Brown Sugar Milk Tea With Pearls Is Unhealthiest BBT, According To Mount Alvernia Hospital

Brown Sugar Milk Tea With Pearls Has 18.5 Teaspoons Of Sugar

Bubble tea is a cherished concoction that Singaporeans won’t stop obsessing over.

Health experts are just as fixated in revealing the unholy recipes that make this beverage irresistible.

As Mount Alvernia Hospital has it, the copious amounts of sugar present in a cup of bubble tea are among the reasons why it’s just as bad as soft drinks and 3-in-1 instant coffees.

On 5 Jul, they released a nutritional report on bubble tea, delving into its ingredients and, to no one’s surprise, its high sugar content.

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Ready your heart, bubble tea lovers.

Apparently, brown sugar milk tea with pearls has the highest sugar content compared to 6 other flavours investigated in its report.

Brown sugar milk tea has 18.5 teaspoons sugar

Here’s the breakdown in the table.

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As you can see, Brown Sugar Milk Tea with Pearls dominates the ranking for most sugar content – 18.5 teaspoons – with Winter Melon Tea next in line with 16.

The rest are:

• Passionfruit Green Tea (8.5 teaspoons)
• Jasmine Green Tea with Fruits (8.5 teaspoons)
• Milk Tea with Pearls (8 teaspoons)
• Mango Green Tea (8 teaspoons)
• Avocado Tea with Pearls (7.5 teaspoons)

Not all toppings are equal

Here comes another episode of horror for bubble tea lovers — calories in toppings.

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Mount Alvernia reveals the calorie count for popular toppings:

• Coconut jelly – 76
• Ai Yu jelly – 45
• Herbal jelly – 57
• Pudding jelly – 89
• Aloe vera – 31
• Rainbow jelly – 71
• Red bean – 45
• Oreo – 116
• Oat cereal – 54
• Milk foam – 203
• Cheese foam – 160-200
• Tapioca pearls – 156
• White pearls – 42

Say it ain’t so.

New BBT ingredients exceed daily sugar intake

According to Mount Alvernia Hospital, bubble tea is a basic brew consisting of tea, milk, creamer, sugar, and tapioca pearls.

Then came an important question,

So what is its nutritional value, and how much of it should we be drinking?

The hospital found that a medium-sized bubble milk tea with pearls – 500ml of it – has 8 teaspoons of sugar and 335 calories.

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The larger size – 700ml – has 11 teaspoons of sugar and 469 calories.

Drink toppings are also ever-increasing. With new ingredients thrown into the mix like honey pearls and brown sugar syrup, it means a single drink would easily exceed the recommended sugar intake for adults per day.

Recommended daily sugar intake

Health Promotional Board’s recommends adults to take 8-11 teaspoons of sugar per day.

Kids and teenagers should consume even less, with the recommended intake at less than 5 teaspoons a day.

But all hope isn’t lost, as Mount Alvernia gave us sound advice for improving the nutritional content of bubble tea. Here are some of the important ones:

• Choose a smaller cup with lesser sugar – 30% and below
• Order a lower calorie topping or no toppings at all
• Ask for fresh milk (low fat or skimmed milk are better)
• Limit yourself to 1 or 2 bubble teas in a week.

Watch your diet, folks. All things, good or bad, should be consumed in moderation. Please be careful when drinking bubble tea too.

We’re sure incorporating regular exercise into your daily routine would help greatly, so you can enjoy that 1 cup of bubble tea in a week, guilt-free.

Featured image from Eatbook.