Tea (29 page)

Brewed tea can also be used in marinades and basting sauces, or as flavoring for stir-fry. Just be sure to choose a flavor of tea that will enhance your meat or poultry.

Next time you are boiling eggs and want to add something a little unusual, boil the eggs in dark tea, and during the last few minutes of cooking, remove the eggs, crack the shells, and return them to the liquid to continue to cook. This results in a beautiful “marbled” look.

TEA HEALTH FACTS

Drinking at least four cups of tea daily offers beneficial results (see below) and may help prevent any number of diseases.

All tea contains cancer-fighting antioxidants, but high-quality green and white teas have them in greater concentrations.

Tea decaffeinated by a water and carbon dioxide process retains
95
percent of its beneficial flavonoids.

Tea must be steeped for at least three to five minutes in hot water to release the greatest concentration of antioxidants.

Tea blends, in which tea is mixed with various substances that do not have antioxidants, have lower concentrations of antioxidants than “pure” teas (for example, a blend that was half tea and half hibiscus flowers would only contain half the antioxidants offered by the same amount of pure tea).

DISEASE-FIGHTING PROPERTIES

Since ancient times in China, people have enjoyed the medicinal benefits of tea. It is not surprising, then, that today many people are turning to tea not only as a tasty and relaxing beverage but also as an aid to fighting many serious diseases. The results are promising, and there is little doubt that drinking tea provides many benefits, though many questions remain unanswered.

Research conducted by highly respected universities and institutes throughout the world has tested the effect of tea consumption on many different ailments and diseases, including cancer (particularly colon, stomach, pancreatic, bladder, esophageal, and breast cancer), rheumatoid arthritis, high cholesterol levels (tea is thought to increase the good HDL cholesterol and lower the bad LDL cholesterol), obesity, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, stroke, infection, tooth decay, Alzheimer's disease, the effects of smoking, and impairment of the immune system.

Results have varied widely, and the FDA has refrained from endorsing the health benefits of drinking tea. But, study after study suggested that, without significant side effects, tea (particularly green tea) offers positive results.

Despite indications that drinking tea offers health benefits, it is also clear that it is not a panacea and should not be used as a substitute for fruits, vegetables, and other elements of a healthy diet. Instead, it should be used as a substitute for other beverages, such as coffee and sodas. The
Wellness Letter
, a University of California at Berkeley newsletter, said in a March
2000
article, “Think of it [green tea] as a back-up to a healthy diet and an adjunct to regular exercise and other good health habits—not as a miraculous potion that will keep you well by itself.”

Perhaps the greatest benefits of drinking tea are lifestyle choices, rather than the actual chemical composition of the beverage. The simple act of brewing up a cup of tea and stopping long enough to enjoy it probably offers as much benefit as polyphenols or antioxidants or any other element found in the tea plant.

University of Maryland
www.umm.edu/altmed/ConsHerbs/GreenTeach.html

The Pu-erh Web Site
http://pu-erh.net

The Silk Road Foundation
www.silkroadfoundation.org/index.html

The Kenya Tea Development Agency
www.ktdateas.com

The UK Tea Council
www.tea.co.uk

Tea Council of the U.S.
www.teausa.com

Stephen and Martine Batchelor, The Korean Way of Tea
www.stephenbatchelor.org/koreantea.html

Fifteenth-Century Chinese Armada
www.1421.tv

Teahealth
www.teahealth.co.uk

Japan Tea
www.japantea.com

There are countless Web sites posted by various tea companies, many of which offer a lot of information worth exploring.

Blofield, John.
The Chinese Art of Tea
. Boston: Shambhala,
1985
.

Buckrell Pos, Tania M.
Tea and Taste: The Visual Language of Tea.
Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing,
2004
.

Bushell, Stephen.
Oriental Ceramic Art
. New York: Crown Publishers,
1980
.

Chow, Kit.
All the Tea in China
. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals Inc.,
1990
.

Cleary, Thomas, trans.
The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke.
North Clarendon,Vermont: Tuttle Publishing,
1999
.

Fairbanks, John.
China: A New History.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press,
1998
.

