Sweet tea

ickplant@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1907 points –
256

But sugar dissolves in cold water. It just takes a bit longer. This is 9th grade chemistry. At 20°C 203.9g sugar are soluble per 100ml of water.

[Edit: Sorry, for the Americans here: At 68°F, 1 cup of sugar is soluble in 21/50 cups of water.]

Wikipedia (de): Zucker cites Hans-Albert Kurzhals: Lexikon Lebensmitteltechnik. Volume 2: L – Z. Behr, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-86022-973-7, p. 723.

And most of all, solubility being a function of the temperature, if you lower it the excess sugar will leave the solution and cristallize.

It takes time for that to happen and in the meantime you can have a gross oversaturated solution.

Edit: not even oversaturated, would just take a long time for all that sugar to dissolve unless it's hot.

Have you seen how much sugar those hicks put into their tea though? It's gotta be hot because they put coca cola grade amounts of sugar, to the point where it wont dissolve in the water anymore. Sweet tea contains 36-38 grams of sugar per 16 oz. That's a fucking soft drink.

16 oz (454ml) can dissolve some 900 grams of sugar, far in excess of 38 grams. Sugar is ridiculously soluble in water.

Please attempt this and post results

It's easy. It's just making simple syrup.

The consistency alone is enough to know that sweet tea is nowhere near saturated.

When I make my sweet tea, I use two cups per gallon, which comes out to about 50g of sugar per 16oz. And it’s delicious! It’s definitely not a “drink all the time” type drink. I only make it a few times a year for friends.

example: you don't make a pitcher of kool-aid with hot water.

however, adding sugar to the hot tea does work better than adding it after it's already chilled.

How? Wouldn't the excess sugar just come out of solution when the tea cools down again?

It dissolves quickly when the solution is warm. You would need to add a ridiculous amount for it to be saturated at room temp or slightly below.

"ice cold" water can hold about 170 grams of sugar in 100 grams of water

If sweet tea drinkers could read they'd be very upset by that graph.

...is what I was going to say, but man it took me a while to figure out and I'm still not 100% sure I really understand it. The specific gravity line and the sucrose vs solution line are tied to the sucrose dissolved in water curve, right? Wait, the left axis is merging two different scales? Sometimes data really isn't beautiful.

The labels on the vertical axes match the labels on the lines. So the right vertical axis is for specific gravity (the grey line), and the left axis for the other two lines.

Ignore everything but the orange line and the left y-axis. It's just showing the weight of sugar that fits in 100g of water, vs temperature. The blue one shows that value as a percentage, g sugar divided by total sugar and water.

Right but you're forgetting there are already other things dissolved in the water as their not using pure, de-ionized water, and they're adding in tea.

I don’t think the ions and “tea molecules” really matter compared to 170g of sugar. Does a glass of water get notably heavier after adding in tea?

Tap water usually sits around 200 ppm or 0.02% minerals. The tea leaves themselves, as I make my tea, are around 10g/L. Say the leaves dissolve 10% as an overestimation. That gives you water with 0.1% tea, 0.02% other. The solubility limit for sugar is 63% (by mass).

In general, the amount of salts or other organic molecules do not affect the solubility of sugar (or any other solute). The solubility of any solute in water is a constant (for a given temperature), as long as whatever is already dissolved does not have any compounds or ions in common with the next solute.

For example, if we wanted to dissolve sodium chloride into a solution of potassium chloride, the amount of chloride already dissolved would affect the amount of NaCl we could dissolve. But if we wanted to dissolve NaCl into a solution of potassium iodide, the KI would have zero effect on the NaCl solubility.

So, since tea has zero molecules in common with the sucrose, the yes shouldn't affect the solubility of sucrose at all. The only exception would be if solution is acidic, the sucrose can break down into glucose and fructose, of which the tea may have a small (negligible) amount.

Plus we're not actually saturating the sweet tea. Saturated sugar water is a syrup, so you know just by the consistency that sweet tea is nowhere near saturated.

They're not super saturating it. They're putting an amount of sugar in the tea that can dissolve at room temperature, it just takes a long time to do so.

Ok, got it. Someone in this thread mentioned ice cold water can still hold 1.7x its weight in sugar.

Yeah basically, leave the pitcher to evaporate and you get your sugar back as a coating on thr glass

That's very thoughtful of you to provide the imperial measurements as well for Americans ☺️

Well that explains the diabeetus.

That is really just a map of poverty.

I'm going to look at how poverty is defined. You just gave me an idea for my grad school program.

Apparently it's defined by your blood sugar 🤷‍♂️

Hawaii doesn't check out, but they do look very similar

Meh, its not a perfect correlation (and the time series for the poverty map and the diabetes map are different), but most chronic diseases tend correlate with poverty pretty well. You should look at a map of obesity. It follows the same form.

