Tea Facts and Quotations

• All tea comes from the top leaves of the evergreen plant called Camellia sinensis. For top quality tea, only the top two leaves and the new bud are hand-picked. It takes about 2800 leaves to make one pound of tea.
• The Portuguese wife of Charles II, Catherine of Braganza, arrived in England with a chest of tea and teapots as part of her dowry. In those days, beer was customarily consumed at breakfast, but her influence made tea the acceptable beverage.
• The history of teapots began in China around the 1500's. Teapots were first imported into Europe by the Dutch in 1610. Literature suggests that one should have a teapot for each type of tea - black, flavored, green - and of course, one for every mood!
• "We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want." -- Tao-Te Ching.

Tea and Health News

Regular ingestion of tea appears to lower the blood pressure in older women. Researchers in Australia studied 218 women older than 70 and found that as their tea intake increased by one cup a day, they experienced, on average, a decrease in systolic pressure of 2.2 mg Hg (so, for example a decrease in the top number from 130 to 127.8) and a decrease in diastolic pressure of 0.9 mg Hg (for example, a decrease in the bottom number from 85 to 84.1). The women in the study drank an average of just over 2 cups of tea per day. The authors suspect it is the action of tea polyphenols responsible for this effect. J. Nutr., September 1, 2003; 133(9): 2883-2886.

Tea and Health News provided by: TheTeaTable.com

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