Fay, Stephen. “China beat Columbus to it, perhaps.”
The

Economist
, January
4
–
20
,
2006
,
80
–
81
.

Feige, Chris and Jeffrey A. Miron. “The Opium Wars, Opium Legalization, and Opium Consumption in China.” Discussion Paper Number
2072
, Harvard Institute of Economic Research. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, May
2005
.

Fuquan, Yang. “The ‘Ancient Tea and Horse Caravan Road,' the ‘Silk Road' of Southwest China.”
The Silk Road
2
, no.
1
(
2004
). Saratoga, California: Silkroad Foundation. Available online at:
www.silkroadfoundation.org /newsletter/2004vol2num1/tea.htm
.

Gardella, Robert.
Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade
,
1757
–
1937
.
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994
.

Goodwin, Jason.
The Gunpowder Gardens: Travels through India and China in Search of Tea.
London: Penguin Paperback,
2003
.

Hobhouse, Henry.
Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind.
London: MacMillan,
1992
.

Hylton, William H., ed.
The Rodale Herb Book.
Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press,
1976
.

Lu Yu.
The Classic of Tea.
Translated by Francis Ross Carpenter. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.,
1974
.

MacFarlane, Iris and Alan MacFarlane.
The Empire of Tea: The Remarkable History of the Plant That Took Over the World.
Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press,
2003
.

MacGregor, David R.
Tea Clippers: Their History and Development
,
1833
–
1873
.
London: Percival Marshall and Co.,
1952
.

Maloney, Justin. “Land Tenure History and Issues in the Republic of Korea.” Material prepared for the course Cadastral and Land Information Systems, Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine, May
2000
. Available online at
www.spatial.maine.edu/~onsrud/emergingeconomies/coun try_reports/korea.pdf
.

Menzies, Gavin.
1421: The Year China Discovered America
.
London: Bantam Press,
2004
.

Mintz, Sidney W.
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Reprint,
1985
.

Moxham, Roy.
Tea
,
Addiction
,
Exploitation
,
and Empire.
New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers,
2003
.

Okakura, Kakuzo.
The Book of Tea.
North Clarendon, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing,
1989
.

Pettigrew, Jane,
The Social History of Tea
. London: The National Trust,
2002
.

———.
The Tea Companion
. London: MacMillan Publishers,
1997
.

Plutschow, Herbert. “An Anthropological Perspective on the Japanese Tea Ceremony.”
Anthropoetics
5
, no.
1
(Spring/Summer
1999
). Available online at:
www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/anthropoetics/ap0501/tea.htm
.

Podreka, Tomislav.
Serendipitea: A Guide to the Varieties
,
Origins
,
and Rituals of Tea.
New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,
1998
.

Prakash, Om.
The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal
,
1630
–
1720
.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1985
.

Reader's Digest, ed.
Magic and Medicine of Plants
. Pleas-antville, New York: Reader's Digest Association, Inc.,
1986
.

Scott, J.M.
The Great Tea Venture.
New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.,
1964
.

Sen Soshitsu.
Chado: The Japanese Way of Tea
. New York, Tokyo, Kyoto: Weatherhill/Tankosha,
1979
.

Souyri, Pierre François.
The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society.
Translated by Käthe Ross.
New York: Columbia University Press,
2001
.

Stella, Alain.
The Little Book of Tea
. Paris: Flammarion Editions,
1996
.

Suzuki, Daisetz T
. Zen and Japanese Culture
. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, reissue, Bollingen Series no.
64
,
1970
.

Tanaka, Sen'o.
The Tea Ceremony.
New York: Kodansha International Ltd.,
1973
.

Thomas, Gertrude Z.
Richer Than Spices: How a Royal Bride's Dowry Introduced Cane
,
Lacquer
,
Cottons
,
Tea
,
and Porcelain to England and So Revolutionized Taste
,
Manners
,
Craftsmanship
,
and History in Both England and America.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1965
.

Ukers, William.
All About Tea.
Whitestone, New York: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Co.,
1935
.

Whitaker, Jan.
Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn
. New York: St.Martin's Press,
2002
.