Healthy Soft Drinks: The Sugar in 19 UK Drinks

TL;DR

• Sugars per 100 ml is the number that decides it, and the only one that compares a can with a 1.5 L bottle. Five grams is where the UK sugar levy starts.
• An adult's daily limit for free sugars is 30g. A cola sits at 10.6 g per 100 ml.
• Approved sweeteners are safe, says the NHS. Whether they help with weight long term is disputed.
• Sugar-free fizzy drinks count towards your daily fluid, and they are still acidic.

A healthy soft drink, in the sense most people mean it, is one with little or no sugar per 100 ml, made from things you are happy to drink, and drunk in a way that is kind to your teeth. Water is still the benchmark. The rest is a matter of degree, and the back of the pack tells you most of it, provided you read the per-100 ml column and not the one for the bottle.

This article is general information about drinks, labels and UK guidance. It is not medical advice, and it does not describe what any drink sold on this site does. If you have a medical condition or take any medicine, speak to a GP or pharmacist before changing your diet.

What counts as a healthy soft drink?

Sugar per 100 ml, first, because it is the only thing on the label with a national limit behind it. The other two tests, the ingredients list and how acidic the drink is, are judgement calls you make yourself.

What is a soft drink?

A cold drink with no alcohol in it, as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary has it. UK law is fussier: under the Finance Act 2017, a soft drink is a beverage of "an alcoholic strength not exceeding 1.2%". It is a tax definition rather than a nutritional one, which is why tonic water, cola and sparkling apple cider vinegar sit in the same box.

What are free sugars?

The ones the guidance asks you to cut down on. The NHS counts any sugar added to food or drink, plus the sugar in honey, syrups and unsweetened juices, which catches people out. Sugar in milk and whole fruit does not count.

An adult should have no more than 30 g of free sugars a day, roughly seven sugar cubes. Children aged seven to ten should have no more than 24 g, and four to six-year-olds no more than 19 g.

What is the healthiest soft drink?

Water, still or sparkling. After that the ranking is simply the sugar figure, descending:

1. Water, still or sparkling. The only thing to weigh is the mild acidity of the carbonation.
2. Unsweetened flavoured sparkling water, where fruit extract does the work.
3. Zero-sugar drinks. Some manage it with approved sweeteners and some without; the ingredients list tells you which.
4. Lower-sugar drinks, under 5 g per 100 ml.
5. Mid-sugar drinks, 5 g to just under 8 g.
6. Full-sugar drinks at 8 g and above.

Those cut-offs happen to be the sugar levy bands, which makes them easy to remember, though the levy is a tax threshold rather than a nutrition one.

That ranks categories rather than brands, and where you draw your own line on sweeteners is a matter of taste. Tea and coffee count too, so long as you leave the sugar out: the NHS treats water, lower-fat milk and any sugar-free drink as daily fluid.

How much sugar is in popular UK soft drinks?

Anywhere from nothing to 11 g per 100 ml, a wider spread than a shelf of similar-looking bottles suggests. The NHS puts it in cubes: a can of cola can hold as many as nine, more than an adult should have in a day.

The figures come from brand nutrition pages, or a retailer listing of the pack's own panel where a brand publishes none, all taken on 28/08/2026. Recipes change, so trust the can in your hand. We publish this page and make one of the 19 drinks in it, marked "ours".

The 330 ml column is arithmetic, not a serving: the per-100 ml figure times 3.3, rounded to the nearest gram, so a mixer and a smoothie read on the same basis. It is blank for the shot, the tonics and the kefir, which nobody drinks in that quantity, and the bottom five rows all sit below the 0.5 g per 100 ml threshold for the authorised "sugars-free" claim, so read them as one group.

What do the sugar tax bands tell you at the shelf?

That someone has already done the arithmetic. Government guidance sets the entry point for the Soft Drinks Industry Levy at "at least 5 grams (g) of sugar per 100 millilitres (ml)" for a drink that has had sugar added in production, with 8 g or more attracting the higher band.

There is a gap in it. A drink with no added sugar falls outside the levy however much sugar it contains, so a juice at 10 g per 100 ml is not liable, even though the NHS counts those sugars as free sugars. The levy is a tax, not a nutrition label.

It has moved the market. Announced in March 2016 and in force from 06/04/2018, it gave manufacturers a financial reason to reformulate. Scarborough and colleagues, in PLOS Medicine in 2020, found the share of drinks above the lower threshold had dropped 33.8 percentage points by February 2019. A year later Pell and colleagues reported in the BMJ that households were buying the same volume but taking home about 30 g less sugar a week. Industry figures now put more than seven in ten soft drinks sold here in the low or no-calorie category.

