Have you ever counted the phrase "Wanna get boba later"? It’s a welcoming and friendly daily gesture that entails no malicious intent. Smooth and rich milk, robust and slightly bitter black tea, and chewy pearls—who wouldn't love such a sweet and delicious beverage that can be customized to personal preferences? It's just a cup of bubble tea.
How was the boba tea?
Many High School, College students and young people across the globe are having an almost obsessive love for sweet, creamy bubble tea, creating a market with immense potential. The U.S. market alone was valued at “USD 505 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 833 million by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.45% during the forecast period from 2024 to 2030” (Verified Market Research). The market is also probably very high in the Eastern Hemisphere, where bubble tea originated.
However, beneath this huge yet still developing market lies a significant health risk. Boba tea as a type of drink that fit the US Dietary Guidelines definition of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) and only 1 medium sized boba tea (16 oz) exceeds the upper limit of added sugar intake suggested by the 2015 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee which is retained to 2025. You might say, "Of course, that's what bubble tea is like, but I drink it just to satisfy my emotional needs, and whether or not it has boba doesn't really matter. They are just there for the texture.” Yet, it’s not only the milk tea is flavored with creamer and considerable amount of sugar, our beloved boba pearl, the finishing touch of this beverage, is using high-fructose corn syrup as it’s sweetener. The amount of sugar a regular size bubble tea can provide you is 38 grams, which is more than the maximum daily intake suggested for man (36g) and exceed 150% for women (25g) (Staff, 2024). Based on the data from USDA (USDA data 2019) 3.35 grams of sugar are added as ingredient to make 100 grams of Boba pearl, and an 16oz bubble tea usually contains 60~80 grams of boba. Boba pearls alone provide 2.35 grams of sugar per drink. And this is even before adding the customary toppings (Min, Green, & Kim, 2017). The effect of added sugars in consumption includes increase the rate of having coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity and decreases in your executive function result in hippocampal dysfunction, neuroinflammation, reduced brained-derived neurotrophic factor expression and more (Gillespie, Kemps, White, & Bartlett, 2023).
As the market evolved, now customized boba also offered new choices such as zero sugar and oat-milk or soy-milk replacing the creamer and high-fructose corn syrup that was added. But the pearls remained unchanged – they are still those chewy and unhealthy little beads that has little nutritional effect (Min, Green, & Kim, 2017)– until recently.
Some future directions
Small modification: Tapioca + Glucomannan flour
Glucomannan, a derivative product of porang tubers which is the main ingredient of konjac, is a polysaccharide that contains glucose and mannose and have the characteristics of making gel stronger thicken and improve its texture. Porang flours contain high glucomannan that could benefit one’s health by reducing the absorption of glucose and cholesterol and increasing the amount of dietary fiber to reduce the risk of diabetes and hypercholesterolemia (Rusdianto, Purnamasari, & Herlina, 2024). However, due to the unique property, people seem to find the boba pearls are less attractive when the proportion of Glucomannan flour is increased. Boba with high concentration of glucomannan flour has the tendency of having a darker color, a unique odor, less chewy, but softer and waterier, and is salty rough and fibrous. However, as long as the added Glucomannan below 50%, people could still enjoy their boba but in a healthier fashion (Rusdianto, Purnamasari, & Herlina, 2024).
Kinda similar: Purple sweet potato
Purple sweet potato and tapioca: are they really that different? There are benefits if we replace tapioca with purple sweet potato (Khachatrian, 2023): Cassava starch, the main ingredient of boba pearl extract from tapioca, is high in carbohydrates and low in other nutrients such as lipids and fibers, and yet purple sweet potato is healthier due to the high soluble dietary fiber, higher in antioxidant, anthocyanidin, vitamins, and protein (Mishra & Rai, 2006; Truong, Avula, Pecota, & Yencho, 2018). Another advantage of replacing cassava with purple sweet potato is that their growing environments are very similar. If the market demand for pearl balls made from purple sweet potato rises in the future, there will be no need to search for other suitable environments for growing purple sweet potato (Truong, Avula, Pecota, & Yencho, 2018; Moore & Lawrence, 2005). Research that involving recruit participants to try out the purple sweet potato boba was done, and the result indicate that they like it (Daffa & Romulo, 2024)!
Progression from starch to grain: Fresh Highland barley
Highland barley, a product many may not have heard about, is the main crop in Qinghai-Tibet region, China Highland barley is rich in β-glucan, γ-aminobutyric acid, and other goodies. With high protein (12~14%) dietary fiber (~13%) and low starch content (~50%, thus low glycemic index (GI) value), highland barley provides health benefits such as decrease in body weight percentage, visceral fat, glycemia, Low density lipoprotein (LDL), etc. (Shen, Hu, Zhang, & Jiang, 2017). It is worth noting that the fresh highland barley maintained it’s characteristic of high lipid, protein, and dietary fiber content and low starch content compare to the barley group that is not matured even after heat treatments. Among different heat treatments, steaming appear to give the best overall taste, along with color, glossiness, cereal aroma, and moderate hardness and chewiness. Overall, adding fresh highland barley into boba pearls not only reduce health risk but also tasty nutritious content to the boba milk tea (Zhu, et al., 2024).
Next level “Boba”: Seaweed & Fruit
Yeah, all the boba pearls discussed so far, they are all different but like … they are not that different. They are all made from starch and have this black/caramel like color. What if we try something different?
Scientist have been using alginate, which is mostly from seaweed, to encapsulate biomolecules for protection and stability reason. But if we change “biomolecules” to specifically juice, then it’s basically fruit flavor boba pearls. There is a quid pro quo hear: namely it’s kind of hard for alginate peals to have the chewiness texture, but it could give you a minor sensor of a little juice explosion in your mouth. There are two studies that had focused on this novel method of making boba, and their choice of “inner stuffing” were orange juice and pomegranate juice with its peel extract. Orange juice is not only tasty but also contains health promoting substances such as phenols, flavonoids, and vitamin C that is beneficial to prevent cardiovascular diseases and have anti-cancer properties. Pomegranate juice, needless to say could contribute to health in so many aspects, that include but not limited to increasing cardiovascular health and anti-inflammatory activity, have antitumoral and antidiabetic effects, and could even improve skin health (Viuda-Martos, Fernandez-Lopez, & Perez-Alvarez, 2010). With the pomegranate juice, pomegranate peel extract (PPE) could also be added which could even further increase its health promoting effect by introducing more healthy nutrients as polyphenols and tannin. For the orange juice boba, the taste was found to get worse as the storage times and temperature increased (Liu, Cheng, & Wu, 2022). The pomegranate juice with PPE boba on the other hand didn’t show a significant increase in sensory properties, yet the scores for appearance, elasticity, and consistency decrease with increase concentration of PPE in the ingredient (Dundar, et al., 2022). Of course, there are more fruit out there waiting for further exploration and to be added into a nice milk tea.
Conclusion
Drinking boba milk tea habitually for a long time is likely to be harmful to people's health. However, with the progress and development of food science, we can foresee that in the near future, some sub-healthy foods can become better. Boba pearls may not be the main component of milk tea, and they might even be just one of many optional ingredients. But even so, we should try to make changes to allow healthier choices. Although bubble tea can serve as a good social lubricant, it might be advisable to limit the intake of boba tea until healthier versions become available.
Written by Cynthia Yu and edited by Aldrin V. Gomes, PhD
Reference
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