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Milk Tea Addiction
- thatxliner 3y agoIsn’t that just the caffeine in the milk tea?
- slothtrop 3y agoAnd sugar, and fat, if this is the milk tea I'm thinking of (aka bubble tea / boba tea)
- uoaei 3y agoIt's often a social event too so could be related to the "addiction" of hanging out with friends.
- londons_explore 3y agolots of sugar. A typical large bubble tea contains 11 spoons of sugar. The total recommended daily sugar consumption of foods and drinks is 7 spoons. And plenty of studies have linked excess sugar with depression [1] And I'm sure many people have more than 1 cup per day of bubble tea too. [1]: https://www.webmd.com/diet/what-to-know-about-sugar-and-depression#:~:text=It%20is%20important%20to%20note,causing%20you%20any%20health%20problems https://www.webmd.com/diet/what-to-know-about-sugar-and-depr....
- slothtrop 3y agoYes. Some vendors allow you to control the sugar content, at least. I had ordered a drink with "light" sugar once (1/4 of normal amount) and it still tasted plenty sweet to me, and probably still topped at 350-400 calories. I usually never drink my calories.
- spirit557 3y agocasomorphins
- febra_ 3y agoSo would the wise policy in this case be to restrict people's access to milk products?
- belltaco 3y ago> Nearly 77 % of participants consumed milk tea at least 6-11 cups in the last year Is that per day or the entire year?
- nf17 3y agoper day, also very common in the Indian subcontinent. I sure think is addictive but symptoms attached to anxiety, suicidal etc - not so sure.
- criddell 3y agoThere are people who drink that much Diet Coke each day. I wonder if it's the same type of thing?
- laeri 3y agoSo you think tea itself is addicting? Milk tea is basically tea with some milk.
- liotier 3y agoand sugar - lots of it. Needs a control group that consumes equivalent quantities of sweet caffeinated soda.
- ginko 3y agoBlack tea contains caffeine, so yeah.
- lm28469 3y agohttps://www.animefanshop.de/de/snacks/getraenke/Afternoon-Milk-Tea-Relax-von-Kirin-500ml-15362.html https://www.animefanshop.de/de/snacks/getraenke/Afternoon-Mi... Tat's milk tea, almost 40g of sugar per bottle
- laeri 3y agoThen its regular sugar addiction and not necessarily related only to milk tea. Milk tea does not need to contain sugar. Bubble tea chains usually give you the option to choose. Also when I visit indian friends some of them usually refrain from putting a lot of sugar into it, not bubble teavin this case but still milk tea.
- jstanley 3y agoI honestly can't tell if this is a parody? Is it an allegory for other addiction studies? Or are they genuinely worried about kids drinking tea with milk in it?
- lm28469 3y ago> tea with milk in it "Milk tea" can be your typical british tea with a dash of milk, or a 750ml abomination that hits your weekly intake of sugar. It's like saying starbucks atrocities are "coffee with milk"
- amelius 3y agoIs this the same as Bubble Tea? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea
- itsoktocry 3y agoAccording to Google, it's literally tea made with milk.
- ketchupdebugger 3y agobubble tea is mostly tea + milk so I'd assume so.
- agloe_dreams 3y agoBubble tea, in the normal sense, is milk tea with tapioca bubbles. Generally, if you go to a Boba cafe that is more...authentic...you will see them list Boba and Milk Tea separately and they will ask for sugar levels at order time. This article is focused around China, though I would note that in the US, many Bubble Tea chains have taken to aggressively increasing sugar, some sizes and flavors top 100g of sugar.
- tfrutuoso 3y agoWhat have i just read?
- Devasta 3y agoI'm not addicted, I can quit any time I want. I just don't want to is all...
- mickeyk 3y agoFrom the paper, "Milk tea has gained worldwide popularity in the recent years (Wu, 2020). It refers to an umbrella term encompassing all beverages sold in milk tea shops, such as milk tea, fruit tea, floral tea, bubble tea, and others." So essentially "bubble tea" shops (but not limited to tapioca-based drinks).
- uoaei 3y agoWhat's their angle? They seem to heavily imply that milk tea causes those mental health issues rather than those mental health issues potentially encouraging sufferers to have at least something to enjoy in their day. The wording does not seem to acknowledge merely the correlation but implies causation. Food therapy, caffeine addiction, etc. is a well-known phenomenon, how is this any different?
- spirit557 3y agomilk has casomorphins which are opioids so I dunno not a stretch
- ynniv 3y agoTime to crack down on those poppyseed bagels. ... it's the sugar. It's always the sugar.
- uoaei 3y agoIt's likely both. I would be vegan except I'm literally addicted to cheese.
- laeri 3y agoWhich would mean people should be addicted to milk in general and not necessarily to milk tea only. Chain of causation might be inverted here as parent suggests.
- FrankoDelMar 3y agosugar
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spirit557 3y agoI had to look up what is milk tea. My only guess is this is parody or something related to casomorphins in milk tea?
- orbit7 3y agoIn the last year?! In England its not unusual to drink 6-11 cups in a day lol
- orbit7 3y agoTea is addictive though in a weird kind of way and it does make you feel a bit crap if you drink to much of it, but then so does coffee even more so.