It is not finished. The government announced on 25/11/2025 that the entry point will fall to 4.5 g and that pre-packaged milk-based drinks with added sugar will lose their exemption, though no start date is published.

Are diet soft drinks bad for you?

Not according to the bodies that assess them. The NHS position is that "all approved sweeteners are considered a safe and acceptable alternative to using sugar".

The argument is about weight. In May 2023 the World Health Organization concluded that "replacing free sugars with NSS does not help with weight control in the long term", NSS being the trade term for the sweeteners in a diet drink. Britain's Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition read the short-term trials more warmly in April 2025, reporting that in short-term trials adults using more sweetener had lower body weight and BMI than those using little or none, with no advantage over plain water. Neither body says diet drinks cause weight gain, and neither offers them as a solution.

What gets forgotten is the acid. Fizzy drinks are linked to enamel erosion because of it, whether they contain sugar, sweeteners or nothing at all, and the NHS is explicit about that. Some people would also rather not drink sweeteners, which is a preference rather than a finding, and the label settles it: organic standards ban aspartame.

Do soft drinks dehydrate you?

No, on the evidence of the one proper test of it. Maughan and colleagues, in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2016, gave volunteers a range of drinks and measured how much fluid they passed over the next four hours. Cola and diet cola came out no different from water, and nor did tea, coffee, orange juice, sparkling water, lager or a sports drink. Only rehydration solution and milk beat water.

Everyday guidance agrees. The NHS suggests six to eight glasses a day and counts sugar-free drinks, tea and coffee towards the total. The British Dietetic Association is firmer, 2000 ml a day for men and 1600 ml for women, and notes that caffeine's small dehydrating effect is more than covered by the water it arrives in. Its caveat is sugar rather than water: drinks with added sugar should be occasional and small, juice and smoothies held to one small cup a day.

What makes soft drinks fizzy?

Carbon dioxide, pushed into the liquid under pressure. The Royal Society of Chemistry describes the simplest method as injecting the gas straight into the drink, which forms carbonic acid and leaves the liquid holding more gas than it could normally carry. Open the can, the pressure drops, the gas escapes, and you get bubbles.

Does fizz damage your teeth?

A little, and sugar-free versions are no exception, because it is the carbonic acid at work rather than the sugar. The Oral Health Foundation lists fizzy drinks, diet and sugar-free included, among the acids that soften enamel.

Its advice is easy to live with: keep acidic food and drink to mealtimes, use a straw, swallow rather than hold a mouthful, finish with milk or cheese, and give it an hour before you brush. The same goes for apple cider vinegar drinks, since vinegar is acidic too and the Foundation names it on the same page. There is more in apple cider vinegar side effects.

Which UK fizzy drinks are sugar-free?

Sparkling waters, zero-sugar colas and lemonades, some kombucha, and sparkling apple cider vinegar drinks. The first two are straightforward and both sit in the table above. The phrase itself has a legal meaning: the GB nutrition and health claims register permits "sugars-free" only below 0.5 g of sugars per 100 ml, so a drink sold on being light or low in sugar does not automatically qualify.

Kombucha and kefir are far less predictable, and only the label will tell you. Remedy's Raspberry Lemonade lists no sugars at all, Lo Bros' Cola Low Sugar under 0.5 g, and Equinox Original 3.0 g from the cane sugar it is brewed on. Biotiful's kefir lists 3.7 g, though that is milk sugar rather than free sugar. Whether any still carries live cultures depends on brand and process: the Kombucha Brewers International code treats pasteurisation as applied to kill organisms and stop fermentation in the bottle, and requires the label to say so.

Sparkling apple cider vinegar drinks belong here because they are sharp rather than sweet, so they can be built without added sugar at all, though percentages and ingredients vary by brand. Ours are Activate, Defence and Metabolism, and all three list under 0.1 g of sugars per 100 ml. More on the category in apple cider vinegar drinks.

What can you drink instead of alcohol?

Something bitter, sharp or aromatic, served long over ice in the glass you would have used for the alcoholic version. That is the shape a good adult soft drink takes, and it is why bitter and sour hold up across an evening where sweet does not.

The audience is large. Alcohol Change UK counted 17.5 million Britons, close to a third of adults, planning a dry January in 2026, and a YouGov survey for the Portman Group that January put 36% of adults on low and no-alcohol drinks regularly or occasionally.

