Tea Anyone?

Besides water, what is the world's most popular liquid drink? It's tea. (just an odd side note in case you play trivia games, number ten in most popular is breast milk) And why is tea more popular? It's probably a combination of, inexpensive pricing, easily availability, low shipping weight and the culture of the tea drinker. China and India, the world's population centers are tea fanatics. Americans drink the most coffee, and we still like that. I do notice an American export named Star bucks is assaulting the Asian market, the one where tea is supreme.

China is credited with being the founder of tea. It's no coincidence that the source of all tea, the Camellia Sinensis plant is native to China. Anyway, enough of the generic history of tea. For me, although there five kinds of tea including black, green, oolong, white, and puer (a super strong, secret recipe Chinese black tea that is uncommon here), I only like black tea. Black tea is the western choice although the bogus claims made about green tea being a "healthy" drunk and curative have made it increasingly popular in the west.  Give me green tea and I'll spout off about it being glorified water. I find that it has little taste. Fortunately, I am only assaulted with that green stuff when I eat in Asian themed restaurants. They bring it to the table as a starter, but I just let it sit and stew..... or brew, I guess. I rarely drink it.

Never has a drink other than tea been credited with so many curative properties, not a single of which is true.  Green tea and Ginseng tea, for example, have the highest concentration of catechins which has falsely been claimed to help prevent cancer. It's absurd because the levels are so low one would have to drink him or herself to death to reach beneficial levels.  Pu-Erb tea and Ku Ding Cha is claimed to reduce cholesterol. White Tea  may have the strongest anti-cancer potential of all teas, promoters say. It is also an unfounded claim.

Then there are the weight loss claims.  Many tea companies flaunt the supposed health benefit that tea "burns calories" and that tea "is scientifically proven to aid weight loss". Ridiculous!  However, un sweetened tea is a calorie free drink that when substituted  for other highly caloric drinks could be a good way to promote weight loss. But the claims that tea actively promotes weight loss, sexual potency, height growth, prevent heart disease and hundreds of other phony claims doesn't hurt tea's popularity. I see right here in sleepy Portland that tea houses are opening to compete with coffee houses like Star bucks.  Marketing can bring about anything today.

I usually have one cup of coffee for breakfast, my ritual. And now I am beginning to read of the same bogus heath benefits of that drink. Sigh.....I wish they would leave coffee along. If they ruin that image too, I may have to switch to vodka instead.