Decaff (green) tea?

You said in other posts you didn't give much credence to the medical claims made by scientific research for puerh. So you accept a meaningless factoid but not a body of work? You can't explain why multiple infusions can cause caffeine reactions. I can. You can't explain why puerh has no caffeine effects. I can.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

How many people want me to piss them off? Okay if you ask for it. Boiling water is for your health. IMHO anecdotal experience I don't think water temperature is that much of a variable when making tea. You allow me to taste your desired result I'll use boiling water and come pretty close. You can check my posts from the past. At some point the kettle will cool to 160. You should really be making tea according to your taste and not some percentage formula based on differential rates of extraction. If you do use that formula you will have to boil your water. Also note this formula doesn't have a clue about what you mean by 'lovely'.

Jim

crymad wrote:

True, I do not trust a lot of the medical research talking about weight loss, hangover cures, and cholesterol reduction because another study always seems to come out the next week that says the exact opposite. Yes, I believe there is something there but I am waiting for a highly credible study before I hang my hat on it.

The studies I presented about tea chemistry are pretty straightforward and not nearly as controversial. "Factoid" and "body of work" are your interpretations, not mine. What collaboration did you provide, I must have missed it?

Don't need to explain it, I never contested it.

Don't need to explain it, Puerh DOES indeed have caffeine effects, I have never stated otherwise. I experience them almost everyday.

All of the above has nothing to do with the original disagreement, why do you keep trying to change the subject?

Mike

Please tell us more....

Mike

I meant brewing Sencha using boiling water, not water that has boiled and cooled to 160. If indeed, as you say, "there is no fundamental difference in taste no matter what method or how [one] brews the tea", then water temperature shouldn't matter.

That's just my poetic way of saying the tongue is a finer instrument for flavor analysis than any machine. Certainly you agree with this.

--crymad

I have. Check my previous posts on the subject. In one case there is a guy claiming he could taste the difference in tea brewed by one degreee increments.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

If you hang your hat on it it has to be a meaningless factoid. I think I remember you saying you dismissed the medicinal claims and not that the jury was still out. Maybe you can Google link what you said in the past of the subject. You can remember better what you said and when than me. In science all you have to do is find a contradiction to refute a claim or at least require a modification. You can't explain multiple infusions by your references. As it turns out you can't most things by those references. My black puer around bedtime does NOT give me the caffeine jitters like other teas including green puerh. That is supported by my arguments heretofore and your admitted body of conflicting scientific research on puerh which still supports my claim.

PS: I don't see any medicinal claims for puerh that haven't been made by tea in general elsewhere. True story, I just visited my brother who runs laboratory analysis for a major medical research center. He told me he had been drinking tea for 6 weeks and lowered his LDL under 200 for the first time in his life. Our family history points in that direction with diabetes, etc. I sent him a cross section of teas including white which he knew about from the literature and he will monitor his biometrics. Too bad I don't live near by because I could get any tea analysis done I wanted.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

On a lexicographic note, I'd like to point out that "factoid" has a slightly different etymological meaning. (-Accepting, per a famous literary character, that words mean what we mean them to mean.) The term was coined by Norman Mailer in 1973 to encompass snippets of information that have significance only because they have been published - like much social gossip. Science hews to a somewhat more primal standard.

-DM

Lets not get personal now Jim, I take that as an insult. You are also an easy target if we go down that road.

You memory is faulty Jim, that's not what I said, search it yourself if you doubt me. Besides what difference does it make, it appears that your only use for my comments is to use them against me on some future date anyway.

My exact words were " I don't think there is really any conclusive evidence but there does seem to be a smoking gun. "

I went on to say:

"As for the slimming claims I do not put much faith in them. Anyone who has met me in person would question those claims as well. I am a very large man, both tall and wide, and drinking puerh does not appeared to have changed that at all, and I do drink a tremendous amount of puerh."

You keep going back to that, it's nothing more than a Red Herring, I it is irrelevant to my "caffeine is not linear within taste" argument.

Why should your subjective judgments carry any more weight than you give to mine?

