Artificial colouring

I love love love Starbucks' Green Tea Latte, but on my health-conscious days I find it too sweet for my liking and sadly, unlike buying coffee from kopitiam, I can't ask for "siew dai" (less sweet in Hokkien) because apparently it is made with a  pre-mixed formula readily loaded with sugar.


To curb my craving in a healthier way, I decided to try my luck and make my own concoction using my Nespresso machine. I bought a pack of premium grade Japanese green tea powder from the supermarket and added 5 teaspoons of powder (which was meant to make 5 cups of tea) into the steamed milk...


The end result, it tasted absolutely delicious, creamy texture with intense green tea fragrant, but...


It just didn't look like the real deal, see the comparison:

I added more and more and more green tea powder (15 teaspoons in total!) but the colour was not even half as green as the Starbucks'... I gave up.


There is no way that Starbucks could have used pure green tea powder as the cost is too high, so I concluded that they have added colouring (lots of it) into my favourite drink! sigh...


And here is an article that confirmed my suspicion, and to make conscience effort to reduce use of chemicals in their products, Starbucks use insect-based ingredients to make their drink colourful and attractive. I am really not sure if I should be happy to know that the colouring is now more "natural", because given a choice I wouldn't consume insect for its brilliant colour...


The amount of chemicals from artificial favourings, preservatives and colouring we consume daily is horrifying. You just can't run away from it, they are everywhere be it cheap or expensive food sources. These kind of additives are added liberally just to make the products more competitive and lucrative. Many studies show links between consuming food additives to diseases like hyperactivity in children, skin allergies, asthma and even cancers. How can we not fall sick if we keep pumping in harmful chemicals into our bodies?!

Why can't they leave a simple drink to look simply the way it is??