Watch the mixer, where the sugar usually hides: the two tonic waters in the table are nearly 4 g per 100 ml apart. For something worth making at home, see an apple cider vinegar drink that tastes good.

How do you stop drinking sugary soft drinks?

By swapping rather than stopping, and letting the label decide. NHS advice amounts to trading sugary drinks for diet, sugar-free or no-added-sugar versions, a lower bar than going without. Four things help:

1. Read the per-100 ml line, and use 5 g and 8 g as your markers.
2. Count juice and smoothies in, because the NHS counts their sugars as free sugars.
3. Go down a step at a time: full sugar to mid, mid to zero, zero to unsweetened.
4. Keep cold sparkling water in the fridge, which replaces a good deal of what the sugar was doing.

Common questions

Are "prebiotic" sodas low in sugar?

Some are and some are not, so judge them as you would anything else. Hip Pop's Tropical Peach lists 2.6 g of sugars per 100 ml from fruit juice, a fibre blend of tapioca, acacia and guar, and apple cider vinegar. This article makes no assessment of what added fibre does; on sugar alone the category sits mid-table.

What is a fermented drink?

One made by letting microbes turn sugar into something else. Kombucha, kefir and vinegar all qualify: in vinegar, yeasts turn the natural sugars to alcohol, then acetic acid bacteria turn that alcohol into acetic acid. Fermentation is a production method, not a nutrition claim, and how much sugar survives it varies enormously, as the table shows. For the difference between vinegars, see apple cider vinegar vs white vinegar.

About ApealWörld. ApealWörld makes organic sparkling soft drinks in cans, made with 4.5% organic apple cider vinegar and botanicals. There are three: Activate (lemon and mint), Defence (organic ginger) and Metabolism (cinnamon, clove and vanilla), plus a Starter Pack with all three. Each can lists sugars at less than 0.1 g per 100 ml (labelled zero sugar) and 5.2 g of carbohydrate per 100 ml, with no artificial sweeteners and no artificial preservatives. The drinks are pasteurised and are not sold as a source of live cultures. The range is certified organic by the Soil Association and holds a Great Taste 2024 award. The taste is sharp and dry, closer to a bitter mixer than a lemonade, which is how founder Salka Backman wanted it when she started making the drinks at home. Shop the range, or read more on the Learn about ACV page.