Nah, that's actually a my bad for not getting my point across. Looking back on my comment: I know I was trying to commend you, but I must've gave up on trying, because it fell completely flat (Not to just you, but to me too when I reread my reply). Dunno where my head was when I posted it, but I can see that I stopped trying at some point and just hit "send"

The reason I commented to your post at all was because my first reaction was, "holy shit, that's so specifically accurate and funny at the same time... how was this person seeing a fucking heat map, and able to respond with their own map, that is both wildly accurate and hilarious, given the context".

So I scoured the maps, because I wanted to commend you and also try and be as witty. Hawaii was one of the only (obvious) differences I could find (which makes sense when talking about diabetes and poverty)... but then idk what I did. Just literally gave up on being clever and posted a "spot the difference" comment

So yeah, doesn't much matter in the grand scheme of things, but I still wanted to let ya know just in case... I thought your comment of the map was surprisingly astute, and I was kinda flabbergasted that it seemed like you just had that on standby. Like you were just waiting for this moment your whole freaking life, and then pulled that very specifically accurate map out of your ass, as soon as it was relevant.

My comment fell flat on it's face, because it truly couldn't be topped. And I think I must've gotten distracted and gave up on my response, because the only thing I really wanted to convey was... fucking brava my friend. That was some S-tier shit you dropped; and so casually too. It wasn't necessarily news to me, but hot damn if it wasn't quick.

My original comment should've just been "you win" or some shit like that, but I failed on both ends to get that across

So very much so... holy hell friend bwahahahaha!!! Well fucking done (and pardon my language). But that was the very definition of "under-rated comment" to me. My applause to you

Sugar should be heavily taxed, it's so dangerous at rates of more than 10 grams a day

It should be taxed on the corporate side. Taxing sugar on the consumer side becomes a poor tax, because poor people will still want sweets from time to time, making those treats now more and more expensive. Well off people will just accept the tax because it's marginal to them, but when your chocolate bar that you treat yourself to once a week goes from 1.29 to 3.29, then it really fucks your day up.

What should be done is incentives to provide less sugar/glucose-fructose on the product side and encourage companies to make snacks and beverages that have less sugar content.

It doesn’t make a difference which side you tax. If consumers are taxed then corporations will still feel it through reduced demand for their product. If corporations are taxed, consumers will still feel it through increased prices. The tax burden does not depend on who is taxed, but rather how elastic supply and demand are.

It sure makes a difference to the people buying it, that's the point

It literally doesn’t. The price is the same either way. Reduced demand from the higher tax makes it so producers will lower prices. This is really basic microeconomics.

From Wikipedia: “tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

Reduced demand from the higher tax makes it so producers will lower prices.

I have never once seen this happen... i just see prices rise

Do you actually think that 100% a tax burden will always fall on consumers?

Wouldn’t the price go up irrespective of which side you tax it on? Obviously if this is a megacorp, they could spread it out over unrelated products, but in the end its not like theyll roll over, take the corporate tax and leave the product at the old price. Is it being a poor tax even that bad of a thing? This is not a necessity and poor people are generally going to be the ones that suffer from poor diet / lifestyle choices in very big part due to the price/calorie aspect of junkfood et al. Lets be real, if you buy a bar once a week, 1.29->3.29 is not a big deal.

Also, we do have tax on sugarry soft drinks in the EU (atleast my country), it is just laughably small compared to EtOH and tobacco). I personally always have thought that anything with added sugar beyond a certain amount should get a heavy tax, conditional on this tax being funneled into healthcare / public health programs.

2 more...

Agreed. Though either way the price of heavily sugared stuff would go up

2 more...

Whoa settle down there

Sucrose is 1:1 glucose/ fructose which is near the optimal 0.8 ratio for fueling endurance activities

I rode 100 miles solo in less than 5 hours Sunday on 360g sucrose in 4 750ml bottles

It’sa lot cheaper than all that fancy SIS/skratch etc

Carbs aren’t poison if you move your body

Yeah I consume near 400g carbs every day and am fine as a competitive powerlifter who also runs (which is rare lol). You just can't be sitting on your ass all day.

The issue is how much hidden sugar there is, especially in the US. Just look at how many things include stuff like corn syrup when it isn't all that necessary.

Sure, but so few people are high energy athletes who can legitimately burn the sugar right away.

My comment was really about the great majority of people for whom sugar consumption is a path to metabolic disease, diabetes, and early death

I still support a tax on sugar as it would reduce consumption overall, but for those wealthy enough to exercise hard a sugar tax would hardly hurt

Wealthy enough to exercise? Wtf?

