Milk tea is good, but be wary of additives

In the blink of an eye, winter is coming. Drinking a cup of fragrant milk tea can add a lot of warmth to the cold winter. However, consumers must also be vigilant when buying milk tea. Nowadays, many cheap milk teas on the market are made up of fruity powder + creamer + tea powder. The cost is as low as 5 cents. Drink milk tea like this. Chemicals.

For the issue of additives in the milk tea industry, many media conducted related visits and investigations. In the survey, some businesses found that in order to save costs, the milk that should be added to the milk tea should be replaced with a creamer. The creamer can make the tea more fragrant and thus more attractive to customers, but the main component of the creamer is the non-dairy creamer. Creamer is made by hydrogenation of vegetable oil. It has the properties of saturated fatty acids, which can increase cholesterol, aggravate arteriosclerosis, and increase the incidence of cancer.

Wang Dingmian, director of the China Dairy Industry Association, said: “The ingredients of the creamer are actually non-dairy creamers, not milk powder or milk products. The content of theophylline and tea polyphenols in the tea powder is very low, and the drinks that are washed out cannot It is called tea, so the milk tea blended in this way should be categorized as a beverage. It should not be called the name of “milk tea,” and it should not be advertised under the name of “milk”. It is easy to mislead consumers into thinking that drinks contain milk. In fact, it has no nutritional value at all."

In addition to additives such as creamer and protein sugar, fruit powder, coconut fruit and black pearls are also essential ingredients for cup-tea milk.

When we buy milk tea at a tea shop, we can often see a variety of colorful bottles in the store. The powder in these bottles is fruit powder. The taste of milk tea actually depends mainly on fruity powder, and the taste of fruity powder is no less than 20 kinds. Whether it is strawberries, citrons, papayas, or apples, pineapples, it has its corresponding fruity powder, and its ingredients are mostly edible flavors and pigment. A bag of 1 kg of fruit powder, wholesale price ranging from 10 to 24 yuan.

Due to their different colors and different tastes, coconuts are very popular with young people. There are more than 20 varieties of coconut fruit and the price of bagged black pearls is around 10 yuan. They are made of guar gum, cyclamate, sodium saccharin, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate and other additives.

The black pearl powder added to milk tea is also very popular with young people because it has a very good taste. Black Pearl wholesale price of 5 yuan a bag, 2 pounds per bag, there are a few thousand. However, according to industry sources, those chewy "pearls" and coconut palm main materials are cassava starch, but artificial synthetic polymer materials have been added, and plastic is said to be white.

Obviously, a cup of “pearl milk tea” with aromas and colors is actually only a few powder blends. Chemicals such as creamer, plastic, Glauber's salt, and industrial magnesium chloride have become the main additives of some pearl milk teas.

As milk tea belongs to the catering industry, there is currently no industry and product standard, that is to say whether milk tea should contain milk, milk tea should be made with additives, the country has no relevant regulations. It is understood that the relevant state departments are stepping up efforts to standardize the catering industry market. In the future, the use of additives for product indications and the use of standard additives will become inevitable.

Experts suggest that if you buy fresh milk tea on the roadside, you must look at the store's brand, word of mouth, and the price of milk tea. Relatively speaking, the milk tea sold by the brand chain stores is more reliable, and we must be vigilant for those teas whose price is obviously lower than the average price of the market.