Tea Without Milk Please

Tea has been hailed as a healthy drink throughout the ages, the ancient Chinese recognised its properties without the benefit of modern day scientific studies. A German study a few years back in 2007 found that the proteins in milk interfere with the function of catechins in the tea. The catechins are believed to be the chemical responsible for helping to reduce heart disease. So they recommend that tea be drunk without milk.

For most of us (Brits) that is unthinkable, we are so used to adding milk to our tea. It just isn't going to happen, or at least not when we drink the mass produced supermarket or health food store tea bag tea.Frankly, there isn't much 'goodness' in that anyway. The leaves have been ground up into a powder. It is as far removed from tea as instant coffee is from proper coffee! 

As most Y10 pupils could tell you from their science lessons, anything ground up into smaller bits will react faster. So what do the chemicals in tea react with? Basically, oxygen from the air. Loose leaf tea therfore oxidises more slowly as it is not ground up at all. So logically, it contains much more of the useful antioxidant chemicals. And more flavour!

Drinking speciality loose leaf teas is therefore a very different proposition. These are traditionally taken 'black' i.e. without milk. You get more flavour, indeed a more delicate taste altogether; a taste that adding milk would simply mask.

So by all means drink tea as usual but if you really want to benefit - lash the cash and invest in some gourmet quality teas. You wont be disappointed and you might just be doing yourself some good too!

Lotus Tea (He Ye Cha)

It has been recognised as an effective way to treat the body for several centuries across Asia. It is known to affect directly the digestive and diuretic system. This legendary plant has also been associated with purity and serenity in Hinduism and Buddhism. The Lotus is a native from India and has spread through all the sub continent, South East Asia and China. It is mostly found in ponds and aquatic areas, with its distinctive exquisite blossom flower on the surface. Lotus tea benefits are very well known. For at least two thousand years it has been used by millions of people with very positive results and with absolutely no side effects and indeed all pure and natural.

In Nature Fresh Green Tea for Summer

Many shops across the UK and the US are now offering our superb Spring Green Tea, Bilo Chun. This unique sweet green tea is so tender, that the water used to brew the tea should never exceed 85 degrees centigrade. Do not treat it like cheaper teas or commercially produced tea bags on which you would pour boiling water. Use pure spring water, free from chlorine, to preserve its delicate taste, aroma and endless health properties. If you must boil the water, leave it too cool before pouring it onto the Spring Green Tea leaves. Boiling water drives off the subtle aromas and flavours leaving you with a bland, two-dimensional flavour lacking the nuances of this top quality tea.

Treat it with respect and handle with care to enjoy the pure fresh sweet taste to the maximum

During the summer drink Pure Green Teas from In Nature Teas. Our teas are delivered fresh every week to the UK to preserve the pure taste and natural health properties.

Buy top quality Spring Green Tea

Cho Yung Tea - Beware

Lately, we have been asked by many customers about a supposedly miracle tea named Cho Yung which apparently is good for losing weight. It is offered as a FREE Trial, with all sorts of claims as a secret Chinese slimming tea with hundreds of articles on the internet from the very same company. This practice is quite well known in China to scam the general public.

FACTS:

The company selling these "miracle teas" claim the teas to be Green Tea. As far as we know such tea, under this Chinese term, does not exist in the Green Tea category.

We highly recommend all our customers to be careful since this may be a massive deception carried out using the internet with the assistance of the less informed and unscrupulous companies.

The term Green Tea is fairly unregulated. We at In Nature strive to provide the most renowned Green teas available in the market namely the : Long Jing (Fresh Green), Mao Feng (Alpine Green) and Bilo Chun (Spring Green). These teas have attained the highest recognition from tea master and from the general public for thousands of years and have the proper certification from recognised bona-fide tea institutions worldwide.

For more information about Green Teas please visit www.innteas.com or contact us at sales@innteas.com .

Green Tea Folklore and Healing

No one really knows for sure when tea drinking started, one popular Chinese legend suggests that an emperor called Shennong was responsible. He also seems to have been responsible for inventing traditional Chinese Medicine too! Clever chap, if it's true. Apparently, he had a bit of a thing for tasting plants (and probably animals too) and whenever he came across something toxic that made him ill he would take tea! There is also a similar legend about a Chinese deity - just versions of the same legend I suppose ... but whilst tea is not really a miracle cure as described in these legends, it is potentially a healthy drink.

Why's that?

Tea leaves contain many natural chemicals, some of which are known to have powerful antioxidant properties. These can help the body deal with bad chemicals called 'free radicals' which are known to cause harm damaging the heart and linked to cancer. Antioxidants can alter free radicals and render them int a form that is no longer harmful.

There are plenty of other foodstuffs around that contain antioxidants so tea should form just a part of your daily healthy diet. Studies have been done and suggest that you would need to drink a lot of tea to supply the body with a usefully high antioxidant concentration. A study in Japan (sorry, I don't have the reference now) suggested that people who drank at least 7 cups of green tea per day may well have less chance of developing cancer. Sadly, the report was fairly arbitrary and just looked at a few people in a certain village - as with all health related studies, it is impossibly difficult to carry out a controlled experiment and the numbers involved are inevitably too small to make it scientifically valid.

So green and oolong teas may not be the 'silver bullet' that will ensure long life and good health, as claimed by many marketers (are they cynical or do they not realise that these stidies are not particularly scientific?) and sellers of tea ...but they do taste good and may just contribute in some small way to your healthy lifestyle.

Buy Green Tea
Buy Oolong Tea

About the amazing Camellia Sinensis

This is the scientific name for the amazing plant that gives us the goodness of green and oolong teas. It is native to south east asia which probably explains why China was the birthplace of the tea industry. Did you know that all types of tea come from this plant? The differences come from the fact that there are two varieties, the time of picking and the method of processing. Green tea is the least processed, in fact it is not really processed, preserving the natural compounds that are reputed to do you good. OK, back to Camellia.


It is a small shrub which has small white fragrant blossom during late winter and the spring. In warmer climes is grown outdoors as an ornamental garden plant - the leaves are a bright green and often have a hairy underside making the plant tactile as well as a visual ornamental. White tea is so called because the hairy leaves are used in its manufacture. When dried, the hairs give a white, almost silver sheen to the tea leaves. The fruits are a dull brown-green. Left wild, it grows to a tree standing just under 20m in height so to grow it as an ornamental will normally require pruning. Propagation is normally by cutting as it is notoriously hard to raise from seed. The reason for that is that if the seeds are dried, viability is reduced - they need to be planted fresh whilst they are still moist. However, if the seeds are stored in moist conditions at a temperature a little above freexing, they can remain viable for a year or more. It prefers a slightly acidic well drained sandy soil. Chinese tea is produced from the hardier variety Camellia sinensis var. sinensis which is hardy to about -5 degrees C. The leaves are more delicate than its Indian counterpart Camellia sinensis var. assamica.

Remember, always use loose leaf teas in preference to tea bags. The latter are made from the fannings - the waste material from the real thing. Because the fannings are effectively tea powder, they present a large surface area to the air and any goodness and flavour will oxidise much faster than in the leaf tea. So the green tea tea bags sold in health shops are probably not as healthy as they claim, nor will they be as tasty.

Fresh Green Tea - Long Jin

Long Jin tea is also known as Dragon Well and is often called the national drink of China. It is probably the most well known green tea produced in China.

When brewed, this green tea produces a yellow-green colour, giving off a distinct but subtle aroma with a great taste. It is incomparably better than the beverage produced from cheaper green tea bags.

Pack size: 50g

Servings: 50 cups or more. Full instructions on how to prepare the perfect cup of tea inside each box

Prices:      £5.45