Green Tea Toothpaste

(Update)
For more on the connection between tea and dental health, check out this article about TEAth Floss.

Here's the blurb from the manufacturer's Web site:

"Developed by a dentist to aid in the prevention of periodontal disease. TEAth FLOSS™ is made from the finest quality dental floss and infused with natural tea flavors. This floss is tantalizing to the taste buds."

(Original Post)
I've been trying to think of consumer products that don't contain green tea and the list gets smaller every day. I have yet to see green tea butter or margarine, green tea breakfast cereal or green tea motor oil and I'm really surprised that nobody's dreamed up a green tea hair loss tonic yet.

But green tea toothpaste? No problem. Check out Dr. Ken's Web site, where you'll find it, along with green tea chewing gum (more on that here), mouthwash, dental floss and breath strips.

shop for tea books.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Green Tea Vodka

For those who like their green tea to pack a little wallop, Napa Valley-based Charbay Winery and Distillery offers Charbay Green Tea Vodka.

The vodka, which was several years in the making, uses extractions of four tea varieties from China's Anhwei province. It joins Blood Orange, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Meyer Lemon, Red Raspberry and Pomegranate, a line of flavored vodkas the family-owned winery and micro-distillery began making in 1998.

The company notes that this is the first green tea vodka produced in the United States (which implies that perhaps there are others being made offshore). One of their recommendations for using the product is a China Grill Green Tea Martini. It mixes 1.5 oz Charbay Green Tea, 1.5 oz freshly brewed green tea, 1.5 oz unfiltered cloudy sake and a splash of simple syrup.

shop for tea books.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Dragon Well, Gyokuro And Yunnan

Dragon Well, gyokuro and Yunnan - now there's a threesome that's sure to warm a tea lover's heart.

The Fragrant Leaf has a nice overview of Dragon Well, a Chinese variety of green tea. Also known as Long Jing, it's grown in China's Zhejiang province and it's well worth a taste.

I had my first taste of gyokuro recently and I intend to be sampling a lot more of it in the future. Gyokuro is a Japanese variety of green tea that's generally considered to be near the upper end of the quality scale. O-Cha.com has put together a guide to "the perfect cup of gyokuro green tea."

If black tea is more to your liking, you might want to give Yunnan a try. Though in China, where Yunnan is produced it's more commonly known as red tea. GoKunming has a brief overview here called Yunnan - The Birthplace of Tea.

For more on Yunnan, check out this rather more in-depth article from the quite worthwhile Cha Dao site, a collaborative effort of 17 tea lovers.

Image: O-Cha.com

save to del.icio.us

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, gyokuro, Dragon Well, Yunnan

Shop for tea books here

Spring Tea Harvest

Spring is still three weeks away, but a recent article in China's Shanghai Daily noted that some spring teas in China are already being harvested.

Thanks to unseasonably warm weather, green teas from the Emei Mountain area in Sichuan Province and Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province have already begun to turn up in shops in the Shanghai area.

If you're waiting for shincha (new tea) from Japan, you'll have to sit tight for a while, according to an entry at O-Cha.com's Green Tea Blog. For more on shincha and the green tea harvest in Japan, look here.

save to del.icio.us

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, shincha

Shop for tea books here

Top Teas Of 2006

So many teas...so little time. I've had the chance to taste a few teas this year and, of course, there were more than a few winners in the bunch. Here's the list of those that truly stood out.


Black:
Hattialli Estate GFBOP SPL (Assam) - Upton Tea Imports

Black, Honorable Mention:
Nahorhabi Estate FTGFOP1 SPL CL (Assam) - Upton Tea Imports

Green:
First-Flush Shizuoka Sencha "Hatsumi" - O-Cha.com

Green, Honorable Mention:
Matcha-iri Teabags - O-Cha.com

Other:
Snow Buds (Xue Ya) Organic White Tea - Rishi Tea

Herbal:
Blueberry Rooibos - Rishi Tea

RTD (Ready To Drink):
Anteadote Pure White Tea - Adagio Teas

RTD, Honorable Mention:
Honeysuckle White Tea - Inko's

Image: Rishi Tea

tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Shop For Gourmet Teas

Green Tea In The Sahara

...to these desert people, tea drinking is one of life's non-negotiables, taking precedence over virtually all else. It is such an ingrained ritual, it seems as though it's been part of their culture since prehistoric times.

In fact, tea was first imported into this part of Africa in the early 1800s. For nearly a hundred years, it remained a luxury item, consumed mostly by the wealthy. Only in the early twentieth century was it adopted by the culture at large. It was so popular, and addictive, that Muslim scholars wrote long opinions on whether drinking it was permitted by the Koran.

Historically and today, the everyman's brew in this region is green tea from China--though not because the nomads were aware of its myriad health benefits. The British deemed green tea to be undrinkable, so their merchants used crates of it as ballast for their ships. When they docked at the Moroccan port of al-Swaira, the tea was unloaded and sold off cheaply, then the holds of the vessels were filled with African goods.

from Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold
by Michael Benanav

tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Buy Men of Salt

Green Tea, Koots & HIV

We last wrote about Koots Green Tea in May, around the time they were opening their first green tea cafe in the Seattle area.

