Tea - Who Gives a *BEEP*?
Tea - Who Gives a *BEEP*?
(By the way, the graphic at the top of the page is the Chinese character for "tea." In Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, it is pronounced as "cha.")
The Question:
My Answers:
1. Because it's tasty, you whore! No, really! Tea is nothing more than the end result of steeping various combinations of leaves, fruits, roots, herbs, barks, and/or spices (in other words, various plant parts and/or plant derivatives) in boiling or near-boiling water. The object is to draw out the flavors, fragrances, nutrients, essences, oils, and/or restorative properties from the plant items that you are steeping into a drinkable infusion (that's a rather broad definition on my part, because that means that coffee could be classified as a type of tea, but oh well). In many cases this makes perfect sense, as it would be much easier on your taste buds, your jaws, and your stomach to drink a cup of rose hip tea than to eat a handful of rose hips, or to have a cup of ginger tea than to eat a chunk of ginger root.
2. Tea is also low in caffeine: the teas with the highest levels of caffeine (e.g. black teas and other strong, dark teas that are made from fermented tea leaves) still have only about a quarter of the amount of caffeine found in coffee, while green tea (made from unfermented tea leaves) has a third of the caffeine found in typical black teas, and herbal teas (any tea made without leaves from the tea plant) have no caffeine whatsoever. Caffeine overstimulates the heart and raises blood pressure: heart attack sufferers are sometimes given shots of caffeine in order to restart the heart after an attack, and the amount of caffeine in some of those shots is actually EQUAL to the amount of caffeine in a strong cup of coffee. Chew on that, kind reader! >:p
3. Tea has amazing beneficial properties from a health standpoint. For instance, rose hip tea is very high in vitamin C; green tea in particular has become extremely popular, not only because it's become one of those oh-so-trendy symbols of Japanese high culture that many Westerners attempt to adopt, but also because it is high in vitamins A, B, and C, along with minerals, antioxidants, and chlorophyll and other phytonutrients. Green tea even has antibacterial/clarifying properties - my mother goes to a local Korean salon/spa where she gets to bathe in green tea (I kid you not!), and whenever she comes back from that spa her skin just glows and any blemishes have literally faded almost completely away.
3a. From a more simplistic standpoint, tea is great in that it warms (or cools!) and hydrates the body; it also helps lubricate the digestive tract, which makes digestion easier - and which explains why many cultures begin their meals with at least a small helping of soup. As a healthy drink tea is great because it is flavorful yet lacks the fat, dairy products, digestive irritants, and/or overabundance of simple sugars found in nearly all of today's popular drinks, from soda to even products like orange juice. Tea contains the essences of the plants it was made from and transports those essences to the body in a form that is extremely easy to digest, and as stated above it is preferable in many cases to ingest the essences in this way as opposed to eating the plant parts themselves.
4. My biological father is an acupuncturist and an herbalist in the tradition of Oriental medicine (he was also president of certain state and national committees that changed California law so that acupuncture and herbal medicine are now covered by medical insurance), while my mother is a farmbred woman who worked in one of California's first health food stores/restaurants in the 1970s. I was taught very early on by my Korean parents about the importance of natural eating/drinking and the importance of the relationship between what you eat/drink and the state of your body, and I've been drinking ginseng teas and various Oriental herbal infusions as both prophylactics and as remedies all throughout my childhood; hence my current love of and respect for teas. (Besides, through my own light, unscientific research, it's come to my notice that certain teas affect me differently: that green tea and genmai tea improve my skin and digestion when I drink them regularly; that ginger tea warms me up and makes a sore throat feel better, but I feel icky and uncomfortably "sweaty" inside if I drink it too often; that ginseng tea improves my energy and feelings of alertness; et cetera, et cetera.) But most of all, teas are just tasty! Tea is made of the flavors and fragrances that have been steeped out of tasty little plants and into a liquid form for one's enjoyment! My point? Teas are cool, and that's why I made a site for them... you whore!
Why are you making a website about tea, you freak?