EasyWay, Chatime, Gong Cha. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a phenomenon brewing Down Under – bubble tea.
Also known as pearl or boba tea, the drink has enjoyed popularity in Southeast Asia since the 1980s. But the trend has picked up in Australia and these brightly-coloured beverages are now bubbling up, well, everywhere.
Which begs the question… what even is bubble tea? Is it a beverage? Or a dessert? And most importantly, is it any good for you? Here’s what it boils down to.
Sugary syrups.
Bubble tea comes in flavours that suggest fresh fruit and healthy herbal infusions. Yet the flavours usually come from syrups, which contain oodles of sugar. While some syrups do contain real fruit, it’s juiced and concentrated into a fructose-y concoction.
Drinking that much sugar at a time could make your blood sugar levels spike and put extra pressure on your liver. And, for the record, you can ask for less syrup or none at all… but then you’re kind of just drinking really expensive plain tea!
Shocking toppings.
One of the biggest attractions of bubble tea is the pearls. Made from tapioca, these chewy balls that collect at the bottom of your cup are usually soaked in brown sugar or syrup. You can also choose a fruit jelly topping, which unsurprisingly is also full of the sweet stuff!
What are you really drinking?
One of the biggest concerns we have is that you don’t really know what you’re drinking. We contacted popular bubble tea companies here in Aus and nobody could tell us the ingredients, how much sugar they contained or even where they came from. Yet we found that American bubble tea had up to 35 teaspoons of sugar per drink.
Bubble tea has been also been hit with quite a few contamination scandals over the past few years. In one instance, a chemical plasticizer and carcinogen was found in Taiwanese juice syrups, which may have been exported to shops around the world. That worries us!
What to drink instead?
In our opinion, bubble tea is not really a healthy option and should be given a wide berth. Looking for a healthier tea? Our Infused Iced Green Tea recipe can be tweaked to suit your tastebuds. And the blueberries are just like pearls!
Did you know how much sugar was in bubble tea?
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