There are some things in life where I will accept no substitutes. Coffee and tea are two of these things.

This is the second of two articles I wrote for my main site. This one was originally published in April of 2008 and I've moved it here (with minor rewriting) because this site is about coffee and tea and the other is not. Keep in mind when it was written as I made references:

Recently, I was reminded by Claire (A little piece of me) that while some people like lemon in their tea, others do not. She, like me, does not like lemon in her tea. She needs "proper" tea, whatever the heck that means.

Tea, Cold or Hot

I've noticed, at least locally, that much more tea is sold with lemon added than without. In fact, I can rarely find instant tea that doesn't have the added lemon flavor. Yecch! At times, I have resorted to doing the tea bag drill and making my tea that way. I prefer iced tea, but when it doesn't feel like a sauna in my house, hot tea works just as well. The instant tea brand I always look for as unsweetened, without any added flavoring, is Nestea (a product of Nestlé. If I can't find any, I resort to buying the Lipton tea bags.

Local restaurants like to stick a slice of lemon in with the iced tea when it's served. The first thing I do is toss out the lemon before it ruins the flavor of the tea. I love the natural flavor of tea. I am guilty, however, of sweetening tea with sugar, but not too much. I don't want the sugar flavor overwhelming the tea flavor.

Black tea (an American all-time favorite), oolong tea, or green tea, it doesn't matter. They're all good to me. What a lot of people don't know is that all three are produced from the same plant. See "Tempest in a Teapot" for more information.

Coffee, Hot or Cold

Growing up, I was enticed into becoming a coffee drinker by the strong aroma wafting from the coffee pot percolating in the kitchen. I can remember my mother putting coffee grounds into the pot, letting it perk for however long it took, and then people sitting around the dining room table drinking it. Back in those days, the coffee pots were tempered glass and it took more than just a few minutes for the coffee to be ready. Nowadays, we have automatic drip coffee as well as instant coffee.

I prefer instant coffee, but not just any instant coffee. It has to be either the Folgers or the Nescafé (another product of Nestlé) brands. Other coffee brands just don't seem to taste right to me.

While I was in the military and stationed in Japan in the eighties, I had to settle for iced coffee, usually arriving as a can from a vending machine. When Starbucks started marketing cold coffee, it was already old news to me, so I didn't get suckered into buying it all the time.

When I was young, non-dairy creamers like Cremora and Coffee-Mate (still another Nestlé product) didn't exist (well, they did, but I never saw them). It's a good thing they didn't because partially hydrogenated oils are bad for you. Everyone that didn't drink it black used evaporated milk from a can. I drink coffee with sugar only these days.

Carbonated Beverages

It doesn't matter what you call them. In some places they're called soda. In other places they're called pop. In yet other places they're called soda pop. I can't drink any of them. When I was much younger, I drank soda because it was convenient. The vending machines were everywhere. It didn't matter which brand I preferred because it changed from month to month. As I got older, I realized that soda (while not knowing how bad it really is for you) just didn't do the trick in quenching my thirst.

A couple of months ago, I found myself drinking a soda because it was the only thing available at the time. We were out of bottled water and I was thirsty. I poured the soda over ice cubes and it still didn't water it down enough to tame my thirst. I ended up driving 11 miles to buy bottled water. Don't get me started on the tap water. The tap water where I was at was worse than the water you find in swimming pools, it had so much chlorine in it.

What Are Your Favorite Drinks?

Aside from alcoholic beverages, what do you like to drink? Coffee, tea, soda, other kinds of drinks or just water? Can you tell me why? If you're a beer-aholic (someone who drinks beer for the taste, not the alcohol), can you tell me why you prefer it over anything else?

(Image sources: The "What's in Your Pot?" Swap and Well of Illusions!)

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• Iced Tea or Iced Coffee?
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• The Many Kinds of Tea
• How to Make Iced Tea
• Steuarts Black Tea with Cinnamon

Personally, I really can't tell the difference the taste of green tea as opposed to black tea or any other kind of tea. I've had a little experience, not good, with using green tea for dieting. I'll relate my experience along with other details about green tea.

Green Tea for Dieting

A few years ago, I'd say at least eight, I was introduced to something called "Chinese weight loss tea". One of my wife's friends had lost a bit of weight by drinking it and explained to me how it works. She gave me a small cardboard box, colored green, covered with Chinese writing and with the words "diet tea" on one solitary flap.

This green tea came in teabags, not as tea leaves as depicted in the small picture I provided, and it was intended as a hot drink. Since I like hot tea almost as much as I like hot coffee, I tried it for a day. I knew it was supposed to act like a mild laxative, but I could not stay out of the bathroom after drinking it. At least, not until I was completely void of everything in my system.

That was the first and last time I ever messed with anything with the words "diet tea" on it.

Green Tea Detoxification Recipes

I've been reading various articles about green tea being used as the basic ingredient for detoxification. Various forms of "detox tea" can be used to detoxify your liver and your skin. I'm sure there are other detoxifying organs involved, but I haven't read about them yet. Of course, it takes more than green tea by itself to do the job intended.

