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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

The boba tea result alone makes me want to never drink that again. Was a fun little treat while it lasted…

It seems noteworthy, but not commented that I can see (in the article), that the different samples of "Boba Guys Black Tea Pearls" have 20x variation in measured amount.

So what's up with that? (I have uninformed ideas...)

This seems to be the happening with other items and chemicals tested as well. Look at the results for DNP in Clover organic milk for example.

Further down, they explain the measurement errors involved:

" If you buy the same product twice, how much will chemical levels vary?

When we bought two samples of the same product, plastic chemical levels differed on average by 59%, calculated as Relative Percent Difference (RPD).

To test whether completely identical samples would show different levels of chemicals, we sent about 10% of our products in triplicate. This means we sent three copies of the product from the same batch – with matching lot number and expiration date – bought at the same store on the same day. We found that the triplicate samples differed less – on average by 33%.

Our lab’s quality control methodology lists 20% RPD as an acceptable margin of measurement error for duplicate samples, meaning if you tested the exact same sample twice, you could see up to a 20% difference purely due to measurement noise. Taking that into account, the RPD for two samples of the same product (not necessarily from the same lot) ranges from 39-59%. For samples with the same lot number and expiration date, the RPD narrows to 13-33%.

Within-product variability appears high, possibly because we are dealing with very small chemical concentrations measured in nanograms."

Yep, I saw that section. To my interpretation, these average percents are so much smaller than the variation seen, that it's basically /not/ addressing the outlier variations.

Perhaps plots would be better/less alarming than easy-to-cherry-pick tables, but I'm not expert on conveying this sort of data either...

In Taiwan, there was a huge scandal decade ago about this exact same issue — people discovered vendors were using plasticiser to make the boba jelly like.

Im sure most of the boba shops in the US import ingredients from Taiwan, so its not surprising here

It's really annoying that they only test one brand (Boba Guys), it's unclear wether other producers have better quality products.

Why did you ever drink it in the first place? A boba is 500g of diabetes packaged in 100g of trash. It's the worst idea ever.

Boba can be part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

So can smoking

No it can't. Type 2 diabetes is mostly genetic. I can eat as much Boba as I want and not get diabetes.

Source on type 2 being mostly genetic? All I've found is there is some link but not conclusive.

Also T2 is on the rise in young people. Have their genetics changed dramatically in the past few decades? Or has food?

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data-research/research/young-pe...

So interestingly it could be the two working together [1] [2]. T2 may be on the rise partially to epigenetic changes.

[1] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/link-epigenetics-type-2-d...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10258626/

lol no

It's true. My mother has been obese for most of her life but isn't even pre-diabetic. Her diet would scare people on HN.

Yeah, your proclivity to overeat is highly genetic, and your predisposition to get T2 diabetes in an energy surplus is highly genetic.

We like to think that our (positive) behavior comes from our own self-made character traits rather behavior that is genetically determined.

This is a simplification. Type 2 diabetes is heavily polygenic, but the genetic connection could be... you are genetically predisposed to like sweet food! In which case, the diet intervention would work, most people just aren't willing to do it.

Many genetic predispositions are behavioral, it's not all pure metabolic effects.

Jesus HN, it's a sweet drink. Y'all act like nobody eats cookies, candy, ice cream. Happy Birthday here's your kale salad.

The "ate like shit your whole life and are now overcorrecting in your 40s because you got consequences for the first time" energy is big in this thread.

Some people are capable of consuming nutrition in moderation.

my fam loves boba w zero sugar added... all the places we go to here in san diego let you adjust (e.g. omomo [0]). basically a fresh milky fruit or avocado smoothie with chewy tapioca pearls. it's a fun treat that seemed a lot healthier than an ice cream or something. these findings make me sad :-|

[0]: https://www.omomoteashoppe.com

Ice cream strikes me as a lot healthier than boiled play-doh.

You seem to have a weirdly strong hatred for boba.

It’s okay if something isn’t for you!

Is this based off the tapioca balls? I haven’t considered the health of the balls, but I could see it as being the same as swallowing a bunch of gum.

They are not “gum”. They are mainly starch. They have no nutritional benefit but a do convert a big load of sugars in your blood.

> They have no nutritional benefit but a do convert a big load of sugars in your blood.

That is, like, the definition of nutritional benefit.

It is a very low grade nutrition that produces a lot of unhealthy results. Not really a benefit.

Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough has ~25g sugar per 100g.

Boba has ~14g per 100g, depending on the type.

Coca Cola has ~11g sugar per 100g.

In other words, ice cream has 1.8x more sugar content than boba and 2.3x more sugar content of Coca Cola.

If you’re concerned about the tapioca, that’s literally just starch. You know what else contains starch? Potatoes and rice.

> Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough has ~25g sugar per 100g. Boba has ~14g per 100g, depending on the type.

Nothing at Boba Guys weighs 100g. That's the difference! 100g really is a typical cup of gelato or ice cream.

> In other words, ice cream has 1.8x more sugar content than boba and 2.3x more sugar content of Coca Cola.

Most Boba Tea cups I’ve seen are far bigger than the typical ice cream.

You can’t use per-100gm doses this way. You have to look at sugar in the product as ordered.

People don’t order and eat their food in neat 100gm increments.

How much people happen to eat in one sitting is nice bonus info, but it doesn't make sense to complain that the data has been normalized into density figures.

Either way, a little 16oz carton of Ben and Jerry's that people smash in one sitting is 1200 calories. So it's still more sugar- and calorie-dense than boba tea.

I don't really see the point in bickering over calorie-dense junk foods though. Both of them are displacing healthier foods in your diet that you could've eaten instead. Neither should account for more than a small fraction of your calorie intake.

Companies vastly differ in serving amounts and some have multiple serve sizes.

What did you expect me to do, bash out a 5x10 multi-company matrix so you can compare perfectly across servings?

It's funny that you hold up ice cream as a paradigmatically unhealthy food, when most of the studies point in the opposite direction: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cre...

The state of nutrition science is so bad that I wouldn't believe most any study, though.

I like the texture of the tapioca balls and like milk tea. I’d only get the milk tea plus tapioca (and choose the lowest sweetness possible, “no sugar” if offered)

I mean I get not liking it. I like it. I’d have it maybe once every three months as a little treat

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