[1] Sweet tea with a lemon wedge (photo © Melissa Doroquez | Wikipedia).

[2] Pure Leaf sweet tea (photos © Pure Leaf).

[3] How about a sweet summer peach garnish on your glass of sweet tea? It isn’t traditional, but it’s how we drink it in peach season (photo © The Nibble).

[4] Sweet tea is so popular that Seagram’s created a flavored vodka. You can spike your sweet tea, but it’s most commonly mixed with other ingredients like lemonade (to make a spiked Arnold Palmer a.k.a. “John Daly”), club soda, peach juice, or ginger ale (photo © Seagrams).

[5] Sweet tea has moved from a southern specialty to national prominence. It’s even at McDonald’s (photo © McDonald’s).

Updated August 2026

August 21st is National Sweet Tea Day. For those who haven’t had the experience, sweet tea, also known as sweet iced tea, is more than an iced tea with sugar. It’s iced tea with lots of sugar.

It’s a staple drink in the southern U.S. A 16-ounce glass of sweet tea has 42g to 44g of sugar. Let’s compare that to regular iced tea.

A typical heaping teaspoon of sugar is 7.5 grams. If you added three heaping spoonfuls to a glass of plain iced tea—and that’s a lot of sugar*—it’s still just half the amount of sugar as in sweet tea.

You can have your sweet tea plain, with a wedge of lemon, or accented with mint, peach, or raspberry. But no matter how you like it, nutritionists recommend that you have sweet tea as a special occasion drink, not your everyday, all-day beverage.

Below:

> Classic Southern sweet tea recipe.

> Tea comes to America.

> The rise of sweet tea.

> Sugar comparison: regular tea vs. sweet tea.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The history of iced tea.

> The history of tea.

> The history of iced drinks.

> The different types of tea: a photo glossary.

> The year’s 23 tea holidays.
 
 
RECIPE: SOUTHERN SWEET TEA

The recipe makes about eight cups of tea, so it provides:

 
Because it’s usually served over ice, the final number of glasses will vary depending on glass size and how much ice you use.

Ingredients

 
‡Luzianne and Lipton both make which makes family-size tea bags.
 
Preparation

1. BRING 4 cups of water to a boil. Remove from the heat. Add the tea bags and steep for 5–8 minutes.

2. REMOVE the tea bags. While the tea is still hot, stir in the sugar until completely dissolved.

3. POUR the sweetened tea concentrate into a large pitcher. Add 4 cups of cold water and stir. Serve over ice as desired.

Tips:

 
 
TEA IN AMERICA

A little pre-sweet-tea history:

Tea was introduced to the Colonies by the Dutch—first-class world traders—in the late 1640s.

By the time Dutch East India Company Director Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam in 1647 to become the city’s governor, serving tea—an expensive product—had become an established ritual in upper-class households.

The British took control of New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York. As in England, tea continued to play the same important social role.

Most people will be surprised to know that green tea was the predominant variety consumed in Colonial America.

It was imported from China and Japan, both green tea cultures (even today, Japan produces only a handful of specialty black teas; China expanded into numerous styles of black tea).

So it was mostly green tea that was dumped into Boston Harbor in 1773. (What you learned in school about the Boston Tea Party may not have been accurate. Here’s the real scoop.)

But before then, in the 1760s, American colonists were drinking more than 1 million pounds of tea per year during the 1760s.
 
 
Black Tea Becomes Prominent

In 1839, which was the beginning of Britain’s Opium Wars with China, the British began to grow their own tea in India (American ships continued to bring green tea to the U.S.).

Black tea† was the more popular style in India, and British tea merchants brought back Assam and Ceylon black teas to Europe and the U.S.

By the first part of the 20th century, Americans were evenly split between green tea and black tea, drinking around 40% green tea, 40% black tea and 20% oolong† tea [source].

World War II cut off trade with Japan and much of the tea—producing regions of China were occupied. The alternative was black tea from India and Ceylon.

While green tea reemerged in the U.S. with awareness of its antioxidant qualities some 20 years ago, America remains a black tea country to this day.

(We love all varieties of black, green, and oolong teas, but truth to tell, we think milk and sugar taste a lot better in black tea.)
 

[6] A tray of sweet tea on the buffet. Help yourself! (photo © The Nibble)
 
 
THE RISE OF SWEET TEA

The oldest known recipe for sweet tea was published in an 1878 community cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Marion Cabell Tyree.

Sweet tea could easily have been in fashion for numerous decades before then—among the wealthy.

Sweet tea began as a luxury item: tea, sugar, and ice were all expensive (ice was possibly the most costly of the ingredients since it had to be stored and shipped from afar) [source].

