Bottled iced teas

[Tony_in_WV]

Hello! I'm on day 10 of my very first whole 30. While the cravings were difficult the first few days, I think I'm on my way to slaying my sugar/carb dragon.

Right now the hardest part for me is beverage variety. I flavor my water with slices of fresh fruit (lemons, limes, oranges), and I do enjoy it.

But I feel like I really miss my iced teas. I always drank unsweetened tea, but dumped a couple packs of splenda in it because i thought that was a "healthy" option. I know now from Whole 30 and ISWF that the artificial stuff is bad too.

I think I would be OK just drinking unsweetened tea with some lemon or lime slices added. Would a bottled iced tea be approved??

I like Gold Peak tea. The unsweetened variety contains water, natural flavors, tea, caramel coloring, and phosphoric acid.

Anything in there that would not be on the plan??

[Tom Denham]

Those ingredients sound okay, but you could brew your own tea for a fraction of the cost with just two ingredients - tea and water.

[jhmomi]

I am curious to find out the answer, but I think the caramel coloring might be an issue. This is from Wikipedia...

"Caramel is produced from commercially available nutritive sweeteners consisting of fructose, dextrose (glucose), invert sugar, sucrose, malt syrup, molasses, starch hydrolysates and fractions thereof."

"Caramel coloring may be derived from a variety of source products that are themselves common allergens, such as glucose (sometimes derived from wheat), starch hydrolysates (from wheat), malt syrup (in general derived from barley), or lactose (from milk). As such, persons with known sensitivities or allergies to food products are advised to avoid foods including generic caramel coloring or first determine the source for the caramel coloring before consuming the food. North American and European manufacturers mostly use glucose derived from corn or wheat to produce caramel color, which is highly processed and is generally considered gluten free.^[10]"

[Tony_in_WV]

Thanks for the responses! I wouldn't plan to have a bottle a day or anything like that. I think i'll treat it like I've been treating fruit. On occasion, not at every meal.

I will definitely be brewing my own too.

The caramel coloring was my big concern. Thanks for the info on that too.

[jhmomi]

I think Tom and I posted at almost the same time. Glad to see in his answer it's ok for you to have for convenience. It's strange though, even though the caramel coloring is technically ok, it still makes me want to seek out products that don't have it. IMHO, the shorter the ingredient the list the better, even when comparing several Whole30 compliant foods.

[Robin Strathdee]

Yeah, while caramel coloring isn't on the technical avoidance list, I'd still steer clear because of the unknown factors. If you prove to be sensitive to any of that stuff it could cause a problem.

Good research!

[PatrickDickey]

I know this is a couple of years old, but since I ran into the same issue (with Tradewinds Tea), I thought I'd post. Pure Leaf Unsweetened Tea doesn't have the caramel coloring. It just has the tea, water, and citric acid. I was going to buy that instead of Tradewinds, but it was also more expensive this week.

 

Have a great day.
Patrick.