I'd question or modify two of your otherwise very thoughtprovoking assertions
1. Detoxification via respiration; true of alcohol, but not of most other "toxins", which if soluble or metabolised to be soluble are usually excreted renally or transdermally.
2. Your evidence base for the assertion of an "anglosaxon" fan base for Vega is a bit weak. Firstly, define anglosaxon in this day and age. Maybe calling it as US and UK might be more relevant? I guess what you're digging at applies to me then. I hate Vega. So does Fruitbat, for example. I wouldn't like to make assertions as to who counts themselves as anglo-saxophone round here, but there are a number of others from the US/UK who don't seem to be keen on it either, so we're hardly outliers.
Assuming such a trend does exist though, the simplest explanation is one of supply, not of some cultural effect. Vega is made and widely distributed in the US, and it is imported into the UK. Elsewhere I think distribution is patchy.
But there is, nonetheless a very interesting point. It's a crude simplification, but essentially the makers would like to make us think that drinking Vega will make us turn into Brendan Brazier. Now most rational adults thinking on the adult level realise that isn't going to happen, obviously, but there is always a little bit of inner child which will associate drinking vega with the performance of a celebrated athlete such as Brazier. If that has a psychosomatic as well a nutritional effect on performance, does the athlete really care as long as there is an increase in performance? Does the trainer?
Until someone comes up with a study (or PubMeds me one) which shows that feeding athletes brown goo in plain boxes has a statistically significant different effect on performance than brown goo in boxes with Brazier's name and face on it is less efficient, I don't care either.
Still, none of this babble changes the fact that Vega tastes like smoky cat poo.
