Is chai tea really full of sugar?

The dreaded S word. Sugar has been getting a lot of bad press recently and it’s not to be taken lightly. The UK has one of the highest rates of obesity in Europe with the average adult consuming three times more than the recommended daily intake.

 Interesting fact alert… Did you know that Brighton (yes Brighton!) is the first British city to introduce a ‘voluntary sugar tax’? With the support of none other than Mr. Jamie Oliver, our little town by the sea is also making sure that healthy snacks are readily available at vending machines and food education is brought to every single primary school across the city. Hooray for us!

The not so good news on the other hand, is the recent news story uncovering the excessive sugar levels in high street coffee shop drinks. The majority of them are absolutely chock full of sugar. Believe it or not, the worst offender was chai! Drum roll please… with no names being mentioned, one high street coffee shops chai latte was found to contain a shocking 20 teaspoons of sugar! With the recommended daily intake of sugar being no more than 7 teaspoons, this particular chai was well over the threshold.

But is all chai really bad for you? Well, actually no. Quite the opposite in fact! Chai’s unique and ancient blend of spices means it has medicinal qualities and is full of antioxidants . Chai is good for you – providing it doesn’t have the hideous amounts of white stuff in it. That’s where our chai comes in. Our tea sits way below the sugar tax and is refined sugar free. We use a little bit of Raw Honey to sweeten our chai blend, so you can enjoy your chai latte without the sugar crash later on. 

You can make chai a thousand different ways, but the core ingredients usually stay the same with cinnamon, ginger and cardamom being firm favourites- we’ve even made a how to guide, so you can make chai at home!

Bird & Blend’s hand-blended Gingerbread Chai is made with rooibos, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and mallow flowers. Delightfully refined, sugar free and containing no caffeine whatsoever, you can have as many of our chai lattes as you like from our latte recipes.

Our award-winning sticky chai is super-special, we've been busy bees making this one with Brighton Raw Honey. The best chai always comes from using the freshest ingredients but with the busy lives we lead we often don't have time to grind our own spices and if we store them for later they start losing their goodness and flavour!

When making our Sticky Chai tea we do all the hard work for you, blending and grinding spices fresh and even mixing in fresh ginger root for the most authentic chai experience. We then stir in the honey or maple to help preserve the Sticky Chai which captures all the flavour and goodness of the spice mix and locks it in ready for you to brew at a later day! 

You can read more about what the judges had to say about it here.

Drink a cup of soothing Chai Tea after a meal to aid digestion, or try a refreshing gingerbread iced chai latte with almond milk - after all, summer is nearly upon us!