Ain’t even going there

It's probably a U shaped curve where you can devote (or have to devote) significant time to exercise at very low incomes, but it becomes harder at working poor sort of levels, then easy again at a certain level above poverty

If you paid twice as much for the sugar, would it materially impact you?

At this point in my life no. When I was young, for sure

I don't doubt the number, that means 0.5l soda is 5 times the daily rate!

And when you drink sugar free, your body still crave the sugar.

I recently lost 100lbs partially thanks to Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Zero, and a world of sugar free energy drinks. I also gained 40 lbs of muscle mass.

Note that I gained much of the weight due to major medical issues which left me bedridden for an extended period of time (years). I don’t have the fastest metabolism in the world, so it took a lot of work to melt the pounds off. I could not have done it without diet soda/energy drinks.

The only reason researchers been able to determine for diet soda not contributing to weight loss/“fat” disease prevention is that (current studies are showing) we (consciously or subconsciously) attempt to replace those missing calories with more sugar, rather than cutting back. While there have been studies on the effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin production, etc. they are mostly inconclusive.

If you are shooting for a low carb/low calorie diet, a good diet soda is a safe choice. Don’t let others make you miserable. Just make sure you aren’t pulling in extra calories elsewhere.

Regardless of what type of diet you follow, remember that weight loss boils down to calories out > calories in. Most of your calories come from carbs, so taking on a more active lifestyle with a high protein/low carb diet will ultimately help you lose weight and build muscle mass. Just don’t skimp on the protein (you want most of your calories to come from protein) because you will also be burning some muscle mass unless you actively try to prevent it. Keep a food journal and write down everything you eat/drink. Some dietary choices you make without realizing may surprise you.

I lost 70 pounds over about four months last year primarily via calorie counting. I know it's anecdotal, but I absolutely felt hungrier after the same meal if I had a diet soda with it compared to an unsweetened iced tea, or even an iced tea with a sugar packet or two. It's great that you have the willpower to stick to the rest of your diet regardless, but there is definitely a reason people recommend cutting it out to make it easier to follow a plan.

Now if only i could sallow diet drinks

Have you tried coke zero? I can't stand diet coke but I like coke zero well enough

its the aspartame any thing with that will cause my throat to fill with thick mucus after just a few ounces. I used to drink big red zero since it use splenda and that was fine.

2 more...

Would love to see an updated graph. I feel like everyone gained 50lbs in the last three years.

2 more...

i hate when i go down south and go to restaurants and order iced tea and get a glass of concentrated sugar water

Lemmy is now getting reposts. We've reached critical mass!

I don't see the point of having reposts here, not like there's visible karma or anything.

Also, I loved you in that thing!

Reposts aren't just because of karma whoring. It can be a crosspost or someone saw it and just thought it was funny and wanted to share it to a community they liked.

You may also be one of the first 10,000 today too.

Or simply because not everyone sees every single post and knows it's a repost...

Do you not know of the internet repost database? It's a repository of all posts ever made to every website. You're supposed to go to it every time you want to post something.

It's over here... In my basement. It also has cookies.

So you’re saying you want me to come over to your basement, eat cookies and browse memes? I’m in.

Where did you find it in the first place?

Very true. Maybe it's better to say that I don't think repost are a problem here yet, and I don't expect it to be due to the lack of visible karma.

And if it's the first time you've seen that xkcd link, congratulations, you are one of today's meta-10000

Well, it's the gays or atheists. Or "colored" people. Or whoever they are told to hate at that moment. This happens more than you know in this day and age:

Surprised you forgot "people who might be transgender (wE cAn AlWaYs TeLl)"

Of course they can tell, how else are they going to pick their preferred partners to cheat on their wives with.

I'm preemptively not serving gardeners or lawyers just to stay ahead of the curve.

I play tennis and don’t serve against gay people. They make me feel funny with their passionate moaning. /s

I'm swinging back in the other direction and refusing to serve rednecks and people with navy suits and red ties.

I mean... lawyers are pretty terrible. Case in point: most of Congress are lawyers.

I've lived in the deep south for over 40 years in small towns, and have never witnessed a single instance of any minority being denied service at any establishment.

Has anyone reading this actually ever seen that happen in real life?

This is anecdotal but I have seen this as a gay man living in Ohio. My whole family is from the sticks but I live just outside a major city now. There's a pizza place back home that my fiance and I can't go to because they won't serve him (he is, admittedly, quite fabulous). I can go alone, because I blend in, but him they will just quietly ignore and occasionally glance over to check if he's gotten the hint yet. No yelling, no epithets, but no service either.