- FrankoDelMar 3y agoIt’s basically a cultural analogue to a Starbucks frappe, or Dunkin Coolata, an extremely sugary drink that’s heavily marketed towards kids.
- 1-6 3y agoChina also bats strikes along with homeruns. Lately, I’ve been seeing more of the latter.
- throwaway98797 3y agothose who self-sooth with {substance} found to have problems news at 11
- joenot443 3y agoThis study is from China. The 'milk tea' being described here is the translated term for what we call bubble tea in the west. It's a sweet comfort drink, perhaps closer to a Starbucks order than the steeped tea which immediately comes to mind. It's not really good for you, but I'm quite sure Coke or beer are worse. I can only speak anecdotally here, but the bubble tea joints near my college were consistently packed, though mostly with solo customers. Lots of heads in phones. If there's anything to be gleaned from this study, my personal take is that pleasure seeking but spiritually lacking behavior (in this case, buying expensive sugary drinks very frequently) can correlate with depressive symptoms at a population level. I have no doubt one could draw similar conclusions from the many habits I've kept over the years. From Wikipedia - "In China, young people's growing obsession with bubble tea shaped their way of social interaction. Buying someone a cup of bubble tea has become a new way of informally thanking someone. It is also a favored topic among friends and on social media.[42]"
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago>If there's anything to be gleaned from this study, my personal take is that pleasure seeking but spiritually lacking behavior (in this case, buying expensive sugary drinks very frequently) can correlate with depressive symptoms at a population level. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Modern society is all about speed and convenience and entertainment, so people get used to craving something and getting it more or less immediately. We know sugar is addictive, and so is nicotine -- both are easily sated addictions and bring momentary comfort. Pile addictive social media on top and you have a population that is used to finding that next spark of joy/comfort/excitement immediately. Buddhism posits that "life is suffering" so these moments of comfort can be understood to salve the suffering a bit so we can then go out and endure more suffering for the good of each other. But when those moments of comfort become minutes or hours of comfort, we are no longer struggling against the suffering as much as we are trying to hide from it. When those moments of comfort become the most important part of the day, we are not on the right path. I fear this means that society on a broad scale is less durable than it used to be, which is why we have seen an increase in both suicide rates and escalating attacks between "opposed" groups. Toleration of groups which don't agree with you is a kind of suffering, yet this behavior is actively avoided due to the shallowness of social media interactions being taken to mean "interacting with someone = you agreeing with them" which leads to endless purity testing and spiraling relations between groups.
- febra_ 3y agoThis has to be a parody. I get that you can try to calculate some level of correlation, sure. But to jump straight to "aiding policy makers to restrict advertisement and access to" is making some insanely huge implications that haven't been covered at all in the study. Like the fact that milk tea (bubble tea) consumption might cause some of these symptoms. Let's not confuse causality with correlation here.
- keepamovin 3y agoIt's worth noting that what passes for milk tea is really tea with some kind of synthetic chemical creamer. If you want real milk you need to get "fresh milk tea". I suspect the addiction could be mediated by whatever chemicals are in these creamers, which have never seemed healthy. In the same vein the food science that created "hyper-palatable" addictive junk foods: https://nypost.com/2023/09/26/big-tobacco-created-our-junk-food-diet-and-obesity-epidemic/ https://nypost.com/2023/09/26/big-tobacco-created-our-junk-f... Fresh milk plus regular tea does not seem like it could be significantly more addictive than tea.
- galangalalgol 3y agoYikes! Is that why mixing earl grey and condensed milk never got me the same results? Is this true of all major chains? I could easily see myself becoming addicted to boba tea if it was available more widely, and for breakfast, which is when I actually want it.
- taylodl 3y ago11 cups of milk tea per day is pretty bad for your health - that's a lot of caffeine and a lot of sugar. Add that to a diet that includes a lot of white rice and I could see where it's a major problem. You would think the problem would be obesity and diabetes though, not suicides. But I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV.
- yuchi 3y agoPer day? I intrpreted the number as 6–11 cups “in the last year”.
- taylodl 3y agoHow can 11 cups per year be classified as an "addiction"? That's less than 1 per month! Something doesn't make sense here.
- elil17 3y agoIt's per year, not per day, according to the full text article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373353648_New_form_of_addiction_An_emerging_hazardous_addiction_problem_of_milk_tea_among_youths https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373353648_New_form_...
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- hi41 3y agoMilk Tea has been consumed for a millennia in many countries with none of the harmful effects being mentioned in the study. I am not sure why this is suddenly an issue now among youngsters in China.
- sdfghswe 3y agoPeople have been burning coal for heat for millennia, and ingesting its carcinogenic particles. Does that mean we should continue doing it?
- lm28469 3y agoThat's because you're talking about a different kind of milk tea. Coffee is mostly harmless but if you drink two large latte from starbucks per day you can be sure you'll wreck your body in no time
- orliesaurus 3y agocorrelation doesn't imply causation
- Havoc 3y agoWe need a safe space for this. We could call them tea rooms.