Opinion | Sugar overload or social media star: is Taiwanese bubble tea good or evil?
- Taiwanese bubble tea has taken the world by storm, and has become an Instagram and Facebook hit
- The tapioca tea, however, is far from healthy, with eight to 18 spoonfuls of sugar in each cup
The summer of 2017 was hectic. It was the exam term, and as students we chased deadlines for essays and assignments and studied hard for exams. Despite all the academic commitments, my friends and I managed to go to the Taiwanese Festival at the University of Warwick in England.
The festival heaved with students from East Asia and many of us grabbed a bowl of braised pork with rice and a cup of a uniquely Asian drink – bubble milk tea with tapioca, often called boba. A frothy combination of tea, milk and extras, boba has fans across Asia. On that hot day, my friends and I sat under a tree, drank our boba, gossiped about our schoolmates and just had fun.
One of my friends living in the US recently went to a wedding in Los Angeles catered by Chatime – the global Taiwanese teahouse chain. Fresh bubble tea was served in lieu of champagne and wine.
“I hope my wedding has boba catered too, because my alcohol tolerance is too low,” I texted my friend, after seeing her posts on Facebook and Instagram.
It is increasingly common for people of East Asian descent to arrange a boba gathering with their friends and loved ones. Boba is seen as a social glue – underpinning the connections between people via boba meet-ups and sharing boba posts on social media.