Sad to hear these stories, but I did ask for it. I can't discount your experience because mine is as anecdotal as yours.

I hope these stories are rare though, and I also hope that anyone who does experience any of these kinds of discrimination will put the businesses "on blast" as the kids say by posting their experiences on social media to give them the stink that they deserve.

Thanks, I didn't realize it happened either until one day it happened to me. Then it happened again, and again. Not frequent, and not always as tangible as being denied pizza, but little things here and there in the way people look at me and treat me that only started happening after I came out. I have yet to experience any actual violence, but the general vibe is such that I don't feel comfortable being out and am considering moving to a more friendly state.

I don't think that's homophobia as much as rude staff who ignore people who aren't assertive. I'm not stereotypically gay/flamboyant but get ignored a lot in restaurants and stores because I'm somewhat quiet when I'm alone.

While I appreciate where you're coming from, I can assure you that, in this scenario, it was very much a case of homophobia. Unless everyone there grew new personalities at the same time that I came out.

Idk that's fair. But there is a big difference between how people treat others that I see and how they treat me at some restaurants.

Nope, what Prussia_X86 said sounds very much like homophobia. They won't serve his flamboyant fiance because he looks and acts "gay", and if they knew that Prussia_X86 was gay they wouldn't serve him either. While not all gays are as flamboyant as that his fiance sounds like, plenty are, and while not all flamboyant men aren't gay (or even attracted to men among other genders), a good chunk are. There's a reason a lot of people assume that flamboyant men are gay, and it's because a lot of them are.

What I'm saying is that there isn't a reason to assume that's why they were ignoring him.

I grew up in FL and was denied service 2 separate times for being mixed race. This occurred in the early 2000s. Both times the restaurants were subtlety segregated and they refused to seat us in either section.

Yep. I grew up in the mountains of NC. When I was a kid, the mayor of our town was the head of the local KKK sect. Needless to say, non-white people were generally not found in that town.

Attitudes did change over the following years, so that was nice.

I am not from the deep south but close enough. I haven't seen anything like what people online seem to think it's like around here, it's overly exaggerated. That's not to say discrimination doesn't ever happen, I'm sure there's pockets here and there. I personally don't know a single person who is ok with that crap.

It might be because you aren't a visible minority that you haven't witnessed it, you don't notice it happening because it's not on your radar that it could happen.

Stay in the cities (50k and up), its the small in-between towns that can get bad. Bigger the better

No thanks, my town has less than 6000 population, and I can easily afford my mortgage on my house that sits on an acre of land. It's nice being my own landlord, and I can do whatever the fuck I want here.

Are people in your town nice to gay colored atheists? The only small town I've been to like that is Provincetown, and it's not particularly cheap.

Some of them yes, some of them no probably. I don't know very many people here, because I simply don't give a fuck about going around meeting people.

I would say there is most likely no business in this town that would turn away any minority, because bigotry is widely recognized as being bad for business. Every store or restaurant that I've visited had a diverse clientele.

As a server, southerners stare at me in wide eyed awe when I pour a disgusting amount of simple syrup into a glass of iced tea.

simple syrup

Wait, do americans use glucose syrup in kitchen?

It's just a high concentration of sugar dissolved in water. Not used in food really unless you need to sweeten some cold tea for some southerners, i guess. Very commonly used to make alcoholic mixed drinks though.

I think mainly behind the bar, I don't know too many folks who cook with it.

This seems like a US thing I’m too European to understand

(aka. they bring us the ingredients, and we make our own tea at the restaurant table)

What's called sweet tea in the US is overwhelmingly sweet. That was my reaction to it the first time I tried it. It's so sweet, the only way you can get that much sugar in it is if you dissolve that sugar in hot tea.

The trick is to order half sweet/half unsweet. Otherwise you get Aunt Jemima on ice.

Yeah that is my trick too. Or half sweet tea and half water.

I don't know if you need to be told this.

Pay the money and buy real maple syrup, not 'pancake syrup.' Real maple syrup is one of the best tastes on the planet.

I'm aware of the existence and superiority of maple syrup. I only use Aunt Jemima in this example because that's what oversweetened tea tastes like to me: shit.

Sweet tea can have as much sugar as soda. You would need to add 10-15 sugar packets to a single glass of iced tea to have the equivalent amount of sugar.

Not true about being able to only dissolve the sugar in hot tea, because if it was, the sugar would fall out once it cooled. You can dissolve the sugar into cold tea, it just takes more effort (so time and mixing) than doing it with hot tea and then cooling it. Cold water can hold approx. 1.7g of sugar per gram of water.

If I order a cup of tea, I don't want to get a cup of hot water and a tea bag. Bloody continentals.

