What do you think of this FDA message?

What I think is that if you are eating or drinking ANYTHING strictly for your health, you should look again.

When I was a kid, my parents forced huge amounts of milk down my throat because milk was good for you. Today milk is bad for kids. When I was a kid, I was told coffee would stunt my growth, now it's actually recommended to calm down kids with ADHD. When I was a kid, juice was good for you, now it has too much sugar and rots your teeth.

When I was a kid, there were ads for tobacco products, telling you to "have a Lucky instead of a second helping" and promoting the health benefits of fibreglass filters. Now it turns out that tobacco isn't healthy at all, but actually kills you.

If you like the way green tea tastes, drink it. If you don't, avoid it. Whatever health claims are made today will be different tomorrow.

--scott

Yes, we sure have seen a lot of that.

For green tea, or even tea in general, I think we're on fairly safe ground in assuming that it is not bad for you. Drinking tea does seem to corrolate with better health, but of course corrolation does not imply causality.

And I continue to believe, personally, that drinking tea does in fact confer health benefits, whether the FDA agrees or not.

"RJP" wrote in news:e-mdnVv- joO1Ff snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

That echoes my personal beliefs too, Randy, but I add this:

Some oncologists [cancer specialists] say that in their experience drinking huge amounts of coffee is a risk factor in developing cancer (not a word about tea). And another doctor, who has worked closely with oncologists, advises his patients to restrict their tea intake severally when they are on chemotherapy, along with extra vitamin C, etc. (The agents used in chemo are mostly strong oxidants, toxins which kill cancer cells faster than normal tissue. The anti-oxidants found in tea impede the agents' effectiveness.)

Logically, this means very litle -- caffiene per se could cause cancer, some say it does -- but the advice, "restrict this, it'll interfere with with the course of medicinal poisons you've got to take," gives me the idea that there's something more to tea being healthy than a layman's feeling.

GF

I've been hearing that the FDA might not be an impartial judge. Who knows, but I think we each have to judge for ourselves.

I think there is enough evidence to believe that tea is good for us as long as we aren't taking it in tablets or capsules and hoping we are getting the benefit. In my mind, the foods which have been around for multiple centuries are the foods to use, not modern "preservatives" which could be "preserving" something in our bodies we don't really want. Like colestrol.

or Modern sweeteners like high fructose cornsyrup which is so sweet it has been shown to have a deletarious effect on our systems in so many ways that if it worked faster it would be considered a poison.

I think I like this thread, we got a lot of down to earth answers. Thanks, Kitty

RayNg5kQq8g.4852$ snipped-for-privacy@news20.bellglobal.com5/10/06

15: snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com

I'm on a slow computer at the moment and haven't the patience to hit the web. The headline you quote says it all, though. Probably true. However, I have quantifiable proof that tea contains properties that cleanse wallets of cash, leaving that sparkley clean pure feeling, often followed by that "what have I done!" discomfort as the last stale dregs of that empty your wallet, drink it today, for it's garbage tomorrow green tea hits the bottom of the trash pail.

Tea contains no health benefits at all. Drink cause you like.

Michael

Right now that's true, but wait a few years and the FDA will announce some sort of thing found in tea that is bad for you. Maybe pesticide residue, maybe mercury from Chinese battery plants. Who knows? Everything is bad for you.

Anything that makes you sit down, relax, and contemplate it will confer health benefits, even if it's just the relaxation and contemplation doing it.

--scott

I think that if the drug companies (hence the govt.) could charge $15 with health insurance and $75 without insurance per teabag and get sole distributorship then the results of this study might have been different. Who knows. Who cares? The FDA also says that a daily 60mg of vitamin C is enough....and it is, enough to avoid scurvy, but not enough to promote good health. So don't believe everything you read. For instance, when mad cow hits, all of the sudden you see news reports that the fish are full of mercury and that vegetables are really so good for you...and that chiken is full of bird flu....and vice versa. It's just about money.

P

I can sure relate to the "what have I done" part...just bought some more puer and I STILL seem to get buyer's remorse, even thought I really do drink most of the tea I buy.

It's still a necessary luxery in my mind I think

Melinda

NEVER studied about anything relating caffeine (the chemical) to cancer.

chemotherapy is NOT 'oxidants' . chemotherapy blocks cells from dividing. usually cells that divide alot - thats why hair falls off etc.

teas may have some chelating activity - they may bind medications thus interfering with their absorbtion = decreasing their efficacity.

smoked teas - lapsong, may contain carcinogens if smoked over charcoal = increased risk of stomach cancer. ask the japanese, they have high incidence of stomach cancer due to smoked foods & condiments.

who knows what pesticides/ chemicals they use on those teas/ground they grow from...

old 'aged' tea may be contaminated with aspergillus, which produces aflatoxin, a known carcinogen, causes liver carcinoma. or maybe other fungi which produce some other toxins.

let's not jump to any conclusions here. The FDA limited its "finding" to whether or not teas can put a label on their product saying something like "Tea prevents cancer" or some such.

The FDA is EXTREMELY conservative, many say overly so, about what health claims it will allow companies to advertise.

This link..

...indicates that the vast majority of tea research have been STUDIES as opposed to EXPERIMENTS. One can't draw hard conclusions from studies because correlation does not imply causation.

However, just because the FDA doesn't give its stamp of approval to claims made on tea contains does NOT mean that tea is neutral vis a vis one's health. Based on research we can say that tea is *most likely* very good for you. That's not enough to get an FDA claim of cancer prevention.

Also, keep in mind that the FDA didn't recognize smoking as causing cancer until the past 20 or so years because the only research able to be done were studies as opposed to experiments. Yet today how many people doubt that smoking is related to cancer?

If tea is wrong, I don't want to be right.

I would really like to see the FDA come out and claim that tea causes cancer. It would bring tea prices down again, and it might stop the flood of poor-quality green tea products which are flooding the market. We have a generation of kids who are growing up thinking tea is really supposed to taste like that, and that it's something you drink because it's good for you rather than because it tastes good.

Jesse Helms went on C-span explaining how tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide, which kills bacteria in your lungs and prevents lung infections. Not all THAT long ago. Here in Virginia there are still plenty of folks who will claim tobacco is medically beneficial. It's kind of scary.

--scott

The FDA doesn't allow claims that spinach or green beans will cure anything either and I think we would all agree that those are good for you. Tea is part of a healthy lifestyle... not a cure. That's all the FDA is doing. They are trying to prevent marketers from making definitive claims about the impact of tea on specific ailments.

"Yogurt and bean sprouts? Don't you know those cause cancer! They've been banned for years. Here, have a cigar. It's the best thing you can put in your body." -- Recovery physician, year 2025, in Woody Allen's _Sleeper_