Health
What are the health aspects of sweet tea? How does it compare to the popular sugared soft drink Coca-cola?

Coca-Cola
According to the Coca-Cola Company, 8 ounces of coke has 27 grams of sugar, 23 milligrams of caffeine (Diet Coke has 31mg), and is 100 calories.

grams of sugar in 12 ounce serving: 

27 gram sugar  |  12 ounce coke   40.5 gram sugar
------------------------------- = ---------------
8 ounce coke   |  serving coke    serving coke
milligrams of caffeine in 12 ounce serving: 
23 milligram caffeine  |  12 ounce coke   34.5 milligram caffeine
--------------------------------------- = -----------------------
8 ounce coke           |  serving coke    serving coke

Sweet tea
grams of sugar in STPU: 

1.5 cup sugar  |  200 gram sugar   300 gram sugar
-------------------------------- = -----------------------
STPU           |  cup sugar        STPU
12 ounce servings in an STPU: 
224 ounce  |  serving    18.7 serving
---------------------- = ------------
STPU       |  12 ounce   STPU
Sugar in 12 ounce serving: 
300 gram sugar  |  STPU            16 gram sugar
-------------------------------- = --------------------
STPU            |  18.67 serving   serving of sweet tea
The Lipton web site says that black iced tea has 40mg of caffeine per 8 ounce serving. Since one and three quarters gallons are made from a one gallon tea bag, we would expect the amount of caffeine to be somewhat less than Lipton's numbers. But the tea bags are boiled vigorously so we should also expect to extract most of the available caffeine. Therefore, the estimated caffeine is 28 milligram per 8 ounce serving which is 42 milligram per 12 ounce serving of sweet tea.

Summary
The results on a serving basis: 

serving         sugar           caffeine     
--------        --------------  ---------------
sweet tea       16   gram        42   milligram
coke            40.5 gram        34.5 milligram
--------------  --------------  ---------------
sweet tea/coke  40   %          121   %
Comparison
Sweet tea has 16 grams of sugar per glass while Coke has 40.5 grams. So Coke has two and a half times the sugar of DW's sweet tea, and consequently two and half times the calories. Why doesn't Coke taste much sweeter than sweet tea. Carbonation is a sweetness reducer like lemon, but more powerful. Once Coke goes flat it is revoltingly sweet.

DW sweet tea is estimated to have 42mg caffeine per glass while Coke is 34.5mg. So sweet tea has about 20% more caffeine than Coke, which is small enough to be about equal. Coffee has about 125mg per 12 ounce serving. So normal coffee has about three times as much caffeine as sweet tea or Coke. Specialty coffees can have much more caffeine, and other stimulants, that normal coffee.

Is caffeine bad for your long term health? Some believe it is, but most do not. Much data has been collected and no smoking gun has been found. News programs seem to mention positive effects of caffeine as often as they report negative ones. DW believes caffeine has many obvious, subtle and addicting effects. Given the advances of medical science we will know a lot more in ten years.

What about reports that antioxidants in tea help to prevent cancer? Maybe, but DW only believes claims based on statistics and discards data using inspecific phrases like "reports" and "help" above. What DW knows is that DW's sweet tea tastes good and is an easy, but not exclusive, way to add water to our bodies.

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Last update 01/04/2004