A four-pound sugar bag goes into making McDonald's sweet tea, a staffer claims

A McDonald's employee, known by her TikTok handle @gia2bad, has stirred the internet with a startling claim about the fast food giant's sweet tea. According to her viral video, the sugary secret behind the sweetness of McDonald's sweet tea is the use of an entire four-pound bag of granulated sugar.

Gia's video has since sparked conversation on social media platforms. In the video reportedly shared last month on TikTok by Gia, an employee is captured preparing sweet tea at McDonald's.

As hot water blends with the tea, a full four-pound bag of sugar is seen added by the employee in preparation for the drink.

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The caption of the video reads, "If y’all were wondering why the sweet tea is so sweet at McDonald’s." “Yes we use a whole bag, sometimes two," she added.

Netizens react

The TikTok video swiftly went viral, amassing over 1.3 million views. The comment section turned into a mix of shock, amusement, and concern.

One dubbed the drink "diabetes in a cup". Others confess to having suspected the excess sweetness. Another user said, “That explains why it’s way too sweet. I always order half sweet and half unsweetened."

However, not everyone was ready to accept thissugar-laden claim.

Some individuals who claim to be former McDonald's employees shared their contrasting experiences.

They assert that the sweet tea isn't manually mixed with such sugar quantities,instead, it's produced by a commercial tea machine. The user said, “We don’t hand-make sweet tea at our store, it’s made with a commercial tea machine.”

“I work there and we don’t do that…,” another employee wrote.

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One noted, "We have a machine for this… I have never done this when I worked at McDonald’s."

Information on McDonald's website

According to information available on McDonald's official website, the sweet tea is crafted from an "orange pekoe and pekoe cut black tea." In addition to ice, the recipe includes invertsugar, described by the Food and Drug Administration as an aqueous solution of refined or partly refined sucrose that's inverted.

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Amid this sugar-centred discussion, it's important to consider health guidelines. The FDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans advocate for limiting added sugar intake to less than 10 per cent of daily calories. To put it into perspective, for a 2,000-calorie daily intake, the recommended daily added sugar intake would be 50 grams.

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