Inside Teko's New Formula: Zero Calories, 200mg+ Polyphenols, 100mg+ Chlorogenic Acid

The first thing most people notice about the new Teko has nothing to do with any of the numbers.

It's the finish. The previous formula carried a sharpness at the end of the sip — slightly too much acid, slightly too much stevia, a faint sweetness that lingered a beat too long. Teko's team spent months at the plant in Asunción working that out. Less stevia. Less citric acid. A cleaner drop-off.

The four flavors are unchanged: Limõ, Marakuyá, Melokotón Narã, Anana. They simply taste more like fruit now and less like a drink mix.

That was the purpose of the reformulation. Everything below is what stayed — and what Teko can now put a number on.

Still zero. Both of them.

0 calories. 0 grams of sugar.

Not “low.” Not “lightly sweetened.” Zero on both counts. One stick into 16–32 oz of cold water, and the nutrition panel doesn't move.

The sweetness comes from a small amount of USDA organic stevia extract. No sucralose, no aspartame, no acesulfame potassium. Nothing artificial anywhere in the formula.

What's in a stick

Yerba mate isn't a flavor added to Teko. It's the base of the drink — an extract of unsmoked green Ilex paraguariensis, the plant Paraguayans have been drinking for centuries.

Unsmoked matters. Smoke-drying is what gives much of traditional mate its heavy, ashy bitterness. Teko's extract skips that step, which is why the fruit comes through instead of fighting through.

Polyphenols are plant compounds — the same broad family green tea and coffee are known for. Yerba mate is naturally dense in them, and because Teko is made from an extract rather than a loose leaf that gets steeped and discarded, those compounds carry into the glass.

Research associates dietary polyphenols with antioxidant activity, countering oxidative stress from free radicals.

The figure on Teko's spec sheet is a guaranteed floor, not an average. Batches test above it. Teko publishes the floor because it's the number that holds in every stick, not the number from a best run.

100mg+ chlorogenic acid

This is the part most people haven't heard of.

Chlorogenic acid is a specific polyphenol group — the one coffee gets studied for. In Teko's yerba mate extract, it isn't a minor component. Chlorogenic acid accounts for the overwhelming majority of the identified phenolic compounds in the extract. The 200mg+ polyphenol figure is, in large part, a chlorogenic acid figure.

It's studied in the nutrition literature as a dietary antioxidant.

Why these numbers are hard to find anywhere else

Look at the back of almost any instant drink mix, hydration stick, or water enhancer on the shelf. Calories, sugar, sodium, maybe a vitamin blend.

A polyphenol figure is rare. A chlorogenic acid figure is close to nonexistent.

Two reasons. Most of these products don't contain meaningful amounts worth reporting. And printing a number means committing to it — holding a supplier to a floor batch after batch, and giving up the ability to quietly reformulate downward when input costs shift.

Teko commits to the number.

100% Daily Value of Vitamin C

Vitamin C is an essential nutrient and an antioxidant that helps neutralize free radicals, with well-established roles in collagen formation, iron absorption, and normal immune function.

The rest of the label

Yerba mate extract, natural flavor, citric acid, stevia extract, tricalcium phosphate, sodium citrate, mint extract, ascorbic acid.

Eight ingredients. Gluten-free. Vegan. Non-GMO ingredients. Dissolves clean in cold water in a few seconds — no clumping, no shaker bottle, no waiting.

Made where mate is from

Teko is produced in Asunción, Paraguay, by Paraguayans. Not sourced from South America and blended somewhere in New Jersey — made at the source, in the country where this plant is the national drink.

It's why the flavor names are in Guaraní. And it's why the team went back into the plant to fix an aftertaste most brands would have shipped and forgotten about.