FUCKIN LIPTON

THAT'S NOT TEA

well it ain't no PG TIPS but it will make a gallon of oddly flavored water cooked in the sun, which when chilled and enhanced with fresh lemon juice and served over ice, is dope

well it ain't no PG TIPS but it will make a gallon of oddly flavored water

Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Listen, you stupid machine. It tastes filthy! Here take this cup back!

[He throws cup at NutriMatic]

NUTRIMATIC DRINK DISPENSER: If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink, why not share it with your friends?

ARTHUR: Because I want to keep them! Will you try and comprehend what I’m telling you? That drink -

NUTRIMATIC DRINK DISPENSER: …that drink was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure

ARTHUR: Ah! So I’m a masochist on a diet, am I?!

NUTRIMATIC DRINK DISPENSER: Share and enjoy.

ARTHUR: Oh shut up.

Yeah in the US they have this thing called sweet tea (some places have a choice between sweet and unsweetened tea).

To make sweet tea they just unload a tanker truck full of gum syrup into cold tea. That's what it tastes like to me.

Sweet tea is a drink prepared hot but consumed cold. The cold part is best done via refrigeration. Bringing hot water, tea, and sugar are not going to achieve the same results.

it’s best not done at all to be honest. Just drink a soda like a regular person.

Why do you care what sugary drink people drink?

Some people like the taste of tea over the taste of soda, even if both are equally sickeningly sweet.

Have you ever had southern sweet tea? The flavor is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. If you want to drink sugar water and brown coloring why not drink a coke?

"four seasons-having piece of shit" lol I'm going to start discriminating against people based on their seasons.

"Everybody is welcome at my house!... as long as you've experienced snow, that is"

When I moved to L.A. from Indiana, I met people who had never seen snow up close. It was so weird to me.

I moved from Pennsylvania to Louisiana when I was a teenager, and was most bummed about losing out on snow boarding. Now when I'm out traveling, I get to explain how fun (and practical) "hurricane parties" are. Everywhere is strange when you're a stranger I guess

True, but in the case of L.A. it's a little weirder because you can see snow if you look at the mountains in the winter and it isn't a very long trip to get to that snow, so it's more of a by choice thing.

OK, that is kinda weird to me too. I haven't been out that way yet, so I forget that there's mountains right there too. And the more I think about it, the weirder it seems. Why wouldn't the curiosity or even the novelty drive someone to try and go see what's kinda right there? Maybe I just think snow is cool and am biased lol

Part of it, I think, is that you get so accustomed to the warm climate that you just hate being cold. When I first moved there, it was in the 60s and I had my windows open and the apartment manager stopped by and was shocked that I had the windows open when it was so cold out. And then within maybe 5 years, I felt the same way. And now I'm back in Indiana and, again, it took a few years, but now I'm back to opening the windows when it's in the 60s and wearing shorts and a light jacket when it's in the 50s.

But still, you would think curiosity would be enough to drive you to do it at least one time.

why would anyone ever want to travel TO snow? Snow is disgusting and I live in a desert on purpose.

LA traffic kind of makes it a long trip unless you live on the outskirts.

When I taught in Compton I remember asking the kids if they had gone anywhere interesting during their summer break. One kid raised his hand and said he "went to LA". It was like a 15-20 minute bus ride away.

As a person who has never seen snow, I'm feeling very discriminated lmao

Don't worry, in 50 years, no one will see snow.

Holy shit, everyone's gonna be blind in 50 years! I'm not discounting Climate Change by any means, but why is nobody talking about this vision change you speak of?

I do hope you get the chance someday, it's always cool to experience something new in nature like that. I still really want to see the Aurora Borealis someday!

But still... stay tf away from me until you've experienced snow, you warm-climated monster! I hope you have a good day though

It's worth the trip, I promise. I grew up in Phoenix so I didn't see it for a long time. It's nuts. It absorbs sound really well, so after fresh snowfall, everything is so quiet it's surreal. And then you hear the sound and sensation of walking through it, which is an experience in and of itself.

There is absolutely nothing more amazing than an early morning walk after a fresh snowfall.

The whole world seems better in those few hours before people wake up and ruin it.

It can also feel a bit eerie. Being one of the few people downtown in Seattle after a big snow is creepily silent. The random people cross country skiing to get around almost seem to sneak up behind you. When you see people snowmobiling down 1st Ave, you start to wonder if the world has ended.

Sugar will dissolve in unsweet tea, it's just slower. If you can't dissolve it in cold tea, then it wouldn't stay in solution in hot tea that was cooled down.

For someone complaining about northerners not knowing 9th grade chemistry, it sure sounds like they weren't paying attention themselves.

