The Origins of the Humble Tea Leaf

The Origins of Tea
According to mythological fables, there are many tales of the origin of tea. The first one comes from over 4500 years ago. The Second Chinese Emperor Chen Sung(circa 2737-2697 BC) was sitting beneath a tree while his servant was boiling some water. A leaf from the tree above fell into the boiling water and Chen Sung tried the brew and liked it. The tree was a tea tree, of course.
Another fabled origin of tea comes from Bodhidharma, the traditional founder of the Zen school of Buddhism. The Japanese claim that he brought tea with him from India to China. The Indian legend proclaims that after 5 years of a 7 year sleepless meditation exercise on the Lord Buddha, BoddhiDharma began to feel sleepy. He immediately plucked a few leaves from a nearby bush and chewed them which thereby kept him awake. The bush was
a wild bush tree. Another story along these lines has him plucking off his eyebrows when they started drooping and he threw them on the ground. It is reputed that 2 tea trees sprang up that had the power to keep him awake and alert.
Whatever the truth is, the raw leaves of the tea tree were probably used as food from the earliest times by the native populations of Southern China. A chinese text of 50 BC mentions tea being prepared by servants. Historians and scholars have tea being cultivated in Szechuan around the 3rd Century AD. There are many authentic references to tea in the Chinese dictionary circa 350 AD.
In the 8th Century the Chinese author Lu Yu wrote the first book on tea, the "Ch'a Ching". This book summarised all the accumulated knowledge to date about tea growing and preparation. There were many illustrations of tea making utensils. This book succeeded in giving a major impetus to the drinking of tea by the upper classes. Some say that this book inspired the Buddhist priests to create the Japanese tea ceremony.
Early Processing of tea.
In the 4th Century the fresh green tea leaves were picked , squeezed into cakes and then roasted to a reddish color. These cakes were crumbled into the water and boiled, meanwhile adding onion, ginger, and orange peel. This tea was considered to be a good remedy for stomach problems, bad eyesight and many other diseases, but must have been a very bitter brew indeed.
Tea was beginning to be exported to Tibet, Turkey , India, and Russia because of its easy transportability. In the Tang Dynasty, this tea recipe was the national drink of the ruling classes. Around about the 8th Century the bricks of tea were now boiled with only a little bit of salt.
The first mention of tea outside China and Japan was by the Arabs in 850 AD. Some say that they introduced it into Europe throught the port of Venice. The Portuguese paved the way for the entry of tea into Europe also because of their exploration of the sea passages to China as early as the 16th Century. Jesuit priests coming back from the East brought back their tea drinking habits back to Portugal. The Dutch merchants got in on the act as well. In 1610, regular shipments of tea to ports in France and Holland were started. In the late 17th Century, the English East India Company entered the trade.
Beginnings of the names for tea.
In the 4th Century in China, the Chinese word t'u was often used to describe shrubs besides tea. The modern term for tea comes from early chinese dialect words such as Tchai, Cha and Tay. These words were used to pertain to both the drink and the leaf. Tea is known as Cha or Chai in India to this day. In japan, the word Cha is used to describe both tea and a hot broth.
Early Benefits of Tea.
From the earliest times tea was recognised and enjoyed because it is a healthy refreshing beverage. Made from the dried leaves of the camellia sinensis plant, tea is said to have antioxidant properties, can fight the flu virus, and boosts the immune system.
http://www.healthfromtea.com

Benefits of tea and the spiritual and health factors that add to our enjoyment of the refreshing taste.

