Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
When I first moved to the deep south and would ask for iced tea in restaurants I was always asked if I wanted sweet or unsweetened, so I think for a lot of southerners ice tea/sweet tea are NOT the same.
In the South it's understood that when you ask for tea, you are asking for iced tea and not hot tea. Your waitress is wanting to know what kind of iced tea you want. So I would say that sweet tea is a type of iced tea, not a separate category.
Drinking tea with out sugar is like drinking lemonade with out sugar to me. It just something that goes, so the concept is very weird to me. We don't say Ice tea, normally don't say sweet tea either. Their's a assumption that the Tea itself is serve cold and sweated.
Now like Lemonade and other drinks, people like different amounts of sugar added. I have a Aunt who gets angry if there's to0 much or too little sugar. But mass amounts of people drinking Tea with sugar is almost a culture shock. Again it's like lemonade with out sugar.
A very mild amount of sugar in tea is sometimes okay. However, bottled commercial teas like Snapple and Arizona always have way too much. I remember when Honest Tea first came out, I was happy, because it was mildly sweetened, but they've upped the sugar content so it's like 2/3rds what something like Snapple is, so now it's almost undrinkable - feels like I need to wash out my mouth with a glass of water when I'm done.
For the record, I also cannot drink regular soda because it tastes too sweet to me, and I seldom drink fruit juice unless it's watered down. But I drink a ton of fluids a day (probably close to a gallon), so drinking anything with a substantial amount of calories is a bad idea.
I'm from NC and I went to visit New York City and I asked for sweet tea and they gave me a weird look and just gave me unsweetened tea with some sugar packs to put in it.
Just ask for iced tea and you will avoid the weird looks.
The reason you don't see much sweet tea in the North is purely regional.
Similarly, I was mystified when arriving in South Carolina for college and not being able to find linguiça (Portuguese sausage). It's just one of those cultural differences.
When I was growing up in southern West Virginia in the 60's iced tea was always sweet and I made it that way most of my life. I didn't realize some people didn't like it until a road trip from Michigan when my friend who was driving, a Michigander, took a swig of the tea I made and nearly ran us into the ditch. She was not pleased.
Drinking tea with out sugar is like drinking lemonade with out sugar to me. It just something that goes, so the concept is very weird to me. We don't say Ice tea, normally don't say sweet tea either. Their's a assumption that the Tea itself is serve cold and sweated.
Now like Lemonade and other drinks, people like different amounts of sugar added. I have a Aunt who gets angry if there's to0 much or too little sugar. But mass amounts of people drinking Tea with sugar is almost a culture shock. Again it's like lemonade with out sugar.
just a regional difference and what you are used to. Here Iced Tea comes unsweetened, its just the standard here, not right or wrong just how it is
I personally like it that way, with just some lemon, but is probably because what I grew up used to
I didn't realize so many other northerners shared my distaste for sweetened iced tea.
That being true, why the hell is it so difficult to find a mass-market unsweeetned bottled iced tea in the U.S.?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
