighting the cause in a backwards direction.
Sugar in drinks was already regulated. It wasn’t enough.
Keir must have heard about some voters he’s not lost yet.
They should offer a loisence for 1 extra sugar drink if you finish your mushy peas.
Ol’ Nigel is chuckling his way in the front door, ffs. What is Labour doing?
An original consultation took place during 2018 as part of the previous government’s Child Obesity action, and legislation was finally passed in Parliament in December 2021.
The rules only came into force on Wednesday (1 October 2025).
The legislation was actually passed under the Johnson government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Johnson_ministry
I suppose that Labour could have passed a law canceling implementation, though.
Like the OSA
Tackling a major health crisis?
How long before coca cola launch an unsweetened version and Nandos lets your Bring Your Own Bag (of sugar)?
If you put sugar in granulated or powdered solid form into soda, it'll create a lot of convection points and the soda will rapidly foam up and lose a lot of its carbon dioxide.
You could use a sweet syrup instead.
This only affects sugary drinks, so their Zero and diet options should be exempt. Although a book I read recently was showing evidence that artificial sweeteners can also drive obesity, so we might start seeing things affecting those drinks too.
But yet people are still allowed to smoke?
A bill to phase out smoking is working through the parliamentary process at the moment. It will introduce a progressive ban so those aged 15 when it passes will never legally smoke, licencing for the sale of tobacco and vape products, and the power to ban smoking near hospitals and schools.
We tried that in NZ, then conservatives got in power and just pressed ctrl z. Their argument was that tobacco taxes provided more income than that lost to public healthcare, but that was just a boldfaced lie.
Conservatives are literally a cancer on society.
Banning near hospitals should be a good one. Beggars belief it’s not already a thing.
When I’ve been, there’s a no smoking sign in front of the entrance and several patients stood in front of it looking like death having either a giant vape or chain smoking.
It already is in Northern Ireland
It's not enforced though. A recorded voice will come over the tannoy and say "no smoking, something something" and everyone carries on with their day.
In order to be consistent they'll need to start charging tax per lump of sugar as well.
There already is a tax on sugary drinks
Yes... that is the topic of discussion. I'm just saying it's manifestly unfair if they apply that tax to refills of your cup at Nando's, but don't charge extra for each lump of sugar in a cup of tea.
Maybe now the UK will catch on to iced tea? Free refills!
As long as there's no sugar, because it's only sugary drinks being banned.
One 20 floz Arizona Ice Tea has 59g of sugar (2.95g per floz), one 12 floz Coca Cola has 37g (3.08g per floz).
If you think Ice Tea is somehow healthy, I got news for you.
59 / 37 = 2
it's double healthy
Unsweetened tea is a thing. Sugar free iced tea is a thing. Herbal iced tea is a thing.
No sugar tonight (in my tea)
Begone, devil.
Sounds like a good 'nudge' law - David Cameron would be proud
Well, yeah since Cameron was the one who introduced the legislation.
Please tell me it's just England and Wales please tell me it's just England and Wales
If customers are allowed to help themselves then it's totally unenforcible. It's not like the restaurants are going to police this and a sticker isn't going to deter anyone!
Not at all unenforcable. Just needs an RFID on the cup or on a token handed out by staff.
I was referring to the sticker deterrent method as outlined by the article but let's discuss.
So, every company selling sugary drink refills has to now spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on new cups or tags and the associated tech to make the system work for every outlet. Then, what if I buy a coke zero then decide I want a refill of full fat? Or, visa versa? Gets a bit complicated there.
They could also have a tap behind the counter for sugary drinks and refill taps with 'diet' versions accessible to patrons. But again that would mean installing another bunch of taps in every outlet.
Furthermore, who's going to be checking up on this, making sure restaurants are following the law? As it's not a safety issue it doesn't fall within the FSA's remit so there's literally no one checking up on this.
It's a virtue signalling nothing law. Sure, you can enforce anything if you throw money at it, but this is the UK. Currently scraping the barrel in the race to the bottom. If the sticker doesn't stop you there's not going to be any consequences.
Obesity is the biggest health crisis in Britain right now. This is a necessary step.
Yes, I forgot how obese people are famously terrified of stickers.
A far better way to tackle the obesity crisis would be to implement stricter laws around processed food additives, how food is labelled and priced, and educating people about their diet at an early age instead of this uninforcible nanny state nonsense.
They could, if they were serious about doing something, make it illegal to sell drinks with a high sugar content... Or make unhealthy food packaging unappealing like they did with tabacco products... Include healthy eating in the national curriculum...
This isn't going to change anything and makes the government look stupid.
Probably the best solution honestly... In chain restaurants that don't offer free refills, I quite frequently just take one anyway. Nobody ever stops me. If I asked they might say no, but I don't ask.
Pretty much no one will ever enforce it. It will be interesting to see what happens when some jobsworth does though.