Sugar is a hard monkey to break, or camel to get off your back, or erm… something like that. “Experts” have been banging on about it for years now and politicians have discovered that it’s the perfect addiction upon which to tack another tax and line their coffers with a bit of loosely-veiled social engineering. The official narrative reads that collected money will go to educate and fight against evil sugar gremlins (“who have never contributed to our personal campaign war chests and we’re sure they haven’t lined our pockets up to this point – we swear”). Minus bureaucratic fees and administrative percentages, that probably leaves room for a “don’t drink that” poster or two and some poor sap in a beaver costume telling kids to worry only after their teeth start falling out and they’re put on type-2 diabetes insulin regimens. Translation: We’re late to this particular cash grab and now we want in on the action. Taxes aren’t the answer as they’ll only shift the burden around a bit. Likely to those least able to afford it on many different fronts.
Where all the anti-sugar campaigners fall flat is in a basic understanding of addiction. And I use that word for sugar just like you would drugs or trash television. Your brain is hard-wired to want the stuff from a time when calories were more precious. Millions of years evolving to survive in the forest easily trumps a few decades of trying to fit into yoga pants. Industrial food companies figured this out early on and have used that little evolutionary detail to put the screws to all your cravings for profit. For decades now. Cradle-to-grave profit farming if you will. To break the addiction, you’ve got to have a viable substitute that satisfies. Just like chain smokers holding pencil stubs.
To quickly revisit the budgetary side of the equation, people spend a lot on fizzy sodas and sugar-laden drinks. I mean a LOT. Lugging the bottles to and fro, paying recycle fees, so-called ‘luxury taxes’, and drinking the stuff (at best) for fifty cents a litre adds up quick. Even non-fizzy beverages get sweetened to within an inch of their life because that’s what sells and sugar or syrups at the factory level are dirt cheap. Prepared fruit juices, especially frozen ‘concentrates’, rarely offer safe harbour from added sugar and powdered or premixed ‘sports drinks’ often come with just as much albeit in alternative sneaky forms like high fructose corn syrup. I see cartloads of the stuff going out the door of the Megamarket on every visit and I know it’s a main source of hydration for the masses. If you can’t remember the last time you drank plain water with a meal it’s time for a little self check. You might be addicted but fear not. You can save a bundle and stop blindly drinking most of your calories with the world’s favourite beverage, tea.
Sugar by itself isn’t an automatic evil, especially less refined forms or alternatives like honey. If people only drank soda as often as they eat cheesecake it wouldn’t be such a mess. The problem lies in the numbers. Volumes drastically higher than most modern lifestyles can assimilate and as the ‘usual’ drink every time you reach for something in a thirsty urge. People aren’t farming for fifteen-hour days or trying to dodge sabre-tooth tigers much these days where they’d need the energy. Maybe a select few teenagers can burn off a better portion but youth diabetes rates would indicate that’s not the norm. If you’re over 25 and still chugging Mountain Dew and Irn Bru by the gallon, it might be time for a rethink.
The average 355 ml (12 ounce) can of soda has more than 35 grams of sugar included*. That’s nine normal sugar cubes. Nine! If you sit down to a cup of coffee can you really see yourself dropping in nine sugar cubes? And that’s just if you limit yourself to one can. If you’re guzzling from the handy 2-litre bottle you’re likely pouring two or three times that much even if you bother to drop in some ice. Multiply that by how many you serve a day and the math is staggering. I might be addicted to good cheese, dim sum, and homemade pizza but even I have to stop after a point. The sneaky sugar in beverages seems to have formed an endless tolerance in the human brain.
* “Diet” formulations of soda have their own set of problems with chemical concoctions that aren’t much better than overdoses of sugar. You can research for yourself what ingredients like aspartame and saccharin do over time and in the context of body heat but in the end for me, they just taste terrible. Even if they are marginally ‘healthier’ than regular soda. An addiction is still an addiction even if it comes from a lab.
I think people would be smart enough to stop if they simply saw the volume of sugar going into the glass each time. Or at least wise up enough to knock it back by a good measure. I get that people want taste but you don’t need a miniature mountain of sweet to get there. That’s why tea you make in front of your own eyes can really come to the rescue here. It won’t be pretty at first, you’ll have cravings and withdrawal and will think the task impossible during the first few weeks. After a month or two going cold turkey to give your taste buds time to adjust from years of abuse, you’ll happen across a sip of your old nemesis and think “That’s insanely sweet. How could I have been drinking that?” and the war will be won.