Apparently the chain still has only that one location (and 10 in Japan) but are planning to expand. It probably won't hurt that founder Kouta Matsuda was profiled in the New York Times yesterday, in an article that positions him as the man who took on Starbucks, but questions whether Americans are ready to give up their coffee for tea.

Read the full NYT article here.

If you follow the assorted and sundry health claims made for green tea, you might have trouble keeping up. The latest claim is elaborated in an article in the Houston Chronicle. Seems that green tea, or at least epigallocatechin gallate, a component in green tea, "holds some promise in fighting HIV."

Read all about it here.

Image: Koots Green Tea

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, Koots, HIV

Only the finest imported teas at Golden Moon Tea

Enviga - Coke's Green Tea "Calorie Burner"

When we first mentioned Enviga, Coke/Nestea's new green tea drink, it was still buzzing along under the radar. Since then the drink has begun to get some press and now has its own Web site.

It's a Flash-heavy site and for some reason I haven't had much luck getting to it. One of the few times I did, I discovered that it features the slogan - "be positive. drink negative." This refers to the notion that Enviga not only has no calories, but actually taketh them away. Or so saith its makers. If that notion sounds as flaky to you as it does to me, we're not alone.

Over at Gizmodo, they don't mince words when it comes to the claims put forth for the product. Unless I'm misinterpreting the phrase "snake oil scam."

A recent Reuters report comes to similar conclusions, though it does it in a more mannered, journalistic style.

Even the gang over at BevNET, a beverage trade magazine and Web site, seem a bit dubious about the whole affair. You can read their thoughts and check out reviews of each of the three flavors here.

On the plus side, I will say that the can designs are not so bad, especially for the "plain" green tea flavor.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, Enviga, calorie burner, negative calories

Only the finest imported teas at Golden Moon Tea

Green Tea, Black Coffee And Brains

If you've been living under a rock for the past few years then perhaps you can be excused for not knowing that green tea is supposed to be good for you. But only if it was a really big rock and you were down at least ten feet.

The green tea/health connection has just about beaten to death, so I try not to write about it too often. But recent articles in Time and Psychology Today weighed in on the topic, so I thought I'd share, in case you missed them.

Dr. Andrew Weil, writing in Time, says that green tea and black coffee are both good for you and cites the recently published Japanese study about the former. He also mentions that brown seaweed may promote weight loss, if you must know. Read all about it here.

At Psychology Today, Anne Becker theorizes that the polyphenols and tannins in green tea help make your brain work better. Find out why here.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, coffee, seaweed, polyphenols

Adagio Teas - Free Teapot Offer

(More) Green Tea and Health

The green tea/health connection has been all over the news lately (again), thanks to a study that came out of Japan recently. The verdict - green tea might benefit your health in some ways and is probably no great shakes in others.

Pardon me for being so concise, but I'm growing a little weary of the green tea/health thing. Of course, that goes for wonder foods and miracle foods in general, not just tea.

If you want to read about the study in a little more depth here's just one of the zillions of articles that appeared recently.

Here's an interesting take on the topic from BevNET.

Now drink your tea and stop worrying so much about your health. It's bad for you.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Adagio Teas - Free Teapot Offer

Green Tea Tasting Notes & Tea Cookery

Here's a piece from the Times (London), in which a British chef offers his thoughts on some green teas. He is Nicholas Watt, head chef of Roka. He gives the thumbs up to Waitrose Organic Green Tea, Twinings Jasmine Green Tea, and Sainsbury’s Pure Green Tea. Not so spiffy were Clipper Pure Green Tea, Jacksons of Piccadilly Pure Chinese Sencha Green Tea, and Tetley Minty Green Tea Magic.

If you're itching to do some cooking with tea, check out this article from Chefs.com, with recipes for Chocolate Tea Cake and Red Dress Vanilla Rose Pound Cake.

From China Daily, here's an article about a shrimp dish made with tea leaves.

And from The Essence of Emeril, via the Food Network site, here's a recipe for Tea Smoked Quail with Chilled Noodle Salad and Kicked-Up Hoisin Sauce. We might have mentioned this one before, but here it is again.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, pound cake, shrimp, Quail

Adagio Teas - Free Teapot Offer

Green Tea Energy Drinks

Tea Guy has never really had much to do with energy drinks. I could be wrong, but it seems that they're mostly about caffeine. Since I have enough trouble with the caffeine in tea, I figure it's probably not a good idea to go messing around with beverages that contain even more of it.

But if you're keen to try an energy drink made with green tea, here are a few options.

Those AriZona people have come up with a green tea version they call Green Tea Energy. Not much time spent sitting around the boardroom dreaming up that name. They also have a diet version, which they call...Diet Green Tea Energy. More info here or read some reviews at the BevNET site here.

Texas-based Tempest Tea (if you'll pardon my alliteration) has also come out with a green tea energy drink that we've mentioned here before. It's called Green U. You can read about it here and see what BevNET thinks here.

