Cordial

Food · Drink · Food, Typed Supps

Diluted to taste, which is exactly the problem.

Stage by stage

Contact time (Enamel): Sipped through the day, the acid and sugar exposure never ends — the worst pattern for teeth.
Nothing to slow it (Stomach): No fibre, no protein, no fat, and at whatever strength it was poured.
Free sugar (Circulation): 8.4 of the 8.7 g per 100 g is added sugar, at label dilution.
Fructose (Liver): Handled hepatically, as from any free-sugar source.

Timing

The single most useful change is not the strength but the pattern: with meals rather than sipped continuously.

Time to effect

15–30 min: Glycaemic peak.
1–2 weeks: How long taste takes to adapt to a weaker mix.

Allergens

Contains: Sulphites. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Keto, Low-FODMAP.

Cost band

Cheap — roughly £2 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Sugar

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 34
Carbohydrate: 8.7g
of which sugars: 8.7g
Sodium: 5mg

Food vs. supplement

Cordial is the only drink here whose nutrition panel is a hypothesis rather than a measurement — it describes a dilution almost nobody performs. That makes it uniquely hard to account for in a food diary, and uniquely easy to underestimate.

Kitchen tip

Make it weaker each week rather than all at once. Sweetness preference genuinely shifts, and children adapt faster than adults do.

Common myth

“Cordial is fine — it’s mostly water.” In reality: At the dilution on the label it carries 8.7 g of sugar per 100 g, which is within a gram of lemonade. Poured by eye it is usually stronger than that. And because it is used to make water drinkable, it tends to be sipped all day, which is the pattern that does the most damage to teeth regardless of concentration. Diluting it further works, and taste adjusts within a couple of weeks.