Many of us know that our favorite drink or afternoon pick-me-up comes with a lot of sugary baggage.
Some of Starbucks's (SBUX) -) beloved coffee drinks, for example, can quickly run up your nutrition tab. A Grande Iced Caramel Macchiato, which is 16 ounces of espresso, vanilla syrup, milk and caramel drizzle, contains 34 grams of sugar.
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But it's not just Starbucks that offers an assortment of sugary sweet beverages so many customers are hooked on. Virtually every coffee shop and fast-food establishment sneaks sugar into its foods, making them hyperpalatable. \
One tablespoon of Heinz (KHC) -) ketchup, for example, adds 4 grams of sugar. Chick-fil-A's lemonade contains 55 grams of sugar in less than two cups of the cult-favorite beverage.
And with the World Health Organization issuing a concerning warning about the sugar substitute aspartame, which is present in so many diet beverages, it's understandable that many customers would opt for the real stuff anyway.
But as with most things, there's a catch. Sugar is present in a lot of fast-food items whether you consciously taste it or not. In the case of McDonald's sweet iced tea, customers like to taste it -- and the more the better.
A recent TikTok video, however, might give some McDonald's sweet tea fanatics pause. A TikTok user who says she's a McDonald's employee, Gia2Bad, posted a now-viral clip of how McDonald's workers at her store prepare the sweet stuff -- and it's not pretty.
"If y’all were wondering why the sweet tea so sweet at McDonald’s," she wrote in the video, showing a worker pour a four-pound bag of granulated white sugar into a vat of iced tea.
"Yes we use a whole bag sometimess [sic] 2," she captioned the video, which has been viewed 1.3 million times.
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Viewers were unhappy to learn the revelation about some of their favorite drinks.
"And I wonder why I be so tired after I drink sweet tea," one user wrote.
"A WHOLE bag of Sugar?!" another questioned.
"This is what I figured never can finish one on my own," another said.
Other viewers questioned whether this was standard practice across all McDonald's.
"I work there and we don't do that..." one user wrote.
"We don’t hand make sweet tea at our store it’s made with a commercial tea machine," another wrote.
Others corroborated the claims, saying other fast-food establishments implement a similar practice.
"This happened at Taco Bell too," one user said. (YUM) -)
"They do that at KFC too," another wrote.
"At zaxbys we use two bags everytime..1 1/2 if it doesn't fill all the way," another said.
TheStreet has reached out to McDonald's and Yum Brands for comment.
