When milk tea meets health: Can you have both milk tea and health?

Milk tea has long become one of the indispensable drinks for young people today. Walking in the streets and alleys, you can always see several young people holding various kinds of milk tea. They are of different genders, ages, and occupations, but their love for milk tea is extremely similar. There are even many people who say that they want to "live on milk tea to prolong their lives."

Although we understand that everyone likes to drink milk tea, when it comes to health, we have to consider a realistic issue: Can milk tea and health be achieved at the same time?

As the name suggests, milk tea is made up of "milk" and "tea". But whether the "milk" is real milk is another matter. Nutritionist Tian Xue once wrote an article on the "Dingxiang Doctor" platform, in which she mentioned that the silky taste of milk tea mainly comes from evaporated milk, which is obtained by evaporating the water from milk[1].

Although evaporated milk is richer, the production process is complicated and the cost is relatively high. For cost reasons, merchants began to add non-dairy creamer to milk tea. Although the milk tea obtained in this way tastes very similar to that made with milk, it is extremely unhealthy.

In the article "When Milk Tea Meets Health", the author mentioned that the biggest hidden danger of non-dairy creamer to human health is trans fatty acids. Although the content of trans fatty acids in milk tea has been reduced with the advancement of technology, this ingredient still increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cognitive impairment, and even affects the development of children's nervous system.

A recent study by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research shows that trans fatty acids can effectively prevent heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases by reducing cholesterol levels. In addition, trans fatty acids can increase the viscosity and cohesion of human blood, which can easily lead to the formation of blood clots. This is even more harmful to the elderly with fragile blood vessel walls.

In terms of cognitive impairment, many studies have shown that people with poor eating habits in their youth are more likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease in old age. Trans fatty acids have a resistant effect on a type of cholesterol that can promote human memory.

In addition to these hazards, the most obvious harm caused by milk tea is probably obesity. I believe that many people who want to lose weight should know that trans fatty acids are not only difficult to be digested by the human body, but are more likely to accumulate in the abdomen, leading to obesity. People who like to eat fried snacks such as French fries must have a deep understanding of this, because these fried foods also contain a large amount of trans fatty acids.

Of course, the harm caused by milk tea is not limited to trans fatty acids. In 2019, the Shenzhen Guangming District Consumer Council also commissioned the Shenzhen Quality Consumption Research Institute to conduct a comparative test on 10 commercially available brands of pearl milk tea[2]. Although trans fatty acids and sweeteners were not detected in the milk teas tested, caffeine, which excites the central nervous system, was detected in all of them, with an average content of 258 mg/kg.

You should know that the caffeine content of a cup of American coffee is only about 108 mg. If consumers consume too much of this milk tea, it is very likely to experience adverse effects such as palpitations and insomnia.

Although there are more and more milk tea shops now, and the flavors of milk tea are endless, I still hope that everyone can understand the impact of milk tea on our body. Here I would also like to remind everyone that if you can quit, it is best to quit. If you can't, please drink less.

References:

[1] Peng Danni, Qiu Guangyu. When milk tea meets health[J]. Food Industry, 2021(3):4.

[2] Zhang Xu. Beware of the health "traps" in milk tea[J]. Chinese Medicine Health and Wellness, 2020, 6(2):3.