We hate to burst your bubble, but we’re about to give you some bad news about your favorite Instagram-worthy drink before summer’s even gotten properly started. Well, sort of. It’s our unfortunate task to inform you that a 14-year-old in China ended up in the hospital after drinking too much of a beverage that’s become a popular refresher and photo opportunity.
The guilty drink: bubble tea. Specifically, the tapioca beads at the bottom.
According to reports from Chinese media, covered on Asia One, the teenager from Zhejiang province told her parents that her stomach hurt, she couldn’t eat, and she had been constipated for five days. When they went to the hospital, doctors couldn’t find any medical reason for her digestive symptoms — until they performed a CT scan and found the cause of the blockage.
The scan showed about one hundred tapioca beads in the girl’s abdomen.
She insisted to the doctor who treated her, Dr. Zhang Louzhen, that she’d only had one cup of bubble tea right before the symptoms had started; but given how many beads were inside her, Asia One said that he believed that this might have been because she didn’t want to get in trouble with her parents. She was prescribed laxatives to help the beads work their way out.
Can you stomach the scan?
14-year-old girl in China allegedly has hundreds of undigested bubble tea pearls in her body https://t.co/Se9klyx5ZO pic.twitter.com/LT7HPuwHS9
— Mothership (@MothershipSG) June 7, 2019
The good news is, you would need to eat A LOT of bubble tea beads to end up this ill.
The beads or pearls are made from tapioca starch, which is extracted from cassava root — a South American vegetable with a nutty flavor. It’s formed into a dough and rolled into tiny balls, which are then drenched in a sweet syrup that includes brown sugar syrup and potassium sorbate, to give them that chewy texture people love.
Shout out to bubble tea. Sweet chewy chewy bubble tea.
— Giles Panton (@G_Panton) May 17, 2019
Or hate!
Bubble tea? More like chewy milk! NEXT!
— jack willys (@jack_willys) June 5, 2018
Blockages aside, those bubbles aren’t exactly health foods (but you knew that, right?).
The fact is, you won’t get much nutritional value from eating tapioca pearls, and the sweetest versions come with nearly 160 calories per ¼ cup serving, according to Readers’ Digest. Starch can also cause digestive issues:
Boba may cause constipation. Anything too starchy can cause constipation. If you swallow your bubble tea in one go (idk how you guys did it), it can cause constipation as well.
— Alluskin #LetsRebrandYourSkin (@alluskinhq) June 7, 2019
And another thing is, yang galok sangat makan boba hari hari tu kenapa? Allahuuuuuuu. https://t.co/020pUiG7ES
So you might still get constipation (uh-oh):
But as long as you’re not eating them by the hundreds, or really fast, you shouldn’t be getting go-to-the-hospital constipated like the unlucky girl in the story.
People have been safely drinking bubble tea for over 30 years.
The drink and its bubbles originated in Taiwan in the 1980s, and made its way to America in the ’90s. But while many people with South East Asian roots have been drinking and loving it all this time, it’s only just catching on with everyone else.
It’s part of any international foodie’s snack selection.
Japanese bubble tea, Portuguese custard, German gummies, American Mega Stuf Oreos. Snack game is multicultural af. pic.twitter.com/73XqqGKBTQ
— Sheila Watko (@SheilaWatko) August 13, 2015
Your flavor of choice could reveal more about you than you realize…
However, this isn’t the first scandal to make people think twice about buying bubble tea.
In 2012, a team of researchers in Germany claimed that samples of bubble tea contained cancer-causing chemicals called PCBs. These claims were later disputed by Berkeley Wellness, an online publication of the University of California, Berkeley, who said that while tapioca does contain chemicals from the same group as PCBs, the ones in your tea are a less dangerous subset.
But the study had people worried:
And even devastated:
Although, worryingly, some were willing to take the risk:
That wasn’t even the last scandal to hit bubble tea fans.
In 2013, Taiwanese health authorities faced a crisis when it was found that tons of the kind of starch used in bubble tea and other foods had been contaminated with a food additive called maleic acid. It can cause kidney failure when consumed in large doses.
Is nothing sacred | Contaminated bubble tea pearls discovered in Taiwan http://t.co/pWUjp8iB2y via @shanghaiist
— Stan Yee (@stanyee) May 31, 2013
Two years later, rumors started flying about what exactly those beads are made from.
A reporter in China got wind that doctors had found strange beads in the stomach of a bubble tea-drinker that weren’t made from tapioca. She asked around at the bubble tea shops, and while most employees didn’t know or vaguely referred to starch (or even potato), one said that the beads were “made with things like the soles of leather shoes and old tires”.
Pretty terrifying:
Before you swear off your bubble tea habit forever, it’s worth noting that it’s four years after that most recent scandal, and most moderate bubble tea fans are still loving this drink without any notable health problems.
I feel like drinking some bubble tea today pic.twitter.com/yPj6TM8Ic6
— mads⁸ (@mingiteez) June 11, 2019
Assuming you’re generally healthy, treat it like an occasional treat, savor it slowly, and you don’t have to go cold turkey on your tea.
