Are there really worms inside Lipton Lemon Green Tea teabags?

A video is spreading virally on social media that purports that inside Lipton Lemon Green Tea teabags are worms. The video shows a woman opening up two Lipton teabags and picking out a number of small yellow “worms”.

The video also asserts that they had found the same worms in all Lemon Green Tea teabags that they had checked but not in non-flavoured teabags. Why Lipton would put worms in their products is not explained in the video. See the video below.

While the little yellow “worms” do appear to really look like small worms, it does not appear that they are. Despite claims in the video that these were living worms, there is no point in the video where they move or crawl by themselves, moving only in response to being moved by the woman’s hand or by the white surface moving beneath them.

As many viewers initially suspected, these so-called worms were actually lemon flavouring particles added to the green tea to create the lemon flavour, explaining why they were not found in non-flavoured versions of Lipton Green Tea. This was soon confirmed by Lipton themselves in response to the rumours. They tweeted from their Twitter account –

There are no worms in Lipton Lemon Green tea bags. They are flavor pieces which dissolve in hot water. Watch here:

They also included a video (below) that shows the same product being opened and the same yellow particles being taken from the green tea, only in this case they are mixed with boiling water where they soon dissolve, thus putting this mystery to bed once and for all.

Social media users partial to Lipton tea also reported doing the same experiment and coming to the same conclusions.

So, there are no worms hiding in Lipton Lemon Green Tea. It is a hoax.