Monday August 6, 2007 | 5 comments
As tea becomes more and more popular and increasingly sought after for its health benefits, we will continue to see it show up in the most unlikely places, especially in the U.S. We are unique in the way that we can transform even the healthiest substances into forms that fit our
unhealthy lifestyles. Take a look at this fun video singing about one of the many unique entrants into the tea market: Smirnoff’s Raw Green Tea. It boggles my mind to think about how many people out there will be consuming bottles of this stuff or prepared drinks at their local bar and restaurants thinking that they too will now be getting in their health quota of green tea. Just throw in sugar or alcohol with your green tea and you’re good to go. Who cares how much green tea is actually in this stuff.
Help me out people. What will it take to get the message out there that there is more to the benefits of taking time to prepare and drink a real cup of tea than just shoving the basic ingredients down your throat infused with a bunch of other crap.
As ever before my personal reaction is violent. Tea should be drunk as tea and in the way it is proposed since a life time – the conventional cultural way. All junky fast food ways are injurious to health and never satisfies the urge to drink tea.
Colas by their advertisement power won the whole world but mind it that time they were alone – now you have all the plethora of beverages – synthetic as well as natural.
We must carry the cause of natural tea.
I think such adulterated tea beverages as this Smirnoff Raw Tea is being targeted towards the young adults at clubs and parties who want / need alcohol in their drinks. That market segment rarely thinks of hot tea, which is sort of an anathema of clubbing and wild partying.
I remember my visits to several clubs in China. I noticed that many people play a dice guessing game — usually a man and a woman — in which there is a winner and a loser every 10 seconds or so. The loser drinks something…and that something, as I found out later, is sweet (sugared) green tea and Jack Daniels mixed together in ice. In the end, you get two drunk people. The tea is there to prolong the game lest the brain gets numb too soon from the alcohol. Outside of that context, I suppose they drink hot tea on occasions.
Ouch, Sandy. Alcohol is not simply “crap,” (aka “nutrition’s corpse”) but a deadly poison, too. I see two insidious thrusts here: one is to somehow convince the already addled alcoholic that his addiction is doing her/him good; the other to attract more young people to drink alcohol. Ouch, again. In 21 years of teaching, I have attended at least one funeral per year to grieve a young life cut short by alcohol . . . driving drunk, binge drinking, hit by a drunk driver, suicide. Yet, it goes on. Our young people seek anesthesia. Why? Is it that we have eliminated the meaningful life rituals and experiences, like drinking HOT tea with people you love and respect? When we can answer that “why,” we might just be on the right track.
Please, people, visit my classroom at lunch on Tuesdays, I plan to invite six kids each week to bring their sack lunches, and then join me for a cup of HOT and unsweetened green tea. I’ll keep you posted.
I think this discussion should come back to scientific research although I’m not sure who wants to fund it. Science is beginning to identify the specific compounds in tea and developing statistical research which identifes why tea has health benefits. If the temperature, freshness, presence of other compounds with the tea eradicate the health benefits then that can be shown also using science. But if a bunch of non-harmful flavors or additives make tea consumption different than it has been traditionally, but still a healthy beverage, then we should embrace new tea-drinking patterns.
It seems that the slower process and ritual of traditional tea preparation can be analyzed separately from consuming the tea. This is undoubtedly “a tougher sell” to a fast-paced, multi-tasking popular culture who are more enamored with convenience and trendiness than the substance of truly enhancing personal well-being. Promoting Mindfulness when drinking a hot cup of excellent quality tea, as in Buddhist philosophy quoted here at TChing, requires a distinctly different avenue. And of course the best approach is to teach by example and to invite others to share in that experience.
I think the answer is quality and taste. Along with the money to market. Not only is there crap in the bottled junk out there, but I have tasted lots of crappy loose leaf tea. In the ‘end’, quality and taste should will out…but will it? The ones who seem to put out the crap also seem to have the marketing $$.