What's in your red cup?
Tis' the season for holidays, giving, travel, family, food... and red cups. Living in the hometown of Starbucks, we have no shortage of those during the holidays. I'm not really sure what the whole controversy regarding red cups was about at the beginning of fall, nor do I care. What I do care about is whats inside of those red cups.
A few weeks ago while I was on my 21-day Sugar Detox, we stopped at one of our local Starbucks Coffee shops for a warm drink. Since their initiation of providing coconut milk as an option (so thankful!), I've loved getting their matcha green tea with coconut milk. One thing I usually forget to ask is for "unsweetened". This time I remembered.
Sadly, when I took a sip of my coconut matcha tea, it was like crack. I've never done official drugs before but after eliminating sugar, I was ultra-responsive to it. I went back to ask the barista to clarify if it was unsweetened and she said "yes, but if it's not good enough I can make you another one" (bless her heart). She then made me an unsweetened coffee with coconut milk, but that's besides the point.
After this incident, I researched on Starbucks' website to find the sugar content of the unsweetened drink: 54 g. Since their calculations are based on standardized recipes, this is hopefully not true. However, even if that's the sweetened drink, that's still WAY too much sweet. Specifically, that's 14 teaspoons of sugar! 14 teaspoons of sugar in a "lightly sweetened" drink. I don't think I want to know what's in their non-lightly sweetened drinks.
Lesson Learned
I've decided to stick with tea bags with hot water or just plain coffee, especially while on the 21-Day Sugar Detox. Sugar is a sneaky thing; if you're not on the lookout for yourself, others may not be.
