You may want to keep a shot of insulin handy for this viral TikTok video about McDonald’s because the tea it’s spilling is ultra-sweet.
@gia2bad Yes we use a whole bag sometimess 2 🤷♀️🤷♀️ #fyp ♬ original sound – DJ Veinz
TikToker Gia (@gia2bad) posted the video which, as of this article’s publication has over 284,000 views. In it, Gia claimed to show why the Sweet Tea at McDonald’s seems sweeter than the soda from the soda fountain.
Over the course of the short video, Gia simply showed a 4-pound bag of White Satin sugar being poured into a bucket as a worker stirred the tea. She captioned the video, “Yes we use a whole bag sometimes 2.”
Viewers confirmed her assertion in the comments.
One former McDonald’s employee corroborated Gia’s claim about the chain’s Sweet Tea, saying, “It’s definitely made that way I remember working at McDonald’s as a minor [and] this is how it was made except the entire bag goes in.”
Someone else said, “When it’s not sweet, I get mad.”
One worker added, “Y’all when the customer complain it’s not sweet I just put like 6 pumps of liquid sugar.”
The Daily Dot previously reported on a TikToker who tried to ascertain exactly how many calories are in a McDonald’s Sweet Tea. According to Yahoo!’s Eat This Not That blog, former McDonald’s employee Nicole Weiser confirmed that the chain does indeed use as much sugar in its popular beverage as TikToker Gia claims they do.
“I was a manager at a McDonald’s. I worked there for about three years.” She stated, “For every four gallons of [the container of] sweet tea, there was a full four-pound bag of sugar emptied into it.”
The McDonald’s website says that their small sweet tea (16 ounces) contains 100 calories. But based on Weiser’s claim that the chain uses 4 pounds of sugar for every 4 gallons of sweet tea, a 16-ounce cup would contain a shocking 48 percent of the Percent Daily Values (DV) of sugar recommended for those on a 2000-calorie diet.
“I stopped drinking the tea after I realized that,” Weiser told Yahoo. “That’s nasty.”
One TikToker who agrees with Weiser, commented on Gia’s video, “I literally saw them do that before and now I only get unsweetened.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to McDonald’s and Gia via email and Tik Tok comments.
