So, your way of forming your belief was to Google for "why do snacks taste different?" and then believe the first result that came up, which was a weird theory about penny-pinching big sugar megacorps. You then further perpetuated that theory by restating it, without giving your source.

You also threw in the statement "And this is coming from the US one of the sugar capitals" as if that made the weird theory any more credible. The fact that I had been discussing sugary drinks in the UK should make it more questionable whether anything that's happening in the US is even relevant to the discussion.

And my way of forming my belief was to attribute the difference in taste to the blinding obvious, namely that they've replaced the source of sweetness in a drink that's supposed to taste sweet as evidenced by the ingredients list on that particular drink's packaging.

Independent thought can sometimes be correct, and total bullshit can often be stated in a way as to include numbers and references.

Linguist oddity. Sweets is never used to refer to a drink in the US so your statements about "the war on sugar" appeared to apply to non-drinks.

If talking about non-drinks a tax on sugar in drinks is always not the answer. I didn't know why you made the leap and missed evaluating your phrasing to see why the expansion of complaint occurred.

I guess I assumed you were following the original post which was talking about sugar in general.

Honestly your independent thought was "I don't like Pepsi Max as much as a different drink" without listing the other drink or mentioning whether the store even offered alternatives.

Fundamentally I saw "I ordered a cola and didn't like that I got a low sugar one by default"

You then expanded on that independent thought to imply a lot of things that are not in fact dependant on that independent thought.

Remember you said "sugar drink = cigarettes" from a taxing standpoint