Friday May 1, 2009 | 7 comments
Increasingly, we are becoming more and more separated from our foods and beverages. Most of us don’t even know what is contained in many of the products we consume. Our reductionistic tendencies cause us to keep wanting to extract the key constituents and feed them back to us in convenient, concentrated, or altered forms that are also often enhanced in some way. Given that the tea market has grown by double digits in the past few years, much of it driven by the health claims, I’m concerned that this trend may eventually find its way to tea. This post is meant to engender discussion about the difference between consuming whole foods and beverages and what would euphemistically be considered food products.
We live in a very fast-paced, highly technological, work-oriented society. Each feeds into the other. The more we work, the more technology develops to help us work faster. The more technology advances, the more and faster we can work. Unfortunately, this all bleeds into our personal lives. It both reduces the amount of personal time we have and provides further technological advances to reduce the amount of time we take for personal matters, such as eating.
Even our food culture has evolved into a very reductive way of eating. Everything gets reduced to its primary constituents for the sake of convenience. So much so that our food is barely recognizable as food anymore. We primarily eat products that require labels and a chemical dictionary to decipher them. Even the components that once were food are reduced to some concentrated juice, paste, or flake before being added.
When you review most of the scientific literature in nutrition, what you see are research studies that test the impact of one particular extracted constituent on the health of its subjects. That is exactly what the majority of research into tea does; it has predominantly been testing the impact of EGCG on the health of rats and humans. The results of these studies have been what is driving the growth in the tea market. At the same time, however, there is a small but growing body of literature suggesting that this may not be such a good thing. Many vitamins, antioxidants, and other healthy nutrients are starting to show up as actually creating disease processes in subjects when taken in isolated and concentrated forms. What is going on here?
What I believe, and have been discussing and writing about for years as an herbalist, is essentially what can
be summed up in an old TV commercial catch phrase: “You can’t fool mother nature”. The organisms and systems of nature are so complex, so inextricably interwoven, that we really don’t have a clue as to how they all work or why. Yet, we are so ego-centric that when we come across something that we haven’t figured out yet, our wont is to label it as useless or unimportant. Just look at the wholesale slaughter of innocent tonsils and appendices in the 50′s. Then, they were just “vestigial” organs. Now, they are important components of our immune system. Oops! Did you know that we don’t know what 97% of our DNA does, so it has been labeled as “junk” DNA? Really? This amazingly intricate design system is 97% useless? Is that really what they expect us to believe?
Not me. I believe that there is an incredible, inherent wisdom to all things in the Universe. You can call it what you want: God, Nature, The Force, whatever. This wisdom that underlies all things has resulted in systems so complex that we may never be able to unravel their secrets. And yet, we think we know better. In our inimitable wisdom, we can obviously identify the one constituent in a plant that is truly useful and 
beneficial from the hundreds of others which we glibly demote to “junk”. Have we not learned our lessons from the years of deadly side-effects from the extracted chemicals used to create drugs? Do we not see that we have been slowly killing ourselves with diets rich in extracted and refined substances that we can no longer even define as food?
What will happen when EGCG pills get added to the growing body of Nutraceuticals? It’s already being added to thousands of over-the-counter products. Will all of those people who now drink tea for the health benefits switch to the tea pill for convenience? I already know some people who are so enamored with their supplements that they replace some of their meals with them. Will we eventually become a nation, as depicted in science fiction novels, that takes their nutrition in pills?
Over millennia, tea has become more than just a beverage. It has become a practice; a way to relate to people and the world. It is truly greater than the sum of its parts. In order to derive the full benefits of what tea can offer (pleasure, health, quietness, present awarenes), it must be consumed whole, just as the rest of our food supply must. It is becoming abundantly clear that the wonderfully intricate chemical interactions contained in all living things cannot be reduced to something better than they already are. There are no true shortcuts in life.
