This "news" article passed me this morning so I took a few minutes and wrote down my thoughts on the subject at my teasphere.wordpress.com blog. I thought it might spur some discussion so I'll post it here, although I have a feeling most opinions will be similar on it.
Let me start by saying that I don?t put much stock in the myriad health benefits/miracles made about tea, and similarly I disregard ?studies? like this one released today on ABC?s site about a tea/ throat cancer link:
I will never understand why folks need to believe a simple drink will somehow cure everything from obesity to bad skin to lack of friends. I drink liters of green and oolong tea every day and I still get sick throughout the year, I?m still a bit overweight, I?m beginning to bald, break out at times? I do have some good friends though. So there?s that. I always say that if all the tea I drink keeps me alive one extra day, then that is one more cup I get to drink. Nothing more, nothing less. However, I don?t blindly ignore the fact that I?ve probably ingested my share of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides, etc. as I steep and eek out every last drop from my leaf each day. Everything is always in balance. Yin and Yang.
Tea (not to mention tons of other hot beverages) has been drunk in many degrees of temperature for millenia, and to believe that just now it can somehow be definitively linked to throat cancer is laughable at best. It couldn?t be the increase in air pollution and highly evolved mutant sicknesses. It couldn?t be the fact that we?ve been unknowing guinea pigs for so many untested and unregulated ?advances? in the name of a quicker buck like genetically modified foods, chemical additives, or a whole host of other lovely things. It must be hot tea. That?s it. Surely.
- Dominic