By: Qinwei Wu

About every month or so, when my Mom’s in a happy mood, she tends to go and buy boba for us. Every time we go to our favorite bubble tea shop, I can’t wait to taste the delicious sweetness of boba.

Yesterday, on Thursday, my Mom bought bubble tea for me again. I looked at the cup for a while and thought, why is this so good?

According to square bubbles.uk, “The taste of the tea is sweet and refreshing. But the tapioca at the bottom adds a creamy texture and roundness to the drink.”

I absolutely agree with this statement. The milk tea is definitely refreshing after a hot summer’s day, and the tapioca pearls add extra flavor to the drink.

Squarebubbles.uk also mentioned that the wide range of flavors make the drink good as well. I agree with this too. I’ve tried regular boba, but there are other flavors I’ve tried, like Strawberry and Taro.

The unique thing about it is you can change the flavor of the tea and the tapioca pearls, making it easily customizable to your taste. Along with Tapioca pearls, you can add grass jelly, coconut jelly, and other varieties as a topping to your boba.

Runmingtea.com says, “Boba teas contain sugar that makes people feel so happy after drinking a cup of tea, and sometimes they sugar rush. This drink can give satisfaction to any boba tea drinker because of its good taste.”

Boba is comparably much sweeter than tea, especially because of the sugar. My mom usually gets me boba that contains less sugar, but I still sometimes get a sugar rush, which makes me question how much sugar they put in those cups.

According to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, “Results indicate a 16 ounce (473 mL) single serving of a boba drink with milk tea and tapioca “boba” balls containing 299 calories and 38 grams of sugar.”

38 grams of sugar is equivalent to 147 calories, about half of the calories a regular 16 ounce boba drink contains. This means if you were to request 0% of sugar, you would still be getting 152 calories.

The amount of calories the sugar adds to the drink is surprising. I usually get boba that only contains 75% sweetness, and after researching about this ordeal, I feel like I should lower it down to 50%, considering the amount of sugar the drink contains.