8/6/2018 Tea and (De)HydrationFor the more delicate of you who dislike discussing any of the body’s magical fluid management techniques read no further (are any of you even reading this blog, lol?) For the rest of you let’s get sweaty ‘n stuff: With temperatures above 100° F and beyond, breaking records, hydration is yet again a hot topic. Literally. I find myself in a water bottle fill-empty-repeat cycle multiple times a day (mine also has a mister on top that I love. Less exciting than running through a sprinkler but more portable). I also find myself taking trips to the toilet more often. I know that as a singer I drink more water than the average person and if you factor in my tea intake even more so. Still, sometimes on days where the temperatures are relentless and the running about causes me to slip from my hydration routine I feel my mind slipping away. Apparently this is a sign of possible mild dehydration. Research shows that most people in the Western world are in some state of dehydration and are unaware of it. There have been conflicting reports over time about whether or not caffeinated beverages like coffee and tea contribute to dehydration. I have never felt that my tea intake hampered my hydration efforts and a 2018 article in Time magazine supports this ‘tea and coffee are helpful’ side of the argument with info from a Doctor/Professor at UCLA Medical School. A Live Science article agrees indicating that increased intake of any fluid will cause increased urination. That doesn’t mean dehydration is occurring. From my scrapes with heat exhaustion while performing outdoors I learned it’s when you stop urinating or sweating that there’s a real problem. The Live Science article also refers to a 2005 study that indicated a higher dose of caffeine had no more impact on hydration than a lower one. That doesn’t mean you can’t overdose on caffeine, but it’s hard. Like really hard. Like 100 cups of coffee a day hard, which means many more cups of tea (though different types of tea have different amounts of caffeine a cup of tea is usually around half that of a typical coffee or less. Check the Mayo Clinic’s breakdown ). Likely you’d have some heart palpitations giving you a clue to slow down way before that happens. Now what about sweat? According to Dr. Weil, perspiration doesn’t smell in itself. It is when it mixes with bacteria on the skin. Ick. We are such interesting beasts aren’t we? We have 2 types of sweat glands, eccrine and apocrine, and it is the apocrine ones which are in the hairy areas that contribute to stench. Caffeine can increase sweating and Dr. Weil suggests removing caffeinated beverages from your diet if excessive sweating occurs because of them. Interestingly though, he suggests using deodorants which contain green tea extract to help control the smell as it is naturally antibacterial. I found multiple mentions about coffee potentially contributing to body odor but none for tea. Another point for the tea lovers! So tea can contribute to your hydration when you ingest it (drinking a ton of water alongside it doesn’t hurt) and it can reduce your body stench if you rub it on your pits. Tea might help get me through this summer after all. What is your summer go to tea? Have you ever used a green tea deodorant? Let us know on social here or here. Stay frosty, people. -Cassandra Vincent Tea. To many it still conjures images of ladies in floral dresses and big hats or zen masters pondering the mysteries of the universe as in the case of Thor: Ragnarok. When Doctor Strange offers Thor tea he responds: Thor: I don’t drink tea Then a huge magically refilling beer glass appears in Thor’s hand because everyone clearly knows that beer is a more appropriate drink for a man who calls himself the God of Thunder. Ahem. (great fun film, by the way) Now, I love beer. I have nothing against it, but ‘back in the day’ tea had a dark, criminal underbelly. Yes, the nobility and the wealthy drank it first, but as with anything perceived as exclusive everyone started to want it. So demand gave rise to everything from substandard knockoffs to black market trade. Let’s look back to the 18th century. Britain became ravenous for tea more than any other western country of size. “Recorded imports into Britain rose from 13,082 lbs. in 1699 to 1,241,629 lbs. in 1721. By 1750 the total was 4,727,992 lbs.” 1 But that is only the legal recorded amounts. The cost of tea was too much for most households to afford, especially with the duties imposed by the government and the East India Company monopoly on the tea trade. This unmet demand resulted in violent, prolific, smuggling. Some gangs that engaged in the tea smuggling trade went so far as torturing and killing informants and customs workers who tried to bring them down. Yeesh. It’s like that spoof of “Breaking Bad” that some of the cast of “Downton Abbey” did on Colbert called “Breaking Abbey” where tea replaced meth. It is hilarious, but when you realize how like the drug trade parts of tea history are it is…slightly less hilarious. If I saw a biker gang drink tea now I would not think it strange (Sons of Anarch-tea? Yeah, that’s an image. )
