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Teas of the world: Black, green, or wasp?

By Tom Aaron

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Published: 03Mar2009
Word count: 710
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Flying in and out of Japan, I am never surprised at hearing Japanese flight attendants creatively trying to put Japanese into English. I was surprised the first time a Western flight attendant asked me if I wanted green or black tea. Never having heard a Westerner refer to black tea, I wondered if that was acceptable English where she came from. I asked her and she explained that she used black tea to differentiate it from green tea, but had never used the term before working as a flight attendant.

Googling, I found millions of references to black tea. Wasp tea references merely numbered in the hundreds. Never having drunk wasp tea, I wondered what it would taste like. Once in Morocco, sitting outdoors on a plaza in Fez, or perhaps Marrakech, drinking sweet tea, the wasps began to gather. Attracted by the sweet scent of the tea they climbed up the spout and into the teapot. A few wasps became ten and then twenty and then over a hundred.

I don't know if wasp tea offers health benefits. Green and black tea certainly do. Living in Japan, one hears of the many health benefits that green tea offers. Green tea reduces cancer risk by inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. Green tea also lowers your total cholesterol levels and improves your ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol. The list goes on to cover health benefits for rheumatoid arthritis, infections, and more. While green tea may not have all the powers we hear about, it does offer much.

We may think that black tea does not offer as many benefits as green tea, but black and green tea are from the same plant. They basically offer the same benefits. As green tea is less processed than black tea, black tea offers fewer antioxidants than green tea, but the difference is not as significant as one might imagine.

Milton Schiffenbauer of Pace University states that both green and black tea can fight viruses in your mouth like herpes. According to Schiffenbauer, tea also helps to prevent diarrhea, pneumonia, cystitis, and skin infections. Research at Rutgers University has shown the potential of black tea for preventing stomach, prostate, and breast cancer. Black tea contains a compound called TF-2 that may slow down cancer growth. TF-2 can kill cancer sells while leaving healthy cells untouched.

Dr. Joseph Vita of the Boston University School of Medicine has shown how black tea also fights potential heart attacks and strokes by saving our arteries. His tests compared heart patients who drank plain water with others who drank black tea. After only one month, the tea-drinking patients had improved their impaired blood vessel functioning by 50%. Other health benefits that black tea presents are preventing tooth decay, lowering cholesterol, and soothing arthritis. Black tea may help us to burn fat too.

The list of benefits of green and black tea go on. For cultural reasons black tea may not have as many vocal admirers as green tea. Black tea drinkers and scientists who conduct research may just not feel as strongly as green tea drinkers. For many Japanese, green tea is more than a drink. Green tea is part of their national heritage and a source of pride. Presenting the health benefits of green tea may seem like a mission to many Japanese whereas presenting the health benefits of black tea speaks only to health for most Americans. Most of us do not identify with black tea the way Japanese do with green tea. Tea is just a great drink, not a way of life. Coffee is probably more a way of life to Americans.

Either way, tea research is still in its infancy and more research is necessary on both animals and humans to further investigate and understand the health benefits of tea.  Personally, I am pleased to hear that black tea is as healthy as green tea. I like both, but tea bags are just so easy. Yes, you can buy tea bags for green tea, but making green tea from a tea bag is not the way for me to drink green tea. It just seems so...

Green and black tea aside, I am now waiting to hear of the benefits of wasp tea.

Aaron Language Services (http://www.aaronlanguage.com/ ) provides translation, proofreading, and online English coaching to a primarily Japanese client base.

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