Chemistry knowledge! Sweet tea is actually a supersaturated solution. That means there more sugar in the water than could normally be held in suspension. This is achieved by heating the water so you can dissolve more solute in and then chilling it. Remember theres at least 2 diabetes worth of sugar per glass.

That's kind of disgusting. So southern style sweet tea is basically just tea flavored simple syrup?

Yea, when my family did a trip down south, i asked for some sweet tea, thinking it was like Brisk, but i couldnt believe how sweet it was.

if your drink is sweeter than pop, its.. scary.

Yes, yes it is. To be fair, what do you think soda is though?

According to Wikipedia:

it is not unusual to find sweet tea with a sugar level as high as 22 degrees Brix, or 22 g per 100 g of liquid, a level twice that of Coca-Cola."

Coca-Cola already has a disgusting amount of sugar. The mere idea of this makes me queasy.

Yeah, I don't like my sweet tea like that, but I've been to people's houses that it's just diabetes in a glass.

That's stupid sweet but not supersaturated though. Saturated would be ~200g per 100g of water.

Depends on who makes it... McDonald's, 7-11, and the like use about twice the amount of sugar that's really necessary and it does not make it better.

Where did you get that? It would be like honey if that was correct. Also, that is not called suspension but solution, since the particles dissolve (unlike fat in milk, but that is an emulsion since the fat is a liquid).

I thought a supersaturated solution could easily be brought out of supersaturation by something like sticking a spoon in it? Am I misremembering?

I highly doubt that, since any shock or impurity would cause a supersaturated solution to separate into a solution and the excess sugar.

You're technically correct, but completely missing the point that folks want to be able to actually drink it a reasonably short time after it's been served.

2 more...
2 more...

Damn, I knew sugar was bad for you, but boy it looks like it can make you really irritable. Stop drinking so much sugar y'all. It's nasty.

honestly I'm straight up addicted to Nestea Zero. My teeth aren't rotting out and I'm not worried about diabetes but I need to get off this stuff

I mean it would be inconvenient but they would still dissolve, they aren't super saturating sweetened tea in the south.

That's exactly what they are doing for tea in the south.

No, even with the 2 cups of sugar per gallon it seems to make sweetend tea it still isn't super saturating the mixture. It might make it take longer to dissolve but it's not because the tea is fully saturated. They could put 4 cute per gallon and it still wouldn't be fully saturated, even when cold.

This is correct, it's sad to see that you're getting downvoted for pointing that out. People aren't seeing that It's about how rate of dissolution is affected by temperature, not saturation point. Even in the south it isn't supersaturated (although it does get very close to saturation when chilled with some brands). More would still dissolve when cold, just very, very slowly ('vigorously stirring overnight' slowly...)

Not quite. It gets close to saturation with some of the sweetest brands, but typically no. See below comment for where this confusion is coming from. Remember that rate of dissolution varies as temperature...

Maybe someone should introduce her to a spoon.

1 more...

And I hate when they have only sweet tea...

Or when you order unsweetened, but you still get sweet anyways...

I hate sweet tea and I hate that I have to go UNsweet when going through a drive through. Like that. With emphasis. It should be the default. Sugar is an addition.

This happens because a lot of ordering systems default to ticketing teas as sweet tea and iced tea instead of something sane like sweet tea and unsweet tea

the correct response to somebody trying to order sweet tea in the north is and always has been this quote from 30 rock:

“I'm gonna come back in 5 minutes, if you try to order off menu again I will slap those glasses off your face.”

Sweet tea is trash anyway. Might as well just dump sugar into the water and drink it why even have the tea in it at all

It really is. I was raised in South Carolina and drank sweet tea regularly as a child. In my college years, I had easy access to as much as I wanted and gained around 50 pounds. One summer, I realized how much better I felt drinking less of it and swore it off. By swapping sweet tea for water, I lost all that weight and have kept it off for 20 years.

Nowadays, I've gained an appreciation for unsweetened iced tea. The initial sip is always a shock when restaurants accidentally serve me sweet tea.

Just a follow-up for my neighbors in the southeast: don't fall for the sweet tea propaganda. Regardless of culture or tradition, it's a bad habit.

Maybe the amount of sugar that cold water easily accepts is the correct amount to not taste like shit

Yeah, and if you saturate hot tea, won''t the sugar simply materialize back as the tea gets colder? Seems to me that nothing about this has to do with saturation.

Water can dissolve a ridiculous amount of sugar even at room temp. For an average 12 oz glass of tea, the most sugar that could dissolve is a whopping 700 grams. One packet of sugar is about 5 grams. At the saturation point it would be basically syrup thickness, too.