The general public wanted tea but were against the cost of the legal version of it so millions were complicit in the smuggling trade 2. The cheaper tea was often not much real tea at all. To keep the cost down it was often cut with anything from leaves of other plants, used tea leaves purchased from servants and even sheep’s dung 3. Even dangerous dyes were used, like copper dyes in inferior green tea, which may have added to the British switch from green tea to more black tea. A fine was imposed for such adulterations but it was difficult to impose on tea sold under the radar. It kind of makes that Versace knockoff you got from a NYC street vendor seem mild by comparison. Unless you intend to eat it, of course. I suggest you don’t. You don’t know where that thing has been. In 1747 there was a large drop in the tax on tea which caused legal imports to Britain to roughly triple and smuggling to shrink. But by the 1770s smuggling swelled with large armed ships with large crews running the game. During this time historians estimate that 4-7.5 million lbs. of tea was smuggled in exceeding the recorded 4-5 million legal lbs 4. Americans in the colonies were digging tea too and demand was increasing. As they were still under British rule the tea came through Britain for the first half of the 18th century. This tea came with heavy cost as the import duties paid in Britain were passed on to the cost in America. Because of this it is estimated that ¾ of all the tea imported to the colonies in 1760 was smuggled in 5. Then it got even more interesting. In 1767 there was a law passed that let the import duty on tea sent to America to be repaid which slowed smuggling for a time 6. Then in 1773 the East India Company was allowed to export straight to the colonies and would include a threepenny tax per lb. As Britain had already taxed American newspapers, bills and legal docs prior and then initiated taxes on lead, paint, paper, glass and now tea 7 it is fair to say America was getting tetchy. It was the Tea Act of 1773 that began the rumblings which would lead to the infamous Boston Tea Party. It was felt that Britain was attempting to secure greater and greater power over American interests. Customs officers had to be guarded by British troops. Apparently a man died and protests erupted when troops fired into a mob in Boston in 1770 (sound familiar?). The people began to organize preventing ships from docking and attacking tea warehouses. It was like tea had become a symbol of the establishment that the angry public wanted to bring down. In the book there is an interesting log entry from the journal of a mate named Alexander Hodgdon who served on the ship the Dartmouth which arrived in Boston: “Between six and seven o’clock this evening came down to the wharf a body of about one thousand people. Among them were a number dressed and whooping like Indians. They came on board the ship, and after warning myself and the Customs-House Officer to get out of the way, they unlaid the hatches and went down into the hold, where there were eighty whole and thirty-four half chests of tea, which they hoisted on deck, cut the chests to pieces, and hove the tea all overboard, where it was damaged and lost.” 9 This was the Boston Tea Party, which resulted in the destruction of all tea on three ships that had arrived in Boston. The tea that had arrived in Charleston was left to rot and tea that had been sent to Philly and NYC was sent back to London. It was Boston that took the biscuit, though, sending a strong message to Britain who responded with closing Boston harbor and attempts to exert control that resulted in the war that led to American independence. No wonder coffee gained a foothold here. Tea was somewhat demonized for a time as a traitor’s drink. Quite a ride for a beverage sipped in some of the West’s most opulent hotels and enjoyed around the table of many a common home today. Tea - there is a world of history in your cup. The source for this post is an interesting book written by a man who began his work in the tea trade at the age of 21 in 1960. The book is: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire, by Roy Moxham. This post touches on just a piece of what the book covers. If you are interested in tea history I recommend it. Here are the pages I drew from: Moxham, Roy (2003) Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire, New York, Carroll & Graf 1 pg 24, 2 pg 25, 3 pg 29, 4 pg 26-27, 5 pg 46, 6 pg 46, 7 pg 47, 8 pg 47, 9 pg 49 This is not a sponsored post 9/24/2017 15 Tea Fails - have you Been a Victim?by Cassandra Vincent
No matter our knowledge or passion sometimes things go awry – best intentions and all that – resulting in a tea travesty. Have you ever…
We have all been there, luvvies and we will all live to tea another day;) 7/7/2017 Tea and Celebrating LifeCar accidents are interesting things. The everything-is-moving-smoothly-then-out-of-nowhere BAM! is shocking, to say the least. I was a passenger in a car that got T-boned by someone running a red light and though my life didn’t exactly flash before me I am very happy to still have the privilege of breathing. I appreciate every cup of tea I have (unless it accidentally oversteeps and it gets gross, then I just toss it away and start again) but that first cup I was able to get after all the craziness was so sweet – like a warm hug of deliciousness. There are various statements about tea being the cure for everything, especially with the British. Though it may not cure everything, tea is another reason to be happy to be alive – to taste something soothing and delicious and full of life energy. This is just a short post to relay the cause of the silence. I hope that you find many reasons to be glad to be alive today and I’ll soon be sharing more adventures in tea. - Cassandra
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