I'm just like you. I drink tea every day I don't have coffee around and it's something I love because it makes me feel like a health nut. Or a Brit. Or a wise dharma master, depending on which color, or unpronouncable variety I choose. It's a wholesome, carefree product that I don't have to worry about being pumped full of pesticides, or hormones or high fructose corn syrup, right? Wrong.
Sorry to break it to you friends but it seems not all tea bags are created equally. Teavana, a popular brand of designer tea that charges an arm and a leg for their products, claim to provide the consumer with organic, pesticide-free tea blends that are not only safe to drink but, healthy and wholesome for you. However, research conducted in an independent lab by Glaucus Research, found that 100% of Teavana's teas contained traces of pesticides and one of Teavana's most popular and expensive varieties, Monkey Picked Oolong, contained 23 different pesticides.
Not only do these teas contains traces of pesticides, the amount that Glaucus Research found violates U.S. food pesticide standards, which are quite lax to begin with.
The news has been devestating to Teavana's stock prices. And hopefully their image will follow, since the companies claimed adherence to FDA guidelines is a blatant misrepesentation of their actual practices and customers complain about the taste anyway.
Glaucus also found similar issues with Celestial Seasoning's teas, reporting 91% of the Celestial Seasonings' teas tested violated U.S. pesticide standards. The group is reprimanding the company to relinquish their decpetive image as a Natural Health company.
But it doesn't end there, A recent report by the Atlantic raises serious questions about the safety of plastic tea bags posing as streamlined 'Infusers' or whatever mumbo jumbo companies use to say 'it's way cheaper for us to use plastic and consumer health safety be damned'
So what do I do?
Fret not. Where there's a problem there's a solution. It's cheaper, safer and easier to buy tea in bulk. Brewing loose leaf tea is easy and you can fine tune the amount to your desired taste. Whatever you do, immediately stop buying Teavana and Celestial Seasoning teas. They aren't worth the designer price hike and the health costs are far too high.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