Sources

1. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, "soft drink". https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/soft-drink
2. Finance Act 2017, section 26, legislation.gov.uk. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/10/section/26
3. NHS, "How does sugar in our diet affect our health?" Adults no more than 30g of free sugars a day (about 7 sugar cubes); 24g at ages 7 to 10; 19g at ages 4 to 6. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-sugar-in-our-diet-affect-our-health/
4. HM Revenue & Customs, "Check if your drink is liable for the Soft Drinks Industry Levy", updated 25/03/2026. Lower band "5g or more and less than 8g per 100ml"; higher band "8g or more per 100ml". https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-your-drink-is-liable-for-the-soft-drinks-industry-levy
5. HM Treasury, "Soft drink levy extended to protect children and improve health", 25/11/2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/soft-drink-levy-extended-to-protect-children-and-improve-health
6. HM Treasury, "Soft Drinks Industry Levy comes into effect", 06/04/2018. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/soft-drinks-industry-levy-comes-into-effect
7. Scarborough P, Adhikari V, Harrington RA, et al. "Impact of the announcement and implementation of the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy on sugar content, price, product size and number of available soft drinks in the UK, 2015-19: A controlled interrupted time series analysis." PLOS Medicine 2020;17(2):e1003025. Proportion of drinks above the lower levy threshold fell by 33.8 percentage points (95% CI 33.3 to 34.4, p < 0.001) by February 2019. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003025
8. Pell D, Mytton O, Penney TL, et al. "Changes in soft drinks purchased by British households associated with the UK soft drinks industry levy: controlled interrupted time series analysis." BMJ 2021;372:n254. One year after implementation, volume purchased unchanged; sugar in those drinks "30 g, or 10%, lower per household per week" (precise estimate 29.5 g, 95% CI 3.1 to 55.8 g). https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n254
9. British Soft Drinks Association, Annual Industry Insights Report (2025 data), as reported by Food Manufacture, 22/07/2026: "more than seven out of every 10 soft drinks sold in the UK were low- or no-calorie products". The BSDA site could not be retrieved, so the trade-press report is cited. https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2026/07/22/uk-soft-drinks-saw-record-value-in-2025-despite-global-challenges/
10. NHS, "Are sweeteners safe?", reviewed 20/02/2023. Also the source for the statement that carbonated drinks are associated with dental erosion regardless of whether they contain sugar or sweeteners. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/are-sweeteners-safe/
11. World Health Organization, "WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control", 15/05/2023. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-05-2023-who-advises-not-to-use-non-sugar-sweeteners-for-weight-control-in-newly-released-guideline
12. Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, "SACN statement on the WHO guideline on non-sugar sweeteners", April 2025: higher NSS consumption by adults "led to lower body weight and BMI" against little or none in short-term randomised trials, and no effect against placebo or water. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67ea97b3ea9f8afd8105627d/sacn-position-statement-on-non-sugar-sweeteners.pdf
13. NHS, "Water, drinks and hydration", reviewed 17/05/2023. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-guidelines-and-food-labels/water-drinks-nutrition/
14. British Dietetic Association, "Fluid (water and drinks)" Food Fact Sheet: 2000 ml a day for men, 1600 ml for women. https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/fluid-water-drinks.html
15. Maughan RJ, Watson P, Cordery PAA, et al. "A randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status: development of a beverage hydration index." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2016;103(3):717-723. Cumulative urine output at four hours after cola, diet cola, tea, coffee, orange juice, sparkling water, lager and a sports drink "not different from the response to water ingestion". https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/103/3/717/4564598
16. Chapman K, "The chemistry of fizzy drinks and the perfect pour", Royal Society of Chemistry Education. https://edu.rsc.org/everyday-chemistry/what-makes-soft-drinks-fizzy/4021318.article
17. Oral Health Foundation, "Dental erosion". Lists fizzy drinks including diet and sugar-free versions, and vinegar, among acidic causes; advises mealtimes, a straw, swallowing quickly, finishing with milk or cheese, and waiting an hour before brushing. https://www.dentalhealth.org/dental-erosion
18. Oral Health Foundation, "Acidic foods and drinks: what you need to know". https://www.dentalhealth.org/acidic-foods-and-drinks-what-you-need-to-know
19. Alcohol Change UK, "UK brings a Jan-do attitude to better health and wellbeing in 2026", December 2025: "17.5 million, almost one in three (32%)". https://alcoholchange.org.uk/blog/uk-brings-a-jan-do-attitude-to-better-health-and-wellbeing-in-2026
20. The Portman Group / YouGov, "YouGov survey shows continuing demand for Low and No-Alcohol drinks", 06/01/2026 (n=2,138, fieldwork 24-25/11/2025). https://www.portmangroup.org.uk/yougov-survey-shows-continuing-demand-for-low-and-no-alcohol-drinks-as-more-uk-adults-choose-moderate-consumption/
21. Soil Association, "What is organic food?" Organic standards ban aspartame. https://www.soilassociation.org/take-action/organic-living/what-is-organic/
22. Great Britain Nutrition and Health Claims (NHC) register, gov.uk, spreadsheet updated 19/05/2026, Nutrition_claims sheet: a "sugars-free" claim "may only be made where the product contains no more than 0,5 g of sugars per 100 g or 100 ml". https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/great-britain-nutrition-and-health-claims-nhc-register
23. Kombucha Brewers International, "Kombucha Code of Practice" (version 3.0). https://kombuchabrewers.org/kombucha-code-of-practice/
24. Lo Bros Kombucha Cola Low Sugar, nutrition panel via Ocado. https://www.ocado.com/products/lo-bros-kombucha-cola-low-sugar-445225011
25. Dash Water, nutritional information (help centre). https://dash-water.gorgias.help/en-US/articles/nutritional-information-84267
26. Product and retailer pages used in the sugar table, all fetched 28/08/2026: Coca-Cola Original Taste, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Diet Coke and Fanta Orange (coca-cola.com/gb); Red Bull Energy Drink (redbull.com/gb-en); Innocent Strawberries & Bananas (tesco.com); MOJU Ginger Shot (mojudrinks.com); Sanpellegrino Aranciata (sanpellegrino.com/uk); Fever-Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water and Refreshingly Light (fever-tree.com/en-gb); Fentimans Rose Lemonade (fentimans.com); Biotiful Kefir (biotifuldairy.com); Equinox Kombucha (equinoxkombucha.com); Hip Pop (drinkhippop.com); R Whites Lemonade and Remedy Kombucha (ocado.com); Volvic Touch of Fruit (volvic.co.uk); Dash Water (dash-water.com); ApealWörld (acvdrink.com).