Tea Blog

From time to time some publication will weigh in on the worst iced teas in all of history – or something to that effect. Perhaps I exaggerate just a bit, but the fact remains that all iced tea is not created equal. You might even go so far as to say that many iced teas contain more sugar and various other ingredients than they do tea.

A recent article from a New York paper didn’t pull any punches when it presented a list of 10 Iced Teas That Are Terrible For You. The names of these iced teas will be very familiar to anyone who’s ever set foot in an American grocery store or driven past a fast food outlet. As noted above, the “terrible” part of these delights seems mostly to be sugar and none of these beverages skimps on it. One 20-ounce bottled tea from a well-know tea company contains 55 grams of the stuff, which is just about 14 teaspoonfuls.

A while back Men’s Health magazine weighed in with a few thoughts in an article titled The 20 Unhealthiest Drinks in America – Exposed! In addition to noting that the Worst Drink in America was a milk shake from a certain well-known ice cream chain, they offered their opinions on the Worst Tea-Like Substance and the Worst Iced Tea. The honoree in the latter case was a bottled tea that contained a whopping 20 teaspoonfuls of sugar per 20-ounce bottle.

The article also noted that “your tea of choice should carry no more than 15 grams of sugar per 20-ounce serving.” I would go one step further and question why iced tea needs any sugar at all. This might seem like a downright heresy in those parts of the country (the South) where tea and sugar seem to be downright inseparable, but it’s not really that farfetched of an idea.

If the truth be told just about any tea that can be consumed hot can also be turned into iced tea. It stands to reason that the better the quality of the tea you’re using the better tasting the end product. I’ve been making my own homemade iced tea for quite some time now and I couldn’t imagine adding sugar to it – or drinking bottled iced tea, for that matter. But there are teas I’d rank as undrinkable whether hot or iced and I can see where the logical course of action might be to make them more palatable by adding something sweet.

If you’d like to start steering away from those sugary tea-flavored drinks, the best strategy could be summarized quite simply with the words time and tea. It’s likely to take some time for your overstimulated taste buds to get used to the subtleties of unsweetened tea, but you can speed this process along by using the best possible tea that you can get your hands on.

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.

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