Images:: Main: “eliza” :: 1st: sbushberg :: 2nd: pwbaker :: 3rd: Betacells
This is a wonderful article, Sandy, and a very genuinely well-thought out one, in my opinion, and I agree with the message. A sales rep brought in something like a (and I won’t use the real name) ‘he-man milk’, some concoction with protein in it. The worst tasting stuff. We threw it into the bushes outside the store’s side door, so maybe they are beefing up. I quit taking vitamins because they felt like a lump at the bottom of my stomach. Nothing but food in its’
most natural form and beverages in theirs seems to be that agreeable anymore, especially not
pills and powders. I hope that the discovery of problems with the antioxidants and other ‘good things’ in other forms won’t harm the perception of the healthfulness of loose leaf tea which, after all, has been around thousands of years without causing any health problems. Alot of this
just boils down to someone making alot of money from the new products. As well, your discussion of how technology is putting pressure on us is also so true. We have started Twittering and I can see how that can become obsessive and time-consuming. Plus, we now
have not just neighbors and friends but NEIGHBORS & FRIENDS all over the world we’ve never met in person, and each one represents a little chunk of our time and energy. Oh brother.
I’ve heard even young adults are cutting back on Net time because they’re just exhausted with staying in touch.
(On a side note, one of our number is at World Tea Expo for the first time and he’s having a ball.
I’m not sure if anyone from T Ching is there? We are also in an article re: brewing in the new edition of Fresh Cup magazine which they have up there at the Expo and which I haven’t seen myself.)
Ah..now it’s time to relax for a day, drink some good loose leaf and turn off the ‘puter. Yeah, sure.
I don’t know Diane. I hope you didn’t inadvertently wind up killing that poor, defenseless bush. That first picture in the article of the “Batter Blaster” I just happened to be walking through a Whole Foods market and spotted it. It bowled me over – pancake batter in a spray can: boy have we come a long way. Given that it’s sold at Whole Foods and is “organic” I’m sure there are some people who look at it as being healthy in some ways. Scary stuff.
Excellent article and very well articulated. I have always believed it best to consume any food or beverage as a whole rather than extracting only specific chemical components. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy to do. This is why Whole Foods is so popular as we are not the only ones who believe whole foods and beverages are healthier.
This same philosophy is what prompted me to develop a ready to drink bottled iced made from genuine brewed tea (not extracts and powders) and flavor it with pure cane sugar and 100% lemon juice (a natural citric acid). I wanted to provide a convenent, healthier all natural alternative to many of the artificial ready to drink teas so prevelant on the market today. It can be done and it’s not that difficult, it’s just not the mainstream thinking for many food and especially beverage processing plants. No one wants to brew tea! I found Food Science labs looking more like chemistry labs rather than kitchens.
Let’s continue to enjoy tea as it should be – tea leaves infused in hot water, maybe with a little sugar or lemon or milk to taste. It’s really a simple, splendid beverage.
I remember reading about the big fight Paul Newman had when bottling his salad dressings.
He refused to put in the preservatives the food scientists told him he had to have. He stuck
to his guns and, if I remember, used something entirely natural, which turned out to work
just fine!
Excellent article! I agree wholeheartedly that we should be eating whole foods and beverages! Science has proven that extracting individual nutrients from whole foods does not accomplish the same things as consuming the food in its whole, natural form. We don’t fully understand how all the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and other compounds work together in whole foods, but we do know that they work better together than in isolation. Wow, that’s a metaphor for living and working in community! We can learn a lot from food.
And on the tea note: I’m a tea snob. I drink only quality loose leaf tea, with no flavourings added. I was priviledged to be part of the World Tea Tour to Sri Lanka, India and Nepal in October 2008 where we visited about 12 tea estates and saw firsthand how this amazing beverage goes from the field to the cup. It made me appreciate each cup that much more.
Great topic. While I don’t deny that tea might have some health benefits I think it’s important to have a finely tuned bulls*** detector when it comes to deciphering such claims. As for EGCG, that’s so last year. Looks like the latest wonder substance to be extracted from tea and mercilessly hyped will be l-theanine. Watch for it.
Finally, the scientific community may just be starting to see the light. A new research study has shown that the “junk DNA” I mentioned in the article may not be so useless after all. Maybe in the future they will not be so quick and glib in dismissing unidentified functions of the human system.