Yes. Not sure what the other person is on about. Hot water can have more sugar dissolved in it. When it cools it crystalizes but only if the saturation level is higher than what the water can hold. It's how rock candy is made. This is like basic chemistry.

It's not about achieving saturation, it's about how quickly it dissolves. The sugar packets would absolutely dissolve, if you stir vigorously for half an hour... Rate of dissolving varies as temperature. 9th grade chemistry...

That wasn't the original argument now was it? If you're going to move goalposts then at least be halfway correct the first time.

And here I was happy to learn something new on social media contradicting my previous knowledge lol. But yeah, I definitely intend on having a basic chemistry refresher video now!

Hot water dissolves it much quicker, giving the illusion that it dissolved more. It's not actually saturated when you're trying to stir it into cold tea, it just dissolves extremely slowly. If you were to saturate it while hot (which would take an insane amount of sugar), then yes, it would recrystalise. But in pracrice, you need to dissolve it while hot because the more energetic molecular motion in the solution dissolves the sugar faster, since the heat is causing more effective collisions. Saturation point and the change thereof is, contrary to the proposal above, not a factor here, since everything is happening well below that point even with the sweetest teas commercially available.

No, I can assure you sugar does not re-crystalize after being mixed in hot tea. It is super interesting how differently people view this subject just based on where they grew up.

You're right with normal tea, but normal tea is never saturated. If you added another pound or so of sugar while hot, then let it cool, it would absolutely recrystalise (barring supersaturation). But you're right, that's not a factor in normal tea. It's about the rate of dissolution (which also depends on temperature), not saturation point.

That is very interesting, and not something I remember from my very limited exposure to chemistry in school. Thanks for clearing that up!

That is only because it's not saturated. If you added an ungodly amount of sucrose (and I like it ridiculously sweet but this would be undrinkable), it would recrystalise when chilled. That's why there's a controversy here. A saturated solution would recrystallise, but people are pointing out that tea obviously doesn't do that. That's simply because no one drinks it saturated. It's hard to stir in while cold because the rate of dissolution varies as temperature. That's why there's some confusing as to thinking it's about the saturation point. It's actually below it in both cases (hot and cold). To learn more about that mechanism, read about how reaction rate is affected by temperature.

We got Union as hell on this post, didn't we. Every time I come back it has more comments.

I'm still mad as fuck that I can't get my precious Lipton Instant Tea at Walmart, because I really was raised in a trailer park, so maybe that's why I had to delete my own giant shitty comment about this.

It's mostly water?

I don't have to heat up lemonade to make the sugar dissolve in it; why would tea be different?

It isn't. If you have to heat the water to get sugar to dissolve in it 1) you have too much sugar and 2) when it cools again the sugar will prwcipitate out. It is easier and quicker to dissolve in hot water tho, so if you're impatient it may appear that the sugar won't dissolve in cold water.

Sweet tea is extremely common up north. Wtf you talking about?

Texas Roadhouse and whatever is in the gas station cooler do not count.

In case anyone needs it, Texas Roadhouse serves proper sweet tea, brewed hot, put over ice, all that. It's kinda their gimmick.

I am not even referring to that. Sweet tea was never a southern thing, they just claimed it as theirs for no good reason. My grandmother makes her own, her grandmother made her own and they only ever lived in the North. I been to friends houses where their parents made it. This was in PA and NJ. I personally hate tea so I would get offered it and turn it down all the time.

Of course we have sweet tea, but they are from the South, so being stupid comes naturally for them.

Hey look! Bigotry being upvoted in a post condemning bigotry. Shocker.

They aren't from where I'm from. They are all stupid, racist, idiots, bad. OK man. I'm sure you're the only one with the right perspective on the world.

https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-educated-states/31075

Least educated states:

41 Texas

42 New Mexico

43 Kentucky

43 Nevada

45 Oklahoma

46 Alabama

47 Arkansas

48 Louisiana

49 Mississippi

50 West Virginia

https://us-inequality.sdgindex.org/rankings

Most racist states:

41 Arkansas

42 Wisconsin

43 Missouri

44 Alabama

45 West Virginia

46 Ohio

47 Illinois

48 Louisiana

49 Pennsylvania

50 Indiana

https://propertyclub.nyc/article/most-dangerous-states-in-the-us

Most dangerous states:

Alaska

New Mexico

Tennessee

Arkansas

Arizona

Louisiana

Missouri

South Carolina

South Dakota

Michigan

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/healthiest-states

Least healthy states:

Ohio

South Carolina

Oklahoma

Louisiana

Tennessee

Arkansas

Alabama

Kentucky

Mississippi

West Virginia

Looks to like the South might not hold a monopoly on stupidity, but they sure as fuck are disproportionately well represented on all the worst lists one can think of. That's not opinion. That's fact.

