We’re Really Sorry, But Bubble Tea Is Garbage For Your Body

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The bubble tea craze is so real, and it’s been going strong since 2014. We have to admit, the stuff is pretty tasty. Though you could have guessed that bubble tea has virtually no nutritional value, you won’t believe how truly bad it is for your body. Yep, it’s garbage.

How garbage-ey is it? Well, enough to be temporarily banned from Singapore in 2013 for its outrageous sugar content.

At first glance, bubble tea doesn’t seem so bad. The components are just tea, milk and tapioca pearls. But the amount of sugar is what really hurts your body.

Let’s start with the tapioca pearls, which are boiled and saturated in sugar to give them their sweet and bouncy properties. Insider reports that each pearl adds between five and 14 calories to your drink, which means that a typical drink, which includes about a quarter cup of the pearls, is 100 calories more than without the pearls.

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Insider also says to consider how much sugar is added to the tea aside from just the bubbles. Unless you ask specifically for less sugar, the average bubble tea has over 50 grams of sugar and close to 500 calories. In case you didn’t know, 50 grams goes way beyond the recommended daily maximum amount for both adult men and women.

Yes, a bubble tea is a treat, but if you reach (and exceed) your daily recommended sugar limit just from one drink, you’ll also likely feel terrible in the short term. Don’t even get us started on the long-term effects of drinking one of these babies on a daily basis.

We know they’re good, but if you’re craving a bubble tea, think twice. It might not be worth the actual literal in the end.