January is National Hot Tea Month. You may wonder why this month receives the honors? It’s a cold time of the year, and hot tea is perfect for not only warming up after shoveling some snow out of the driveway but helps fight flu and cold season. You probably already have your favorite teas that keep you toasty and in good spirits, but perhaps it’s time to kick of the new decade with something new and healthy. Freshening up what goes in your mug might just help you beat the winter blues. 

Signature Biodegradable Tea Pouches:

Whether you are on the go or at home our Organic Detox Infusion Tea Pouches provides a refreshing and relaxing way to detox. With a unique list of ingredients including, mint, basil, licorice, burdock root and dandelion root this is a tasty blend that promotes calm, aids in digestion, and acts as an overall body tonic. For an energizing pick-me-up try Rainforest Mate Tea Pouches – a delicious and healthy blend of green yerba mate, rosehips, green anise, mint, licorice, cloves, apple pieces, cornflowers and marigold petals.  Yerba mate may assist in curbing your appetite while providing a natural source of caffeinated energy.

Whole Leaf Loose Tea:

If you are looking to kick your coffee habit, rooibos (pronounced ROY-bos) or sometimes called Red Bush is an herbal plant grown in South Africa that provides an ideal caffeine-free alternative.  Literally the national drink of South Africa, people have been drinking rooibos there for centuries and swear by its health benefits, including using it for nagging headaches, combatting allergies, insomnia and infants suffering from colic.  High in antioxidants it’s also rich in vitamins and minerals. For a rich and flavorful introduction, try our Coco Chai Rooibos – a sweet and tasty blend of rooibos, cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, red peppercorns and shredded coconut.

Another legendary herb known for its healing properties is tulsi or what in India and traditional Ayurvedic medicine is called “holy basil”. This Ayurvedic tea is thought to assist with promoting overall balance within the body including relieving stress, boosting immunity and supporting general well-being. As an introduction try Tulsi Rose - a unique well balanced blend of tulsi, coconut, rose petals, lemon myrtle, chamomile and stevia leaf

On June 18-21 foodies, chefs and those who love to imbibe descended upon the town of Aspen to participate in the Aspen Food + Wine Classic. Mighty Leaf served hot and iced tea at this year’s event to great response. During the festival, tea was the retreat or “pause” from all the wonderful cocktails being mixed on-site or glasses of wine being poured. We enjoyed sampling flights of hot tea and discussing the nuances of the flavor profile and aromas.

During the festival, I had a chance to speak with chefs about how they cook with tea. Marcus Samuelsson talked about visiting Japan and how it inspired his green tea doughnuts.

David Burke soaks dried fruit with tea. Top Chef winners also cook with tea. Stephanie Izard braises duck legs in tea and Ilan Hall poaches fish in tea. The variety of cooking with tea responses left me abuzz with ideas. To watch the interviews of chefs talking about how they cook with tea, visit Mighty Leaf Tea on Youtube.

Festival attendees enjoy sampling tea:

I’m a tea drinker who enjoys tea with a little bit of milk.  Not only does it add a nice creamy texture to the tea, it also seems to take the bitter edge off, even without adding any sugar.  And I’m certainly not alone – by one estimate, 98% of British tea drinkers top off with the white stuff.

In my previous post I looked into some of the health benefits of green tea, and found the evidence to be somewhat limited. This isn’t so surprising, given the difficulty of determining the effects of one small part of a large, complex diet. So is it folly to try to understand how the combination of two foods, milk and tea, might affect health? Maybe so, but there is some evidence out there, and the news isn’t so good.

In 2007, Verena Stangl and colleagues published an article in the prestigious European Heart Journal entitled “Addition of milk prevents vascular protective effects of tea.” This study was based on a legitimate observation – if the British drink so much tea, why is cardiovascular disease still so prevalent? The researchers knew that tea causes relaxation of the aorta, a physiological mechanism associated with health (stiff blood vessels cause all sorts of problems).

They then devised a simple experiment – have subjects drink 1) straight tea, 2) a combination of 90% tea and 10% milk, or 3) hot water. By popping on an ultrasound probe on the subjects, they could then see what happened to the aorta. The experiment was small but the results were not – the folks who had milk in their tea had an aorta just as stiff as those who drank hot water. Those who had straight tea enjoyed a very relaxed aorta.

Sort of odd, don’t you think? Why would the simple act of adding milk to tea possibly annihilate the beneficial effects? Remember those catechins, especially the star player, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG)? It would seem that EGCG is pretty promiscuous – it likes to hook up with whatever protein might be around. It especially likes proline, one of the amino acids.

Wouldn’t you know, one of the most abundant proteins in milk, β-casein, is studded with proline. Indeed, when Stangl looked at the various polyphenols in the tea, the EGCG level in the milk/tea combo was only 20% of the plain tea level.

Ok, so easy solution – just switch from cow milk to soy milk, right? Not so fast – glycinin and β-conglycinin, the major proteins in soy, also have a surplus of proline. Look for Stangl’s newest article, coming out soon in Atherosclerosis, showing that soy milk chomps those catechins every bit as much as cow milk.

Bottom Line: There’s a reason tea tastes less bitter after adding milk – all the catechins just got bound up! If you want to enjoy all the catechins you possibly can, best to have the tea like nature made it – straight up.

It’s that time of year where Uncle Sam is patiently waiting for the tax forms to roll in. I just mailed mine in last week, and am kind of late on the ball. Let’s hope where you sit, tax season is now a thing of the past. I have been contemplating the economic climate of the moment, of the last few months and know it’s been challenging for some of the people in my life. As tax season sweeps to a close, I want to propose this is a good time to detax with some detox.

Occasional detoxes don’t necessarily involve a dietary change, but can consist of changing patterns. Perhaps if you like watching television, try planning a weekly game night or picking up a book for a season to quiet the space around you and give your brain a change of pace. I am considering a detox from processed sugar for several weeks in April. As one who lives in San Francisco, an amazing city with extraordinary sweet finds from places like Citizen Cake, Bi-Rite Creamery, Tartine and Bittersweet, it’s easy to get your fix sated. As one who loves to cook, bake and come up with concoctions from whatever is on the pantry shelf and seems like it will pair well, sugar is a necessary ingredient. Or is it?

This is where tea particularly saves the day. Flavored teas give a healthy choice to the problem of the sweet tooth. There is comfort and respite in a cup with an aroma that intoxicates and invites the drinker to lift the cup and sip slowly. Teas, and for that matter, the sweet tooth seem most awake in the evenings. This is the perfect time to reach for a caffeine free herbal infusion, available in such variations from herbaceous to fruity to decadently chocolate.   A cup of tea invites contemplation and this is a great season to kick-start good routines in place of ones that may not promote the best. To live a life of sipping slowly, enjoying the moment, chewing- this is an ultimate luxury and one within reach.