Ya I'm calling bullshit on some of this. Plus, do you really need to put others, and even places you're not from, to make yourself feel better? That's extremely smart, healthy, doesn't lump groups of people into one, and definitely not a dangerous mentality to have. You're doing great buddy.

Damn that's some bad English. You're just proving him right!

Great job assuming I live in the south. I really don't care. Doesn't matter where you live, there are idiots everywhere. You guys are proving me right.

I kinda like the sugar at the bottom, but I'm a degenerate like that. (I've mostly excised my sweet tooth now. My dad is in his 50s and almost died from diabetic shock, with no knowledge of his condition)

Also are we going to talk about the fact that I've never heard anyone outside of the south pronounce pecan as "pee-can?"

What? Canada pronounces it "pee-can" instead of "peh-cawn".

I'm not talking about that far North.

Yeah, we follow the pronunciation rules of English. What pronunciation rules does "peh-cawn" follow?

we follow the pronunciation rules of English

Where are those?

You know that warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Arc with all the crates? We've got one in an unspecified location with the best quality maple syrups, rare cheese curds to use in top end poutines, and the good golden curling stones.

✋ I'm not from the south and I pronounce it pee-can along with everyone I know

As a northerner, I've never heard pee-can either. I think it's a straw man for southerners

we really need to get some linguists on Lemmy because i miss communities like r/fauxnetics

this is why they should just teach IPA in schools lol whats the point of these phonetic spellings when the point is that many dialects of english pronounce the same word differently

OP was probably talking about /'pi.cæn/ as in "can of beans" compared to /pɪ'can/ as in "con man". they altered "pee" even though that part sounds nearly the same! probably because a Pee Can is a funny image.

Lawl. There was a point somewhere in that rant. I went to university in the South and I do miss the food on occasion.

Sweet tea is fucking disgusting and anyone who drinks that shit ought to be ashamed of themselves.

It would dissolve you just have to be more patient!

You couldn't make it the disgusting super saturated diabetes juice like they do in the south without heating it though. Mr 'Im not racist but....' is actually right about that.

Sweet tea usually has 2 cups (400 grams) of sugar per gallon (some "real southerners" use more.. a lot more)- so a 16 ounce glass (11 ounces of liquid, accounting for ice) will have (at least) 34.37 grams of sugar (about the same as a coke). A sugar packet has 2-4 grams of sugar. So, if you get the small ones, you'd need to sit there an open and pour about 17 packets of sugar.

They will dissolve. The saturation limit for sugar in 0℃ water is 180 grams per 100ml. There are 29.57ml per ounce, so 325.27ml in 11oz. 180gm * 3.2527= 585.486gm. So, you can dissolve 585.486 grams of sugar (or 292 sugar packets) in 11 ounces of 0℃ water.

You could do more if it were boiling- 490g of sugar can dissolve in 100ml of boiling water, so 490 * 3.2527 = 1593.823 grams or 796 sugar packets in 11 oz of water, but honestly, that seems excessive, even for the south.

In Arkansas, the standard is a cup and a half per gallon unless you're at a restaurant with a majority of black employees. Then it's two cups per gallon. I agree with the op on adding sugar to cold unsweetened tea. Fucking Yankee heathens.

Or, you know, don't add sugar at all. Iced tea doesn't need it.

When you stop guzzling that sort of syrupy sludge drinks start becoming refreshing. They quench your thirst instead of making you want to grab some pork rinds and a side of insulin.

Is it actually super saturated? Those solutions tend to rather unstable, though I've never played around with a super saturated sugar solution before.

Saturated at 100℃ is 490gms per 100mls or about 40 pounds per gallon. Most recipes call for 1 pound (2 cups) per gallon. A lot of people will double or triple that, but for it to be supersaturated at 0℃ you would still need about 15 pounds, so even taking it from boiling to iced, most people won't be supersaturating it.

Or with every meal, "would you like grits with that?" No! Grits are disgusting!! Stop it!

I have never been in a place in the South where they don't serve gays

most areas of the u.s. you gotta pick one, sweet or not sweet. since I rarely if ever add sugar to anything, sweet tea is to me an excuse to drink flavored sugar water. but cheaper than soda and it doesn't go flat.

so sweet iced tea is a perverse adulteration of a refreshing yet bitter, tasty beverage. i mean, add some lemon fer real. if i'm south of certain landmarks, i know i won't drink tea unless i make it myself.

Every place in the south will additionally have unsweet for those that will use artificial sweetener. Or those that want half and half (to dilute the sugar content, make half sweet, half unsweet).

It's only outside of the south that you get a singular choice of unsweet.