The Growth Of Sweet Tea

Sweet tea earned its status as the quintessential Southern drink through a blend of climate, agricultural history, technological innovation, and deeply ingrained social traditions.

The long, intensely hot, and humid Southern summers created a daily need for refreshing, hydrating beverages. Before climate control and air conditioning became widespread in the mid-20th century, iced drinks were a practical necessity for coping with the oppressive heat. Iced tea provided a brisk, cooling lift during the hottest parts of the day.

The Expansion of Iced Tea

Historically, iced tea began as an upscale novelty in the 19th century: both manufactured ice and refined white sugar were luxury goods.

As commercial ice plants, refrigerated rail cars, and home iceboxes spread across the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ice transitioned from an expensive status symbol to an everyday household staple.

At the same time, the price of granulated sugar dropped, making a heavily sweetened beverage accessible to households across all economic backgrounds.

Black Tea Becomes The Norm

Early American iced teas in the 19th century were often made with green tea (frequently served in alcoholic punches).

In fact, it was chests of green tea that the Sons of Liberty threw overboard at the Boston Tea Party!

Over time, robust black teas—particularly orange pekoe and cut black tea blends—became the standard. Brands like Luzianne and Lipton developed tea blends specifically formulated to stay clear and hold up to melting ice without turning excessively cloudy or bitter, maintaining the deep amber profile associated with classic sweet tea.
 

[7] In the mist, the famous Bagua Tea Garden, located in the mountain ranges of Zhushan Township, Nantou County, Taiwan The plantation gets its name from its signature concentric, terraced rows of tea bushes that gracefully curve around the hillside. When viewed from above, the configuration strongly resembles the shape of the traditional Chinese Bagua (Eight Trigrams) symbol.
 
The Chemistry of the “Hot Steep” Brewing Method

Unlike ordinary iced tea that is sweetened after pouring, Southern sweet tea is traditionally sweetened while the brewed concentrate is still steaming hot.

Dissolving sugar at high temperatures allows for a much higher concentration of dissolved sugar than cold liquid could naturally hold (creating a simple syrup directly in the brew). This gives the beverage its signature rich body and smooth mouthfeel.

In Southern culture, offering a guest a glass of sweet tea is an essential gesture of welcome and hospitality. A pitcher of sweet tea is a standard presence on dining tables for family dinners, Sunday lunches, church gatherings, barbecues, and front-porch visits.

Over the generations, sweet tea evolved from a seasonal summer cooler into a year-round regional identity marker, often affectionately referred to across the South simply as the “house wine of the South.”
 
How Sweet Is It?

By volume, sweet tea made with the standard recipe contains approximately three to four and a half times as much sugar per 8-ounce serving as tea sweetened with two teaspoons of sugar.

Here’s the math, using the sweet tea recipe of 1 to 1½ cups of sugar per 8 cups of brewed tea:

In an 8-ounce serving, this equals:

 
By comparison, an 8-ounce cup of tea with 2 teaspoons of sugar has a sugar-to-tea ratio of:

 
Sorry to end this sweet article on a down note. As a daily drink—including multiple glasses—these numbers do not tell a good story.

The U.S. South consistently reports some of the highest daily consumption rates of sugar-sweetened beverages, a regional dietary preference that heavily mirrors the geographic distribution of obesity and type 2 diabetes in America. Southern states frequently lead national statistics for both conditions.

While sweet tea is a staple of southern hospitality and culinary tradition, its high sugar concentration makes it a significant contributor to the daily added sugar intake that public health officials advise limiting.
 

[8] Another very sweet iced tea: Thai iced tea, sweetened with sweetened condensed milk. Here’s the recipe (photo © The Nibble).
 
________________

*The American Heart Association recommends an added-sugar limit of no more than 100 calories per day (about 6 teaspoons or 24 grams) for most adult women and no more than 150 calories per day (about 9 teaspoons or 36 grams of sugar) for most men [source].

†Black tea is green tea that has been oxidized by fermentation for two to four hours, to a black color. The tea is then fully oxidized (oolong is half-oxidized) and dried slowly over a low heat charcoal fire, called panning or roasting. Black tea is the most common form of tea drunk worldwide (and tea is the second-most beverage drunk worldwide, after water). See more in our Tea Glossary.
 

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OMG, it’s August 20th, International Hawaiian Pizza Day. When we first had a slice, it was considered a joke by serious pizza eaters. Now, it’s a thing.

We first encountered Hawaiian pizza in a Brookline, Massachusetts pizzeria, way back in our college years. Scanning the menu, we found the concept of a cheese pizza—crust, tomato sauce and mozzarella—topped with ham and pineapple to be “fun.” We ordered a slice.