Introducing White Tea

White tea has only about 200 years of history and is the youngest among major tea types such as Green, Oolong and Black tea. Even though tea has been enjoyed for about 5000 years since its serendipitous discovery by Chinese Emperor and "Divine Healer" Shen-Nung in 2737 B.C, White tea did not come to existence until at much later time.
For her kindness and courage, people honored her with the name of Mother Taimu and named the mountain Taimu Mountain. While taking refuge up in a cave in the mountain, Lan Gu found a special tea tree to help cure them. According to a legend, White tea tree varietal was discovered by a girl named Lan Gu from Fuding county of Fujian Province in China where the beautiful Taimu Mountain is located.
This legend parallels the same divine healing spirit of tea discovery by Shen-Nung, only more than 2000 years later.
According to the history, White tea was first produced in Fuding in 1796 and later spread to two other counties (Zhenhe and Jianyang) in Fujian.
There are three different cultivars of White tea tree - Big White, Narcissus White and Vegetable White with the Big White as the finest and most popular. There are also three different types of White tea based on different ways of plucking - Silver Needle (only one bud is plucked), White Peony (one bud together with one leave down) and Longevity Eyebrow (one bud with two to three leaves down). Silver Needle is also known as its original Chinese name "Bai Hao Yin zhen" and is the most precious and exotic.
Due to the minimal processing, White tea preserves most natural compounds and potentially has the most health benefits. White tea is also called a lightly fermented tea positioning itself between the unfermented Green and semi-fermented Oolong tea. White tea brews to a pale yellow color and has a slightly sweet flavor.

During the process, there is light oxidation occurring. The leaves are withered and then dried. The process only consists of two steps. White tea is the least processed among all types of teas.
In 2002, a research paper by Oregon State University scholar Roderick H. Dashwood published in Foods and Food Ingredients Journal of Japan "White Tea - A New Cancer Inhibitor" provides insight into the anticancer and anti-mutagenic properties of White Tea.
They also found that the anti-viral and anti-bacterial effect of white tea might be greater than that of green tea. In 2004, at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, Researchers at Pace University presented their finding that White Tea Extract (WTE) may have prophylactic applications in retarding growth of bacteria that cause Staphylococcus infections, Streptococcus infections, pneumonia and dental caries.
In addition, several companies started marketing White tea flavored "Ready to Drink" (RTD) bottled beverages. Recently, White tea has found itself used in anti-aging skin care and beauty products.
If you find the price for White tea is generally higher than that of Green and Oolong teas, you now know why. If you find the price for White tea is most exotic and rare due to the rare White tea tree varietals and short harvest time (high grade Silver Needle is only made from the youngest bugs plucked during only a couple of days of spring). White tea is most exotic and rare due to the rare White tea tree varietals and short harvest time (high grade Silver Needle is only made from the youngest bugs plucked during only a couple of days of spring).
White tea could be the tea of the future with its legendary spirit, exotic nature and wide applications of health benefits.
Jay is a tea lover and the owner of
Taimu Tea
- a premium Chinese tea store that focuses on tea knowledge, news and education in addition to providing quality fresh teas from Taimu Mountain and its surrounding areas in Fujian province of China.
http://www.taimutea.com
tea@taimutea.com

The Health Benefits of Green Tea

Now recent medical studies in both asia and the west are providing a scientific basis for the claim that drinking green tea has very significant health benefits. Green tea became part of the Chinese diet and many important health benefits were attributed to it. Some tea leaves accidentally fell into boiling water, and he tried it and found it invigorating.

According to legend, tea was discovered by a Chinese emperor called Shen Nung. The Chinese have known about Green tea as a powerful medication for at least 4000 years.
Thus green and black teas have different chemical properties. Black teas on the other hand are made from fermented leaves and as a result have less nutritional and enzyme content as the green tea. In this way the leaves remain green and the active substances within the leaves retain their qualities.

Green tea is unfermented tea meaning that the leaves used for green tea are steamed soon after been plucked in order to prevent the oxidation of the leaves. The difference between the three main types of tea is the way that they are produced. Green tea, like black tea is made from the leaves of the plant Camellia sinensis.
Antioxidants help your body fight against free radicals which cause damage to cells and tisuues in your body. One study concluded that consuming three cups of tea a day produced a similar amount of antioxidants as eating six apples. The antioxidant activity of tea has been compared to that of fruit and vegetables in a number of studies.

