The Main Reason Why Bubble Tea is Addictive & It’s Not Due to the Pearls

By
George Yang
-

Last Updated on 2024-06-02 , 9:20 am

I’m 101% certain that you, or at least 50% of your friends, are addicted to bubble tea.

After all, numbers don’t lie: walk inside a mall and you’d have come across at least three bubble tea shops. It’s almost like the 90s, when a bubble tea shop was usually within walking distance from where you lived or worked.

But in the 90s, one cup of bubble tea could go for as low as $1.20; now, you’d be shook to find one that’s less than $3.

So why are we so addicted to bubble tea? Is it the pearls? The trend? The Instagram-worthiness?

Well, you’d be shocked to know that it’s none of the above.

If you prefer to watch a video about this, here’s a video for you:

Prefer to read? Here goes.

Ingredients Inside Bubble Tea

It’s rather hard to pinpoint on what ingredients there are in your cup of bubble tea, since different flavours have different ingredients.

But we’re going to use the OG version for this article: the original Taiwanese Bubble Milk Tea.

As the name says, it comprises milk, tea and tapioca pearls.

So there’s no doubt about this, right? It’s definitely the tapioca pearls!

No.

It might contain lots of empty calories and are so chewy that even cats in Yishun love it, there’s no science to prove that they’re addictive.

Instead, it’s something else.

Yeah, the tea in bubble tea.

Bubble Tea Has Caffeine

Lest you’re not aware, it’s not just coffee has caffeine.

Many drinks have them, too. Heck, even your favourite Coke has caffeine, though it’s not as much as a cup of coffee.

And here’s the thingy: Caffeine is addictive.

In fact, health professionals have speculated that Coke is addictive due to its caffeine: in a can of Coke, there’s about 32 mg of caffeine.

You might already know this, but do you know that tea could potentially contain more caffeine than coffee? It depends a lot on how you brew it.

But here’s the bad news: no matter how you brew it, a cup of bubble tea definitely has more caffeine than a cup of coffee, and about four times more caffeine than a can of Coke.

According to caffeineinformer.com, in which they tested ten samples of bubble tea, the amount of caffeine in each cup is about 100 to 160 mg, which average out to about 130 mg per cup.

For your info, a cup of coffee has about 100 mg.

Yeah, you’re actually downing heaps of caffeine as you drink your bubble tea.

But why’s caffeine addictive? Doesn’t it just make us feel awake?

For that, you’d have to understand a bit of science.

Our Brains Are Stupid

You see, the reason why caffeine works is that it looks like a chemical in our brain called adenosine. Our brain kind of creates adenosine and then binds it to a receptor. That’ll make us sleepy.

When you consume caffeine, it goes to your brain and because it looks like adenosine, it’s attracted to the receptor and binds with it. But because it’s not adenosine, you won’t feel sleepy.

But as time goes by, your brain thinks that you’re producing more adenosine (when in fact you’re drinking more caffeine), and so creates more receptors.

And that’s when you crave for bubble tea: you know that you’d feel better when you drink it, while in actual fact, your brain’s subconsciously telling you need it instead.

So yes, bubble tea kind of tricks your mind into thinking that it’s needed.

Pretty creepy for such an innocuous-looking drink, isn’t it?

And anyways, I bet my boss’ car that even after knowing this, you’re not going to quit drinking bubble tea #justsaying

Featured Image: 9nong / Shutterstock.com

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George Yang
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