Tea of course is most often a hot beverage but when it’s served in sweltering climates, many have resorted to icing it down. Bubble tea from Asia gets all manner of fruit and tapioca additions but for the purist approach, you need to look to the deep south of America where ‘iced tea’ is ingrained in the countryside mindset like moss-covered live oaks and endless cotton fields. Luzianne is the local brand of choice that started selling their wares at the turn of the 19th Century in Louisiana. Found in every Piggly Wiggly and corner grocery across the region now, it’s marketed as “blended for iced tea” with modern twists of form from the original. Concentrate, ‘no-boil’, and decaf to name a few of their more experimental attempts. The bottom line however is that the tea is simply orange pekoe sourced from the usual suspects of Ceylon, India, and Africa as best as I can tell. Their goal is to blend any particular year’s disparate crops for consistency and by including some cut leaf in the mix, get the colour southerners have expected for a century. Nothing says you have to do the same and for my tea leaf dollar, I prefer to embrace the variation that naturally emerges from season to season. You could of course also choose green or oolong teas to ice down – many do in Asia – but if you’re looking for a soda substitute start with ordinary black styles. Loose preferred but in this case, decent tea bags will do as long as a hot-brewed cup still tastes good. Dishwater flavour doesn’t improve with ice.
Here’s where I have to fight a fad that cropped up many years ago. “Sun Tea” as it’s called is a misguided attempt to make iced tea more convenient and ‘hip’. Odd since properly hot-brewed iced tea takes ten minutes but sun tea takes hours and is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. This method proclaims you merely fill a jug with water, drop in some tea bags, and set it in a sunny spot to ‘brew’ for a time. Claims of “milder” flavour are bunk that would only be marginally true if you boiled the heck out of your tea otherwise. The whole approach is a horrible and even dangerous idea. Sure you’ll get a brown beverage but the double-ended problem is that you’ll never coax as much flavour from the leaf at relatively low temperatures and those same temperatures are the danger zone for bacteria growth. Labs use tea substrates to culture bacteria. One of the top violations in food service is cold tea vessels harbouring microscopic beasties. It’s just a bad concept all around. Brew your tea (boiling) hot then chill it quickly and keep it there.
Brewing at 95C+ (200F+) gives you full extraction of the tea flavours. Just like making a cup of hot tea, you want to pull the leaves after a relatively short time when they’ve given up their best so bitterness doesn’t intrude. Tea destined to be sweetened and cooled can tolerate longer steeping than hot because you’ll eventually mute some of the tannin that comes out after the four minute mark. Ten minutes is usually my limit but that’s more about busying myself with other things in the kitchen and forgetting to come back for a time. Iced tea is forgiving like that but even it has its limits. Right after brewing as you’re about to chill the lot is the perfect time to add sweetening of choice because sugar, honey, agave, or whatever else your sweet tooth desires will dissolve quickly and completely at those temperatures. Cooling will oftentimes cause the tea to become ‘cloudy’ but it’s visual only and doesn’t effect the taste.
Clever readers likely notice that my “iced tea” above is missing something. Ice. Sure you could brew strong with a higher tea ratio and decant over ice cubes in a hurry but during hot months I keep a steady supply of this at the ready and always have the time to just chill mine in the fridge for at least a few hours. This prevents the ‘watered down’ effect from melting cubes. Thirsty households might want to get a rotation of pitchers going so you don’t fall back into your old soda ways. If you seem to have lots of tea emergencies just make an extra batch and freeze it into ice cube trays so you can quick chill in a pinch without diluting the flavour. I frequently do this anyway in July and August so that I can get my fresh batches chilled through the danger temperature zone faster after brewing and before parking the pitcher in the fridge to finish the job in time for dinner.
You’re almost certainly going to be satisfied with less sugar compared to soda but at least now you see first hand what you’re adding and stay in control. Start with a measure that will satisfy and keep you off the old fizzy fix. You can lower the sweet ratio over time. I’m satisfied with 30g in two litres but I’ve also been practising iced tea for decades and mostly dodged the sugar madness that has taken hold. I go sugar-free when the mood strikes or my menu dictates and often add cream and/or spices for iced chai to fill a thermos on hot farm days.
Other creative additions will keep things interesting if you’re having taste jitters. Any spare herbs steep well, especially mint. Lemons, limes, and oranges can all add a twist, especially if you take the time to muddle the oils from the peels. For a real boost of lemon, you can use cheap but potent citric acid where a mere teaspoon will add a lemon jolt to an entire pitcher.
Further good news comes when you do the math. My own personal tea leaf supply and sugar measure works out to less than six cents a litre. A tiny fraction of the price of soda or juice concentrates and less than a fifth the sugar. That’s a summer beverage win in my books.
Summer Iced Tea Method
2 litres fresh cold water
20 grams loose black tea leaf or equivalent high-quality tea bags
Up to 100 grams (1/2 cup) sugar to preference.*
* Two litres of soda normally contain more than double the full measure at 216 grams. Make your first batch “as sweet as cola” if you must but as your tastes adjust you can get that level down. Waaaaay down.
Very Optional:
1 teaspoon citric acid crystals
handful of fresh mint leaves, lightly crushed
zest of any citrus, thin peeled strips, lightly crushed
Yield: Two Litres
Bring the water to barely boiling and immediately remove from heat. Using an infuser or similar with ample room to expand at least four times their volume, add the tea leaves (or bags) plus any optional additions and steep for five to ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the leaves and allow to drain into the tea but do not ‘squeeze’ the leaves to avoid excessive bitterness. Stir in any sugar to dissolve and chill immediately as quickly as possible. Use tea ‘ice cubes’ from an earlier batch when possible. Serve over the next two days.