Fun it was…but we went back to our “usual,” bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and sausage. They went far better with tomato sauce and mozzarella. We don’t think we’ve had Hawaiian pizza since.

Barbecue chicken pizza, goat cheese pizza, white pizza, whole wheat crusts, and the rest of what we consider “modern” and “artisan” pizzas were decades away.

But Hawaiian pizza endured, and there is actually an International Hawaiian Pizza Day, August 20th, celebrating the pizza that originated in…Canada.

It became popular locally and eventually became a menu staple of pizzerias worldwide.

> The history of Hawaiian pizza is below.

> So are creative enhancements to the traditional recipe.

> The history of pizza.

> 40 different types of pizza.

> The year’s 16 pizza holidays.

> The history of pineapple.

> The history of ham.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF HAWAIIAN PIZZA

Sotirios “Sam” Panopoulos, a Greek-born Canadian, created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in 1962.

He owned the restaurant with his brothers Elias and Nikitas. They offered typical American items fare like burgers and fries, bacon and eggs, grilled cheese, club sandwiches, spaghetti and meat sauce, pizza, American Chinese dishes, and more—a full breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu, served daily.

In New York, we call this style of restaurant a Greek diner.

Some of the Chinese dishes mixed sweet and savory flavors. Inspired by the sweet-and-savory pairing, Panopoulos experimented with adding pineapple, ham, bacon, and other toppings to the pizzas.

“We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste,” Panopoulos told the BBC. “We were young in the business and we were doing a lot of experiments” [source].

Hawaiian pizza also capitalized on the mid-century tiki trend, which popularized Polynesian-style cocktails, food and decor in North America.

By the way, the name “Hawaiian” for the pizza was not a tribute to the Hawaiian Islands, which became America’s 50th state three years earlier. Rather, it was the brand name of the can of pineapples Panopoulos used.

The Satellite Restaurant, still going strong today, proudly calls itself “Home of the Hawaiian Pizza.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a fan of the dish.
 

Modern cooks have elevated the recipe, using:

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] The original Hawaiian pizza from the Satellite Restaurant in Canada, has not released their recipe, but here’s something similar (photo © Satellite Restaurant).

[2] This Hawaiian pizza, modernized by Jacqueline Mearman, chef/owner of Kitsch Café  in Baltimore, elevates the classic ham and pineapple with the addition of pickled jalapeños and spicy barbecue sauce. Here’s a similar recipe (photo © Kitsch Café ).

[3] This handsome pie is made with thick-cut ham steaks and garnished with fresh basil and a drizzle of honey (photo © Niman Ranch).

[4] For an exotic touch, add some thin slices of guava paste (not thick like these) under the ham. Guava and ham are a popular pairing (photo © Buy West Eat Best).

[1] Chile peppers contain capsaicin, a chemical compound that burns (photo of jalapeño chiles © Good Eggs).

[2] In peppercorns, the heat chemical is piperine (photo iStock Photo).

[3] Yellow mustard seeds. When mustard seeds are crushed, the heat is released (photo © Hillshire Farm | Facebook).

[4] Yellow onions have the most sulphur, and thus the most burn (photo © Good Eggs).

August 19th is National Hot & Spicy Day. What makes foods hot and spicy? Why do some people temporarily cough, sneeze, sweat, or even tear up?

The heat comes from specific chemical compounds that bind to special receptors on the tongue, lips, and other parts of your mouth. These activated sensory neurons then send signals to your brain saying you’ve encountered something burning…and voilà, you experience heat or a burning sensation.

 
All of these compounds elicit a sensation of burning pain by selectively activating sensory neurons that convey information about noxious stimuli to the central nervous system.
 
If consuming these foods causes pain, then do people continue to eat them?

First, different people have different sensitivities to the compounds, and some enjoy the burn.

Second, the painful sensations on the tongue cause the brain to release endorphins and dopamine, which are “feel good” chemicals can that give a feeling of exhilaration. At least, that’s what this source says. Personally, we’ve never felt exhilaration—only burn.
 
 
What if you want to eat hot and spicy foods but don’t want the pain?

Federica Genovese, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says that you can train your body to temper these reactions by eating spicy food more often [source].
 
 
Would you rather have an antidote to the heat?

Don’t grab a glass of water! Because capsaicin is oil-based, drinking water will just spread the capsaicin around your mouth, creating even more burning.

Capsaicin and other heat-mongers are hydrophobic, fat-soluble compounds that dissolve in fat and oil.

 
If there’s nothing else, grab some bread. It’s not nearly as good as the other options but can help to suck up some of the capsaicin in your mouth [source].
 
 
> 18 Ways To Spice It Up

> The different types of chiles.

> The different types of peppercorns.

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