Most of the detox teas that I've read about don't even include green tea, so it seems to be a bit of a misnomer to me, even if it is a legitimate use of the word "tea".

Green Tea and Old People

While traveling in the orient at various times in my life, I noticed the old folks tended to drink hot, green tea at least a day. I don't know if it contributed to their longevity (I met a Japanese man of over a hundred years old who could get around better than my 75 year-old mother and my 73 year-old mother-in-law), but why take chances?

If something as simple as having a hot cup of green tea every day could increase your lifespan and allow you to live a healthier life at the same time, wouldn't it be worth it to include it as part of your daily diet?

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• Health Benefits of Drinking Coffee and Tea
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For years, doctors have been telling people to reduce their consumption of drinks containing high levels of caffeine, picking on coffee as the number one source. While over-indulgence in things that contain caffeine can have adverse effects on your health, how much is too much is open to interpretation.

What is caffeine?

Caffeine is an alkaloid that acts as a stimulant and a mild diuretic. Caffeine is called guaranine when found in guarana, mateine when found in mate, and theine when found in tea; all of these names are synonyms for the same chemical compound.

Caffeine has the effect of temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. Humans have been consuming plants containing caffeine since the beginning of time — it occurs naturally in many plants besides coffee and tea, even though coffee and tea get the most publicity for it.

Caffeine is added to soft drinks, especially cola-type soft drinks. I won't go into detail about it since I could spend a day on that topic alone.

Despite the negativity surrounding caffeine, caffeine continues to play a vital role in the health of people all around the world. Again, it's a topic all in itself and I won't go into detail here.

Antioxidants and Flavonoids

Both coffee and tea are high in antioxidants. An antioxidant is a molecule capable of slowing or preventing the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that transfers electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent. Oxidation reactions can produce free radicals, which start chain reactions that damage cells.

Flavonoids are known as antioxidants, but they have other significant properties that I can't explain without writing a textbook or plagiarizing someone else. Green tea is higher in flavonoids than other teas, and the amount of flavonoids in coffee is questionable depending on what kind of coffee we're dealing with.

Health Benefits

Antioxidants have been proven to have anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties. Only a small amount of flavonoids are required, as antioxidants, to show immediate health benefits.

It makes sense to include coffee and tea, if you don't dislike the taste, as part of your diet. It's not known if caffeine-free versions are as effective as those containing caffeine, but it's worth trying if you're on a caffeine-restrictive diet.

Green tea has been called the green tea fat burner recently because of what it does to your metabolism and the anti-fat and anti-carcinogenic effects it has on your system.

Personally, I've been drinking coffee and tea as long as I can remember. I don't have trouble sleeping, a common side-effect of ingesting too much caffeine, and it doesn't cause me to be jittery. Other than old injuries, I have no health concerns. I'll soon be 48-years old and I feel great. You can call me a coffee and tea poster child, if you wish, and it won't offend me at all.

Similar Posts:

• The Coffee Franchises are Here to Stay
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Unlike coffee, the many kinds of tea are not produced from multiple species. The different varieties of tea come from one plant, the camellia sinensis. I'm not talking about teas (like herbal tea) which do not come from the tea plant; I'm specifically talking about the varieties made from the tea plant.

Tea is Classified by the Producing Technique

The traditional tea consumed by most Americans is black tea. It's the same plant used for green tea, so green tea isn't any healthier for you than black tea in its original form. Here are the classifications:

• White tea: Un-Wilted and unoxidized
• Yellow tea: Un-wilted and unoxidized but allowed to yellow
• Green tea: Wilted and unoxidized
• Oolong: Wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized
• Black tea: Wilted, crushed, and fully oxidized
• Post-fermented tea: Green Tea that has been allowed to ferment/compost

What about Red Tea?

When my family moved to Hawaii in the 70s, and I was a teenager, my parents planted a unique hedgerow. It was a repeating row in an order than included Tea, Red Tea and Bird of Paradise. The tea plant was the tea plant I'm talking about. The red tea plant is something else. Although it looks like the regular tea plant, it's not red version of it. Frankly, I don't know what it was.

How Tea is Consumed

I've always known about tea being consumed either cold (iced) or hot. The British like it hot, while most Americans like it iced. Unlike coffee, again, tea isn't used in candies and cakes and the leaves aren't eaten with chocolate.

Local Tea Varieties

I'm unaware of any tea that's grown locally. If I look at some of the packaging, I'd probably find out that some of what I think is imported is actually made in the Philippines.

I usually buy the instant NESTEA, without sugar or lemon flavoring added. I like to taste the tea, not the additives. Yes, I add sugar, but how much I add depends on how strong I make it. I like it iced and lightly sweetened, not heavily sweetened like the US southerners.

Unfortunately for me, most Filipinos like the added lemon, so the plain NESTEA is always hard to find.

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