Lets move on Jim this is starting to get boring. At least in the beginning it was mildly thought provoking. Mike Petro

It has risen to the level of blemishes. I now use it with affectional connotation with the following modification. In the future I will use hanging factoid (with affection) because that implies some legitimacy with the implied Usenet caveat while meaningless factoid is redundant and irrelevant. I think it disingenuous quoting scientific references to prove your point waving a wand proclaiming them indisputable and then waving it again and saying other references are disputable. All initial bodies of scientific work are inherently contradictory. They're a better indicator for detecting underlying principles than hanging factoids. However hanging factoids historically does cause science to come up with better explanations. I stayed with the thread because Google never forgets and there is no science to tell us how to brew a cup of tea. At his point I would add a DUH but I allow for those pesky references. IMHO I think tea taste is proportional no matter how you make it. For the past couple of years I've been drinking teas off the top, leaves in cup, no stirring, and those last sips tasting like the first, which leads me to observing the saturation phenomena possibly also occuring in gongfu. Not in every case but something is going on. One hallmark of science is observation.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

forgotten that much likewise is performed."

There you go twisting words to suit your purpose again. Why must you always attack? Isnt it enough to just disagree and state your point?

I never proclaimed anything to be indisputable; I simply said I found collaborating studies, which BTW is more than you ever produced. Most intelligent tea drinkers have learned that there is a tremendous amount of disinformation about tea out there. I have learned to look for independently collaborated findings before I put too much faith in something. In the case of caffeine solubility I did find that collaboration.

As for the "puerh medical studies" that I don't totally embrace yet, they are MUCH more subjective than chemical analysis, especially if done buy someone who stands to profit from the results. Additional skepticism is in order IMHO. Again, independent collaboration from non-Chinese sources is in order since the Chinese have a vested interest in promoting puerh.

Mike

If puerh lowers BP in controlled studies then you don't need to know the chemistry to make the claim. The experiment should be repeatable and results reproducable to substantiate the claim no matter where the money leads. I don't buy into the argument that eastern science is inferior to western science. In fact I think they have a leg up such as Chinese patent medicines concentrates derived from herbal medicine which the last time I checked was $20b/year. I know puerh has long been used in TCM. I'd guess most claims are from TCM. I know Mao said TCM should be taught side-by-side with Western medicine. In practice it is Western medicine that predominates. However Western medicine is still used to validate TCM claims as policy. I don't feel like plowing through literature to see where it is at especially since it won't make my cup of tea taste any different. For grins I'll do some Chinese lookup of puerh and caffeine and let you know if anything pops out which you can deny as being unscientific.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote: ...Space Cowboy...

Your debate, not mine.......

Bye Jim

I just asked why you think the West has to validate anything the East does in science? You made the statement, not me. There I go again twisting your words when you meant Chinese and non Chinese. Then explain too us the difference between Chinese science and non Chinese science since you think it makes a difference in your evaluation of 'puerh medical studies'. We spend part of the weekend and this week and your use of validated scientific references and it boils down to what culture you're talking about.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

Space Cowboy wrote:

Umm, yes, you are twisting things around again. "I just asked why..." is a false statement. You didnt ask a thing, you just ranted a while! There was not a single question mark in the whole post.

My original statement (see above) said it all, I dont care to elaborate, especially when it feels like you are only trying to start a fight over something I have no interest in debating. My stance is that I am not convinced, one way or another, end of subject.

Jim, your just trying to goad me and I aint biting....

Bye Jim

So we still can assume you wave a magic wand for cultural scientific validation because even the second time around you hid behind some grammatical camouflage you construed because you conveniently left out posts in between which put the question in context. I truly find your reference to Chinese and non Chinese science oddly a little xenophobic even after following the money which we know all about in Western research.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

Jim,

First you demand that I "stand behind every medical claim made about puerh" THEN you want me to elaborate on why I don't buy into every medical claim made about puerh. You have proven that you don't care what stance I take, you just want to use me for a dartboard.

I am not playing that game, go get your jollies by harassing someone else. Assume whatever you want, you will anyway. I apologize for making the mistake of thinking you could carry on a civil debate.

Over and out.....

Mike Petro

Because that's how science works. A scientific principle is universal and therefore everyone can conduct the same experiment and so everyone validates one another.

In the case of something that is new and still somewhat unproven, it is important that validation be done from a number of different corners to make absolutely sure that a thing is accurate.

I strongly recommend reading Feynman's book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" on the subject of the spin of the electron. Turned out that something that had been taken for granted for many years was wrong, because the original results were marginal but made sense and nobody bothered redoing the experiment.

The great thing about science is that everyone can redo any experiment over and over and get the same results.

--scott

You still didn't answer the postulated general question derived from the misconception that scientific work on Puerh in the East (Chinese) isn't valid till given a blessing of approval by the West (non Chinese). The West may simply have no interest in the subject and the East can validate their own science.

Jim

Scott Dorsey wrote: