Plastic tea bags

BigTrout75@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 465 points –

I decided to have a green tea because it's healthier than soda. It's healthier, right?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10389239/

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I can't really find a source for it, but I remember the EU banning plastic in tea bags quite recently, a few years ago at most. Here in the Netherlands, a lot of tea bags contain(ed) plastic as some kind of sealant.

Also, a lot of tea contains sugar, for no good reason whatsoever.

Also, a lot of tea contains sugar

In the form of fruit or added? If it's the latter, they will have messed up something as simple as tea even further. When they started packaging them in airtight plastic (preventing one from smelling what you are considering to buy) and wrap every single tea bag in plastic, I already got mad.

Added sugar, that is. A lot of tea bags contain 'aroma', according to the ingredient list. However, this 'aroma' can be 60-70% sugar.

It should be clearly labeled then. Also in the nutritional information it should be clearly stated (pure tea is 0% carbs, 0% sugar).

I don't think you can hide your sugar as "aroma"

Tic Tacs say 0g sugar in the nutrition facts, even though they're mostly sugar. They can do this because they aren't required to report quantities of sugar below 0.5g, but the serving size is 1 tic tac or, conveniently, 0.49g.

That's a US thing I think, which doesn't make sense btw.

In Europe you are required to report the nutrition facts per 100g. Any other size is optional. In Italy Tic-Tacs have 94.5g of sugar per 100g of product https://www.ferrero.it/Tic-Tac#expand-jump-1

So if you are unsure about the nutrition facts, check the European website

I agree that it's nonsense, and thanks for pointing out that I can look up European nutrition facts -- i'm gonna start doing that. I wish we'd do the per 100g thing, but we don't which makes it easier for companies to game the system. My point was that nutrition facts don't always tell the whole story, especially if your country's regulatory bodies have been lobbied into submission by the companies they are supposed to be regulating, so finding out if your tea has added sugars may not be as simple as looking on the box.

Similarly, “zero calorie” sweetener packets are 4.9 calories each. Because calories are rounded to the nearest 10.

You definitely shouldn't be allowed to hide it like that, no. Unfortunately, they can (Dutch source).

The nutritional information does however state that there's sugar. Even though the ingredient list does not.