Modern science has in recent times been able to demonstrate that green tea is beneficial to one's health and this is mainly due to the fact that tea contains high levels of antioxidants called polyphenols or flavonoids.
Recent medical studies suggest green tea to be beneficial in many areas including the following: While all tea is healthy to drink, it is green tea that contains the highest level of flavonoids.
-Digestive and respiratory health.
-Lowers cholesterol levels
-Boosts your immune system
-Reduces high blood pressure
-Arthritis - anti-inflammatory effect.
-Oral hygiene - due to antibacterial properties.
-Skin conditions such as acne
-Lowers blood sugar
Much more research needs to be conducted in this area but the signs are certainly very encouraging. It was discovered that those men who were given green tea extract burned more calories per day than those who were not given the extract. A study was conducted of ten healthy men over a period of 6 weeks. Recently published research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that an extract from green tea may speed up fat oxidation.

Weight loss is another area that is attracting huge attention.
Anyone for tea!
Lorraine Bevere is the owner and operator of
FOG Tea
which is
a premier source of information about tea. For questions or
comments about this article, please visit:

http://fogtea.com

Why Aren't You Using Green Tea Capsules?

Green tea capsules and tablets represent a simple, excellent, and effective way to get the benefits of green tea.
Although drinking green tea is very enjoyable and soothing to some people, many others don't like the bitter taste. Moreover, some people are realistic enough to know that the more trouble they have to go through to get the benefits of something, the less likely they are to do it.
Everyone now knows that drinking green tea is healthy just like they know that juicing vegetables and fruits is healthy too. But not many of us have the time to juice vegetables and fruits everyday, just like we don't have the time to brew green tea and sip it.
That's why green tea capsules are a fantasic way to get the health benefits of this ancient drink in the few seconds a day it takes to swallow them.
Moreover, if you are taking a quality green tea supplement, you could get more of its potent antioxidants than you could if you drank 4 to 5 cups of the tea a day because of its concentrated nature.
Green tea has a history as colorful as it is flavorful.
Legend has it that almost 5,000 years ago a Chinese emperor was sipping hot water whilst relaxing under a tea shrub when some of the leaves accidently blew off the shrub and landed in his cup.
He took a sip, liked what he tasted, and since then green tea became the health drink of choice in Asia, and is now spreading to the Western world rapidly.
What's really amazing is that it wasn't until recently that research has discovered just how incredibly powerful the health benefits of green tea are.
What Green Tea Contains
Green tea has many beneficial substances, like catechins, tannins, fluoride but, most important of all, powerful antioxidants called polyphenols.
One of these polyphenols in particular, which is referred to as EGCG, has been shown in studies to have potent anticancer properties. Indeed, EGCG is now thought to be one of the most powerful anticancer compounds discovered to date.
For the health savvy people who have heard about EGCG, it is the primary reason they drink green tea or use green tea capsules and supplements.
In one large study with chinese participants, it was discovered that the men and women who drank green tea had lower rates of: rectal, pancreatic, and colon cancer.
Other studies conducted here in the United States revealed that EGCG may be able to get cancer cells to stop reproducing.
Amazingly, it may accomplish this by somehow signalling the cancer cells to die, which in scientific terms is called apotosis.
Even more remarkable is that EGCG doesn't appear to hurt the healthy, non-cancerous cells of our body, so it seems to work selectively. This study was conducted at Case Western Reserve University, located in Ohio.
Other studies are now showing that green tea may be able to help mitigate the damage from LDL cholesterol -- otherwise known as the "bad cholesterol" that is a key marker in heart disease.
In fact, its possible role in lowering cholesterol is another of the biggest reasons people are now turning to green tea capsules and supplements.
Despite all of the potential health benefits of green tea, some people avoid drinking it because it does naturally contain caffeine, which makes some people jittery and nervous.
The good news is that green tea used in green tea capsules and tablets often contains much less caffeine than a cup of green tea itself. A cup of green tea contains about 40 mg of caffeine whereas a daily typical serving of green tea capsules might only contain 5 mg of caffeine.
Importantly, the typical serving of green tea capsules or supplements will have the same concentration of the polyphenols and powerful antioxidants as the green tea.
Even better for some people is that green tea can be decaffeinated and used in green tea capsules so that you can get all the benefits with none of the caffeine.
So there you have it. If you aren't already using green tea capsules for your health, it's time to give it some serious consideration as part of your supplement regimen.