

Maybe it seems like boba came out of no where, but the truth its, it’s been around since the 80s. You get a thick straw so you can suck up the pearls and tea at the same time, simultaneously giving you something you drink and chew. The most common and standard boba is boba milk tea, which strongly brewed tea mixed with milk and sugar shaken vigorously with ice and served with glossy black tapioca pearls. Originally the bubbles in bubble tea referred to the bubbles in shaken tea and not the pearls at all. It’s also called boba tea, bubble tea, tapioca milk tea, or pearl milk tea. Essentially, people use boba as a catch all phrase for all the delicious drinks sold in a boba shop. It’s kind of an umbrella term so you’ll hear people say they’re having boba when they’re having a slushy fruit drink boba OR a pumped up drink topped with cheese foam and oreos. What is boba?īoba is a broad term: it can refer to chewy black tapioca pearls or to a category of drinks sold in a boba tea shop. The pearls add a pleasant chewiness similar to how gummy candies are chewy. If you take your tea with milk and sugar, you have an idea of what boba milk tea tastes like. Boba milk tea is comforting and refreshing. The pearls are chewy with a tiny bit of mild sweetness. The classic boba milk tea is creamy and sweet with the essence of tea.

It comes in so many flavors with so many toppings that I’m pretty sure I could have a new kind every day for a really long time. It’s my go-to treat: creamy and sweet with a fun chew. I mean, not really because the pearls would get stuck, but I love boba tea so much I would have it every single day of my life, twice a day. The signs were in a mix of English and Chinese and the nice shop owners explained to everyone curious that boba nai cha (bubble milk tea) was the most popular drink all over Taiwan. Next to the Asian grocery store we visited every weekend was a tiny shop that seemed to pop up overnight. My first taste of boba was in the 90s, just like much of America. But, what the heck is boba, where did it come from, and how do you drink it? As a long time boba addict, let me take you into the wonderfully sweet and chewy world of boba! Nowadays, it seems like you can go anywhere – even small town America – and see at least one shop that sells boba.
Boba drink how to#
These chemicals were misidentified as PCB’s (polychlorinated biphenyls), which have been associated with liver cancer.Everything you need to know about bubble tea, including types, toppings, how to order, and where to get the best boba tea. I can reassure you, however, about much publicized findings from Germany in 2012 that tapioca pearls from boba tea contained traces of the chemicals styrene and acetophenone, which are regulated by the FDA as flavoring agents. The study authors advise that you can cut down on boba calories by choosing tea without the milk, requesting lower sugar options (half sugar or one-third sugar) and avoiding such added ingredients as pudding, jelly and tapioca. Based on a 2,000-calorie diet, this means no more than 200 calories of sugar per day. dietary guidelines suggest limiting added sugar intake to below 10 percent of total daily calories. Worse, a study published in 2017 reported that a 32 ounce serving of boba milk tea that includes jelly and egg pudding supplies between 250 percent and 384 percent of the recommended maximum daily intake of sugar for men and women, respectively. A 16-ounce serving may have as many as 440 calories, with more than 200 of those from fat. The calorie counts for boba teas depend on how much you’re served, but in general, these are high-calorie, high-fat drinks.
