Iced tea

Iced tea (also ice tea or cold tea) is tea served chilled. You either brew it at home and let it cool, or buy it ready to drink in a bottle or can. The two differ sharply in sugar: three bottled peach iced teas listed on Open Food Facts carry 4.4 to 6.2 g of sugar per 100 ml.

The base is ordinary tea from the tea plant, Camellia sinensis: ready-made drinks often name black tea on the label, and at home you can just as well use green tea. Only the serving temperature sets it apart from hot tea, so sugar and flavourings decide the rest.

At home the route is simple: brew the tea, cool it, add ice, and sweeten only if you want to. Bottled iced tea follows a brand recipe that varies by country: within one peach line, Open Food Facts shows 3 g, 4.5 g and 4.7 g of sugar per 100 ml.

A popular story credits the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, where Richard Blechynden supposedly popularised it in hot weather. Earlier mentions exist, though: an account of a veterans' reunion in Missouri in September 1890 speaks of 880 gallons of iced tea. So 1904 is better seen as a tale of popularity than a date of invention.

A 330 ml can at 4.5 g per 100 ml adds up to roughly 15 g of sugar. Caffeine is more surprising: for brewed black tea USDA lists 20 mg per 100 g, about 200 mg per litre. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 requires a high-caffeine warning on drinks above 150 mg per litre, but exempts tea-based drinks whose name includes the word tea.

The nearest neighbours are black tea and green tea served hot. Kombucha is a different drink: a lightly fermented tea beverage made from sweetened black tea and fermented by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts. The process itself is covered on the fermentation page.

On the shelf, read the name and the nutrition panel: the word tea in the name explains the missing caffeine warning, and the panel shows sugar per 100 ml. Open Food Facts data are entered by users, so check them against the label.

Why this matters to you: comparing the per-100 ml figures takes seconds and shows whether a bottle is closer to unsweetened homemade tea or to a sweet soft drink.