Image: AriZona Beverages

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, energy drink, AriZona tea

Shop at Dragonwater Tea

Green Tea Beer

For some fanciers of liquid refreshment, it would be the best of both worlds - beer and green tea. It's a topic that we've written about before, though I don't know if iKi Bier - from the Netherlands - is made with green tea or black and I don't know how readily available it is in this part of the world.

Something that should be more readily available hereabouts is BluCreek Brewing's Zen IPA beer, which takes an India Pale Ale and flavors it with green tea. It debuts some time in August, according to a recent piece at Themilwaukeechannel.com.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, beer, Zen

Shop at Dragonwater Tea

Green Tea Ice Cream Recipe

From the Seattle Times, just in case you missed it, here's a recipe for green tea ice cream. It uses matcha, the powdered green tea also used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Though you could probably substitute another type of green tea if you absolutely had to.


Link

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, ice cream, recipes

Shop for tea at Amazon.com

Tea Review 70 - O-Cha.com Shincha

First-Flush Shizuoka Sencha "Hatsumi"
O-Cha.com

Observant readers will note that O-Cha.com is now included in our advertisers section here at TGS. Which may lead one to speculate how objective Tea Guy will be when it comes to reviewing their tea. Fair enough, but frankly I'd rather provide readers with honest, straightforward information, even if it means sacrificing a few bucks in potential ad revenues.

Having said that, I'll now go on record as saying that O-Cha.com distributes some kick-ass Japanese green teas. This is nothing new. I previously reviewed their Matcha-iri teabags and their Uji green tea (before taking them on as advertisers, I might add) and came to the same conclusion.

Here's the lowdown on the product, lifted from the company's Web site - "From Shizuoka, a first rate, first flush green tea. Harvested from the first round of young spring leaves. The first batch is known as "Shincha".

First rate, indeed. I should say so. Like all of the other teas I've tasted from O-Cha.com, this one was very fresh and very, very green - almost to the point of fluorescence. It's got a strong grassy taste with lots of fine particles floating in the cup.

My standard procedure was to heat the leaves for about 30 seconds, in hopes of leaching out a little caffeine. From there it was good for at least two infusions of about 30-45 seconds. Be sure to watch your brewing times and temperatures with this one, friends. Like all quality greens, it doesn't respond well to boiling water and long steeping.

Highly recommended.

Image: O-Cha.com

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, shincha, sencha

Green Tea & HIV

There certainly is no shortage of news regarding the health benefits of tea - and of green tea in particular. Yesterday Fox News reported some attention grabbing findings in an article called "Green Tea Blocks HIV in Test Tubes".

As the article reports, researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have found that "an antioxidant in green tea may block HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from attaching to an important molecule on immune system cells".

Link

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, HIV, AIDS

Shop for tea at Amazon.com

Koots Green Tea Cafe

Not so long ago we remarked on the appearance on these shores of the green tea cafe, already a popular concept in Japan. The first Koots Green Tea has opened in the Seattle area and the Seattle Times marked the event with an article on the concept and a profile of head honcho Kouta Matsuda.

The article poses the question "Is America ready for real green tea?" I can't speak for roughly 300 million other Americans, but I'd have to answer in the affirmative for myself.

The reporter quotes the Tea Association of the USA, pointing out that tea rooms in the United States have jumped from 200 to 2,000 locations in the last decade. So apparently I'm not the only one that would be inclined to answer "yes" to that question.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, Koots, Seattle

Shop for tea at Amazon.com

Green Tea, Batteries & Cancer

Is there a link between green tea, batteries and cancer? According to a recent article in the Milford Daily News (MA), there certainly is.

The piece concerns one Ferdinand Bruno, a chemist for Natick Labs. While researching a process whereby he could use the catechins in green tea to replace parts of disposable batteries, Bruno found a new type of cancer treatment.

Needless to say, that's a vast oversimplification of things. If you want it spelled out in a little more detail, check out the article.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, cancer, green tea

Shop for tea at Amazon.com

Green Tea Fingernail Treatment

Is there any end to the creative and peculiar uses that one can dream up for green tea? I doubt it. In these very same pages we've reported on green tea chewing gum, green tea toothpaste and - one of my favorites - hot pepper green tea nasal spray.

Then there's Green Tea Growth Treatment, which comes to us courtesy of a company called NutraNail. Check out the link below if you're absolutely dying to know about the assorted and sundry benefits of this one.

Thanks to Brian at The Tea Smith for passing this one along.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, fingernails

FDA Rules On Green Tea

It's official, friends. Round up all your green tea and pitch it in the bin. It's not worth a damn.

Not really, of course. As one who's long ranted that we should be drinking green tea because we like green tea and taking any health benefits as a bonus, I'm not too devastated by the FDA's recent pronouncement on green tea.

If you missed it - and it's kind of hard, given all the press it's getting - the agency says, as the Associated Press puts it, "there is no credible scientific evidence that drinking green tea reduces the risk of heart disease". This, on top of the FDA's previous rulings that green tea offers no apparent benefit with regard to certain types of cancer.

If you want to read the whole thrilling story, try the link below. I'd recommend that you skip it and have a cup of green tea. I had two. And stop worrying about your health. It's not good for you.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, green tea, FDA, health benefits