Matcha Madness

cassidysa
Jul 17, 2015
2 min read

Lets talk Matcha.

My story all started about a month or two ago, when my roommate Shannon came running to me with a new discovery. Living only a block away from Starbucks in Charleston, let's just say our visits there were frequent. Through word of mouth Shannon had discovered that you can ask for two scoops of "Matcha Powder" mixed with ice water. Not only was this an incredibly healthy drink, but it was only 88 CENTS! Yep, you heard right. Something was 88 cents at Starbucks. I can safely say for that month we were hooked. I got the drink every morning and was feeling very satisfied.

Unfortunately (but also fortunately...depending on how you look at it), a few weeks later I walked into a Starbucks, ordered my go-to, and the price on this drink had changed by about 2 dollars! The Starbucks barista told me that the company found out how much this drink was catching on and upped the price! And this wasn't even the true dissapointing part... the barista then asked, "you realize this isn't actually Matcha right?" It occured to me with all my excitement for the drink, I forget to look into it more. Afterall, Starbucks has a history of putting poor ingredients into it's drinks (i.e. the pumpkin latte with no pumpkin...see FoodBabe's article about that here).

The barista went on to tell me that Starbucks Matcha isn't good for you (not the best salesperson on Starbucks end, but the honesty was greatly appreciated). I immediately went home to do some research. One blogger has an article on it saying that the powder is 51% or MORE sugar! I'm keeping my eyes peeled for more articles, but in the mean time I'm trusting my barista and Starbucks history of ingredients.

On the bright side, real matcha is GREAT for you (you just can't get it at Starbucks). To give some insight: