I want to start off by saying that this post is not going to be discussing the merits of whether claims about tea are true or false. I’ve been thinking a lot about the narrative around this topic for a while. As tea has become more popular, you can find it in all different forms and you can find it in many more locations than before. When I go to the grocery store, the tea choices seem to have doubled!

This means, more companies are either getting into the business of tea or are adding tea as a product to their offerings. With this increase, I have also noticed that health benefits of tea are more widely circulated.

There has always been this information but I see it more and more. I think that a lot of the places I see people claim a certain tea has health benefits are merely for marketing purposes. I recently have been seeing ads for a tea company that I worked with in their early stages and have now blown up. Their marketing has changed from when they first launched and now centers around skin benefits and tea with vitamins It makes some sense though because the health and fitness industry is huge and many people want a cure all to get rid of this or that. I do understand to a point that as a business, you want to somewhat cater to trends.

BUT

I want to state right out that I think marketing tactics like promising that a tea, a supplement etc will cure some ailment are often predatory and wrong.

I think there is a huge market for “skinny” or “detox” teas that usually don’t involve much tea at all and mostly just increase your number of trips to the bathroom. I think that claiming something will “detox” you just to sell product is wrong and often can be harmful. These types of claims are not what I want to discuss.

I want to talk directly to people who consume tea from small businesses, tea that is directly sourced, tea that isn’t packaged into some commercial product. There is an increasing amount of people who just refuse to even interact if a health benefit is mentioned most likely because of the things I have discussed above. If you choose to do this, I’m not here to chastise you but merely try to share a different perspective. That perspective is that much of the health benefits of tea claimed are not the same as the predatory tactics I’ve mentioned.

I will admit that I do not consume tea for most of the stated health benefits of teas that I’ve read. As in, I don’t think of a malady that I have and then search for a tea to solve it. I do think that personally, drinking tea does have health benefits for me in the sense that it allows me to rest and enjoy the present moment which has been very important for me in recent years. I’ve discussed this before when sharing about my journey with making tea in the “gong fu cha” style.

There are a lot of things that tea can be used for that may sound strange if it’s “new” to you. For example, when I was a kid, I remember if I ever had those symptoms starting that looked like they could be pink eye (unfortunately spread in school often) like itchy eyes, crust etc, my mom would have us rub/wipe our eyes with the black tea that we had in our house that was usually used for drinking. I remember it working a lot but this isn’t scientific, just anecdotal and I would never tell anyone to treat pink eye with tea. But nonetheless, in my mind this is still something I do today if my eyes are ever itchy etc.

What is my point? Well, most of the tea in my stash is from China and Taiwan. A lot of the tea companies I purchase tea from are either located in these places or are located in the US but source directly either from farmers there and have a relationship with their farmers. Many of them have connections to these countries either through their own heritage or because they spent a lot of time there. When a company like this shares a tea and also shares what this tea has historically been used for in China, is this predatory? I don’t consider it to be. I think there is a difference between saying that a tea will cure you of something and saying that a tea has historically been used for better circulation, to aid digestion etc.

In fact, I think if you’re drinking tea from a different culture it is both important and interesting to know if that tea has a medicinal use in that culture even if you don’t believe it or don’t plan on using it in that way.

My own tea Aram, includes an herb, borage, that Iranians drink for different medicinal purposes and I listed this on my information card because I’m not claiming that it will heal you in some way but I think it’s an important cultural aspect of the herb.

Of course, you can do whatever you want but I’ve seen some strange levels of dismissiveness regarding this subject. I’ve actually had people say they didn’t want to try a tea from someplace because they noted some medicinal property. I think there are a lot of reasons behind this that I could write an entire post on but at the very least it comes off as condescending.

All this to say, I think we need to be weary of predatory marketing tactics for sure but in the same breath we can also be more respectful and open when consuming cultures that are not our own.