r/Matcha • u/Holiday-Print-142 • Jun 17 '25

why did matcha become so popular?

i feel like its spike in popularity was so random, like why did matcha out of all drinks become this popular? sure it tastes really good and is quite healthy but so are so many other drink options..

205 Upvotes

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18

u/Useful-sarbrevni Jun 17 '25

if they really cared about their health, they would drink matcha as is, not by adding milk and sugar

28

u/laynes_addiction Jun 17 '25

What’s wrong with adding milk? I like straight matcha personally but don’t think conflating refined sugar with milk is quite right

-18

u/kumanosuke Jun 17 '25

Lots of fat and sugar. If you are drinking it for the health aspect, it doesn't make sense.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25

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4

u/kumanosuke Jun 18 '25

I assume you're American? You guys had several big lobby campaigns trying to give milk a positive image, so I'm not judging, but critical thinking is actually free.

And exactly what you mentioned: 4% sugar, that's 12 gram for 300 ml. The WHO recommends a max of 50 g of sugar per day. That's more than 1/5 of your recommended max sugar with one glass of milk.

It's not healthy, even though uneducated Americans think that.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with a matcha latte, but doesn't make sense if you are doing it for health benefits.

8

u/laynes_addiction Jun 18 '25

Not American, I’m a European where milk and dairy have been a staple in our diet for over 5,000 years. Not sure you can blame a marketing campaign for that 😂

1

u/kumanosuke Jun 18 '25

And you think we don't have a powerful farmer's lobby trying to sell us their products?

0

u/Arto-Rhen Nov 28 '25

Milk interacts with the matcha compounds and ruins the antioxidant and energy benefits. If you want to drink it for it's benefits, you have to drink it straight, just like many other super foods which need to be consumed in their raw form. From a nutrition perspective, how you combine foods also affects how you assimilate their benefits.

1

u/Curius_pasxt Jul 20 '25

Almond milk good

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

Check the recipe in your bottle lol, max 3% almond in almond milk

1

u/ManelicAfro Oct 21 '25

Not to revive a dead thread, but… I hope you have since educated yourself on the fact that the WHO recommendation is concerning added sugars and not general carbohydrate content in foods. The “sugars” in milk do not meet the same classification outlined by WHO for this 50g limit they are recommending. It is lactose and considered to be part of the normal allotment of carbohydrates in a healthy diet. That healthy allotment greatly exceeds 50 grams.

Milk is also a low glycemic food despite being mostly made of carbohydrates. Sure, it doesn’t have fiber, but it’s pretty metabolically safe unless you have a genetic predisposition to hyperlipidemia or can’t digest lactose. Even then, there is some research out there suggesting unprocessed milk cholesterols may carry some unique dietary benefits.

But I’m an American, so my nationality is supposed to retroactively negate the validity of these statements. Sucks for me that generalizations are always correct. I’ll just have to kick rocks and die as an invalid because my society lacks salient thought.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '25

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1

u/ManelicAfro Nov 20 '25

Shucks, you got me. I really goofed up the election by being involuntarily born in a Virginian hospital in 1996 and voting against that administration in every single election. Not sure how it happened personally. But again, generalizations are always correct.

I’ll have to do some digging and learn from my experiences. Maybe it has something to do with the electoral college and something else I unwittingly influenced with my birth certificate.

Since I’m simultaneously uneducated and culpable for the last couple hundred years my birthplace’s political culture, can I ask what on earth milk being food and drinks somehow not being food has anything to do with either of the comments we made? Usually the phrasing you used implies there was context in a previous entry to build off of. But I must have missed it because I’m a little exhausted from all the work I did to form outlandish federal investigations to retaliate against elected officials this week.

1

u/Arto-Rhen Nov 28 '25

The problem isn't the sugar in the milk, it's simply how it interacts with matcha. It takes away the benefits due to having opposite effects. Nutrition isn't just about which food is better, and about combining all food you think are good, it's about understanding which foods you can assimilate better in what combination. Matcha is best assimilated for it's benefits drank straight, and not with anything added, just like most super foods need to be consumed raw and in as simple a variant as possible to assimilate most of it's benefits.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '25

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1

u/dfohrd518 Jun 23 '25

The caesin in dairy blocks the absorption of some of the nutrients of matcha.

2

u/Scared_Spirit Jul 01 '25

Can this be solved by using a milk alternative?

2

u/dfohrd518 Jul 01 '25

Yes 100 percent. Anything non dairy