Tea Facts and Quotations
- The word "tea" comes from the Chinese Amoy dialect name of "te," pronounced "tay." The ancient Dutch traders used the word, spelled "thee," since most of the tea they bought came from the port of Amoy. In Mandarin and Cantonese tea is also known as "cha."
- 100 years ago, the majority of the tea consumed in the USA was green tea. The advent of the tea bag transformed America into a black tea culture, but green tea is now roaring back into vogue.
- Long ago in China, tea was an ingredient in immortality potions. Today, Chinese researchers have noted that fruit flies fed 1% jasmine tea in their water lived twice as long as those that did not have the tea in their water.
- "In Tea, the host is simplicity and guest, elegance." - Matsudaira Naritada
Tea and Health News
Drink up, guys! Green tea is getting quite a reputation for fighting prostate cancer, the most often-diagnosed malignancy in American men. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reported the various means by which green tea appears to prevent prostate cancer. These researchers have conducted several different studies, both test tube and animal, and have concluded that EGCG, the predominant green tea polyphenol, promotes the death of abnormal cells, inhibits the growth of cells (cancer is uncontolled cell growth), and inhibits the growth of blood vessels that can supply nutrients to cancerous cells. In general, this means green tea may help prevent the onset and metastasis of prostate cancer. They point out that some of these benefits occurred at a "human obtainable" level of 6 cups of green tea per day, and that given the "multiple targets for prostate cancer chemoprevention by green tea," further studies are needed to identify any other ways that green tea might be of use in prostate cancer prevention or treatment. J Nutr. 2003 Jul;133(7 Suppl):24175-24245.
Tea and Health News provided by: TheTeaTable.com
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