Why Some British Drinks Are Being Made Differently From Their US Counterparts

Picture buying a bottle of Fanta Orange in London and then buying the same drink in Chicago. They have the same name and nearly identical packaging. But check the nutritional facts from Coca-Cola's own U.K. and U.S. websites, and the difference is massive.

The U.S. version lists 73 grams of sugar per 20-ounce bottle. The U.K. version lists 4.5 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters. Crunch the numbers, and you'll find the American Fanta has nearly three times the sugar as its counterpart across the pond — 12.4 grams per 100 milliliters versus 4.5 grams. The thing is, the British version doesn't taste like it's missing anything. So what gives?

British drinks are built differently. It goes back to 2018, when a tax policy called the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) kicked in and started reshaping the country's beverage industry. The premise is simple: more sugar means more tax. Companies could've just absorbed the cost, but they didn't — they reformulated everything instead, swapping out chunks of sugar with artificial sweeteners like aspartame and stevia until the white sugar content dropped just below the tax threshold. This is why British drinks still taste like their regular old selves despite having way less sugar.

According to the policy, if your product contains more than five grams of sugar per 100 milliliters, you get taxed. But nearly every major brand on the market crossed it, which meant nearly everyone was paying up. And the policy's been tightening. In November 2024, the U.K. government announced plans to drop the threshold to 4.5 grams per 100 milliliters come January 2028, plus they're expanding the levy to cover milk-based drinks — bottled milkshakes, ready-to-drink lattes, and yogurts. Fresh-made cafe beverages and fruit juices are currently exempt, but everything else is fair game.

The tax has disrupted the British beverage industry in a big way, but it's working. According to BBC Science Focus, the two biggest soft drink producers in the country, Coca-Cola and Britvic (the U.K. producer for Pepsi products), have reduced overall sugar content in their products by 12% and 26%. Those reductions are expected to accelerate post-2028, meaning even more U.K. beverages will be reformulated with less sugar than their American counterparts, so next time you're at the store, that transatlantic Fanta comparison will be all the more striking.