> On a particularly dumb note, ciders are limited by law to 0.64g per 100ml, or 3.2 volumes. Above that level they cease being ciders and instead become a sparkling wine. This is very important because natural cider is taxed at $0.226 per gallon, while sparkling wine is taxed at $3.30 or $3.40 per gallon depending on how the carbonation is added. This is a difference of roughly 30 cents per standard bottle, or $1.79 per six pack; enough of a difference to make similar products more attractive on the market place shelf.

I've seen this with chocolate too. The definition of chocolate in the UK and EU apparently requires one of the ingredients to be sugar, making sugar-free chocolate unable to be called chocolate unless it actually contains sugar. A friend of mine runs a keto chocolate company and he has to include a small amount of coconut sap to actually be allowed to market it as chocolate, even though he's trying to minimise carbohydrate content.

On the one hand, this seems a rather silly law, but on the other hand, how else do you define what a particular product is? Is it down to how it's marketed? Because then companies will just market it as something else that still hints it's the thing it's not, to avoid the tax and potentially gain more price-conscious customers.