Milk Tea Addiction | Hacker News Reader

Milk Tea Addiction

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

30 pointssaikatsg60 comments

This 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]"

Mmmmh. Not just bubble tea! From the article:

> 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. This inclusive definition is based on the emerging trend of combining ‘milk tea + other tea drinks’ in the present Chinese milk tea market, gradually becoming mainstream

Whenever I get bubble tea they ask how much sugar you want. One place offers it as a percentage, going up to 50%! But you can order it with none at all.

It doesn't necessary need to be sweet. Many bubble tea shops and chains in Taiwan gave the consumer the option to choose the sugar level. Most people probably choose some sugar but this was a nice surprise for me when I visited.

Just about every Bubble Tea place does this, including in North America. They will ask what sweetness level and what ice level you want.

I'm not so sure about Coke or beer being worse. That sort of tea generally has just as much sugar as a can of coke (and the synthetic creamer is probably just as bad as the rest of what's in a coke). Both are quite unhealthy for you. Beer is a different beast altogether with both positive and negative properties.

You're right - I think it's probably not as simple as I made it out to be. The sugar is the real poison in either Coke or bubble tea, my understanding is that sweetened drinks are just objectively bad for you across the board.

>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.

I'm not sure I buy into the addiction pathway theory, but there is definitely a correlation with total overall willpower (as it relates to delaying self-gratification), and the number of addictions a person is dealing with. For example, if a person is addicted to caffeine, nicotine, sugar and cellphone use, they have overall less willpower to resist temptation than someone only addicted to sugar and cellphone use all other factors being equal.

I 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?

> 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"

This 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.

From 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).

> Nearly 77 % of participants consumed milk tea at least 6-11 cups in the last year

Is that per day or the entire year?

per day, also very common in the Indian subcontinent. I sure think is addictive but symptoms attached to anxiety, suicidal etc - not so sure.

So you think tea itself is addicting? Milk tea is basically tea with some milk.

Black tea contains caffeine, so yeah.

and sugar - lots of it. Needs a control group that consumes equivalent quantities of sweet caffeinated soda.

https://www.animefanshop.de/de/snacks/getraenke/Afternoon-Mi...

Tat's milk tea, almost 40g of sugar per bottle

Then 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.

There are people who drink that much Diet Coke each day. I wonder if it's the same type of thing?

Per year, they used the following scale in the questions: "The frequency of milk tea consumption was measured by the item, “In the past year, what was the average frequency of your milk tea consumption? (Lee et al., 2022)”. Item was rated on a 10-point Likert scale, coded as 1 = 3 cups per day, 2 = 2 cups per day, 3 = 1 cup per day, 4 = 4–6 cups per week, 5 = 2–3 cups per week, 6 = 1 cup per week, 7 = 2–3 cups per month, 8 = 1 cup per month, 9 = 6–11 cups per year, 10 = Almost never drink milk tea." The distribution of drinkers is shown in the figure: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01650327230108...

What a strange way to phrase that statement. So what they really meant is that 23% of participants "almost never drink milk tea".

For the entire year, according to the full-text article. Only 0.5% reported having more than 1 cup per day. Further, don't discount the possibility that these people chose a high number to be funny or chose the wrong answer by accident.

You can find the full text article here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373353648_New_form_...

What'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?

milk has casomorphins which are opioids so I dunno not a stretch

Time to crack down on those poppyseed bagels.

... it's the sugar. It's always the sugar.

It's likely both. I would be vegan except I'm literally addicted to cheese.

Which 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.

sugar

It'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-f...

Fresh milk plus regular tea does not seem like it could be significantly more addictive than tea.

Yikes! 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.

I'm not addicted, I can quit any time I want. I just don't want to is all...

It’s basically a cultural analogue to a Starbucks frappe, or Dunkin Coolata, an extremely sugary drink that’s heavily marketed towards kids.

What have i just read?

those who self-sooth with {substance} found to have problems

news at 11

In the last year?! In England its not unusual to drink 6-11 cups in a day lol

Tea 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.

Milk 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.

People have been burning coal for heat for millennia, and ingesting its carcinogenic particles. Does that mean we should continue doing it?

That'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

Is this the same as Bubble Tea?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea

According to Google, it's literally tea made with milk.

bubble tea is mostly tea + milk so I'd assume so.

Bubble 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.

Isn’t that just the caffeine in the milk tea?

And sugar, and fat, if this is the milk tea I'm thinking of (aka bubble tea / boba tea)

It's often a social event too so could be related to the "addiction" of hanging out with friends.

lots 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-depr....

Yes. 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.

casomorphins

So would the wise policy in this case be to restrict people's access to milk products?

I had to look up what is milk tea. My only guess is this is parody or something related to casomorphins in milk tea?

11 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.

Per day? I intrpreted the number as 6–11 cups “in the last year”.

How can 11 cups per year be classified as an "addiction"? That's less than 1 per month! Something doesn't make sense here.

It's per year, not per day, according to the full text article:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373353648_New_form_...

China also bats strikes along with homeruns. Lately, I’ve been seeing more of the latter.

We need a safe space for this. We could call them tea rooms.

correlation doesn't imply causation

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