Just before Christmas I arrived home to find one of those “sorry we missed you” cards from Royal Mail on my mat. Assuming this was a festive gift from a mysterious admirer (obviously). I got up early the following day to get to the post office before work on the last Friday before Christmas. After queuing up I had to convince the lady to give me the package as the name on my ID (unsurprisingly) does not read “Fork My Piehole” (she was giving me a knowing smirk during this exchange but I decided not to ruin the illusion by telling her that it is the name of our blog, not whatever less savoury thing she had in mind). Eventually with package in hand and post office worker suitably amused I ran for the train, took my seat and was finally able to open my mysterious package. Inside there was no note, just this box:
My intrigue grew… perhaps my admirer is a magician? Or better yet a superhero? Dying to find out I lifted the lid to find…. oh. Green tea. Great… In my festive state of mind green tea was really the last thing I wanted. If I was having a drink it was going to be a stiff one. When I got to work I shoved them in my drawer for January when green tea might appeal.
So here we are in January and I was delighted to find these detoxifying matcha green tea drinks in my drawer when I got back to work! I had a look more closely at the contents of the box, two pre-mixed flavoured drinks both containing organic matcha green tea powder. For those of you that haven’t had the memo, matcha is the superfood (or drink) du jour. One serving of matcha apparently has the same health benefits of 10 cups of regular green tea. Matcha is full of antioxidants and will apparently help to increase metabolism and burn body fat, lower cholesterol, and enhance mood and concentration. Pow – that is super! I don’t know whether all of this is true but it sounds pretty good to me!
Teapigs have introduced a range of matcha products, including pure matcha powder to brew your own matcha green tea, but these drinks are supposed to be a grab and go version for convenience. They come in two flavours – apple and elderflower. The apple version is yummy, it tastes like a less sweet apple juice, although you couldn’t taste the matcha at all (maybe a good choice if you’re not actually a tea fan). The ingredients list 91.7% spring water, 8% apple juice from concentrate, and just a measly 0.3% matcha tea leaf powder – which is probably why it tastes like watered down apple juice not tea! It is a pleasant drink but I’m not sure how much of the health benefits of the matcha you would get from this. The elderflower version tastes much more like tea – something like an iced tea, however it contains the same meagre amount of green tea. The main ingredient here is spring water again, followed by grape extract concentrate, elderflower extract (0.7%) and lemon juice from concentrate (0.6%). So both contain not much tea and quite a few juices from concentrate which means the sugar levels are pretty high – 17g in the apple one and 21g in the elderflower. Not all that healthy to be honest!
All in all they tasted nice and I would definitely have one again, but I wouldn’t kid yourself into thinking this is a health food drink – it has the same amout of sugar as a Mars bar!
Forked by Tolibear
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