African Adventure Motorcycle Travel

Health & Safe-Tea

I’ve never understood those people who insist that tea dehydrates. How can a half-pint mug of steaming hot water with a tea bag floating in it possibly dehydrate?

Anyway, my instinctive response to the health properties of tea has been supported by the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which has dispelled the common belief that tea dehydrates.

The journal suggests that tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers. Experts believe flavonoids (I’m not making up this bit) are the key ingredient in tea that promote health. They found evidence that drinking three to four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack.

According to the BBC, somebody called Dr Ruxton said: "Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it's got two things going for it."

In the interest of fairness, I should point out that another thing that tea has going for it is the Tea Council, which provided funding for the research.

Full story here

Tea Ladies Brew for Fairtrade

An army of tea ladies danced through London to Downing Street yesterday as part of a campaign to promote Fairtrade products.

It's Fairtrade Fortnight, and the aim is to persuade more than a million people to swap their usual brand of tea to Fairtrade products.

Not sure what this member of the household cavalry thought but he's still just managing to keep a straight face.

Tea Bag Necklaces

Keen to use every piece of waste associated with tea bags, my friends at Original Tea Bag Designs have devised a way of creating necklaces and earrings out of the colourful boxes in which tea bags are sold.

A little ingenuity takes this ...

                                                                                      ... and turns it into this

Donnah - pictured here - had the original idea to make jewellery some years ago and has inspired many others to indulge their creativity. Donnah now runs the Tea Bag Designs outlet at Cape Town's Waterfront.

Tea boss admits complicity in genocide

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Michel Bagaragaza, the former head of Rwanda's tea industry, has pleaded guilty to complicity in the 1994 genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.

Mr Bagaragaza admitted that he allowed a militia to use tea factory vehicles on killing sprees.

He had originally pleaded not guilty to four counts of genocide - conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide, complicity in genocide and violations of the Geneva Conventions - but amended his plea as part of a plea bargain.

An estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during 100 days of tribal killings in the Central African country.

Spare $2,120 for a cuppa, mate?

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Our favourite democratic drink has a rich cousin - the gourmet tea, some costing as much as $2,120 a kilo.

I'm not sure how many cups you'd get out of that but I suppose if you have to count to justify the expense, you can't afford it.

Demand for pricey brews has remained strong despite the recession. An upmarket international chain of tea boutiques is planned - I just hope they don't model them on Starbucks.

Johnny Vegas drinks tea with a monkey

Bring back the tea lady

A poll of office workers suggests that the long-gone tea lady is much missed by pen pushers in the UK. They said ‘old fashioned’ traditions such as the lady with the tea trolley made their office a more sociable (59%) and more relaxed (55%) place to work, while 28% felt more motivated.

A secretarial recruitment company polled 1,067 office workers about traditions they would like to see return. Here are the ones they missed most:

1. Taking a full hour lunch break (39%)
2. Annual ‘work outing’ (33%)
3. Subsidised canteen (29%)
4. The tea lady, complete with trolley (26%)
5. Pub lunches that last all afternoon (23%)
6. The sandwich man (19%)

It’s hard to believe that anyone would vote against some of those.

What’s interesting is that the tea lady was only the fourth most missed old fashioned tradition and yet it was that element that the BBC has led on all day.

Tea – always a reliable story in the silly season.

Drowning in a Sea of Tea

According to an industry press release this week Britain is drowning under a sea of tea. The country’s favourite cuppa is now so cheap we are paying far less for it than we were 30 years ago.

Overproduction, cut throat supermarket price wars and a weak dollar (the currency in which the commodity is traded) mean that a cup of tea costs less than a penny a cup. In real terms the price is a quarter of what it was in 1977.

That’s all good news for Britons (the world’s second-biggest per capita tea-drinking nation at 165 million cups per annum – only the Irish drink more) but bad news for the 36 tea-growing countries, which last year produced 3.5 million tonnes of the stuff.

Apparently, too much tea is being produced, driving down wholesale prices which allow supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury and others to sell 80 of their own-label bags for a miserly 29p. Like many other items in the shops these days – clothes is a good example – you find yourself thinking ‘How can they sell it so cheap?’ Well, as always, someone has to pay for that - and it’s usually third world labour.

Tea is grown in some of the poorest countries in the world and, despite the low wholesale price, is often a major source of income: tea is the third-largest export earner for Uganda, for example, but tea pickers can be paid as little as five pence per kilogram for the leaves they pick.

The argument for ‘fair’ tea is a circular one. British tea importers argue that many countries are planting and growing far more tea than is needed, under pressure from poor local farmers desperate to make a living. The more they plant, harvest and sell, the cheaper it becomes and the less they earn.

Cafédirect, Britain’s largest ethical tea and coffee wholesaler, is the only major brand to guarantee a minimum price for its tea. They have bucked the trend by announcing an increase of 8 per cent this year and are calling for a minimum auction price to be paid for tea, as there is with coffee, to address the problem of producers not being paid a fair price.

 

Tea Clipper Cutty Sark

The Cutty Sark, a uniquely historic and graceful tea clipper dry-docked in Greenwich, London, suffered a disastrous fire yesterday May 21 2007.

Curiously, the ship was undergoing major renovation at the time, so much of its interior fittings had been removed for safe storage - it could have been a lot worse. It is still too early to say whether too much of the ship’s fabric has been lost to fully restore. Go here for more info

The event (and, of course, the ship itself) is important to the Brew Ha Ha because as a tea clipper she is a tangible reminder of the importance of tea in 19th century trade and cultural life.

As one of the most famous ships in the world (and the only surviving extreme clipper), she is, to many, the epitome of the great age of sail and the ultimate fast commercial sailing ship of its time. And a very beautiful sight, too.

The Cutty Sark left London on its maiden voyage on February 16 1870 bound for Shanghai, via the Cape of Good Hope. She carried wine, spirits and beer with the intention of returning with tea – a fair trade! She departed for London with around 1,450 tons of tea - the first of eight voyages the ship successfully made to China in pursuit of the ultimate brew. 

How the clipper got its name:

The old Scottish legend of Tam O'Shanter was later turned into a story by Robert Burns, of whom the owner of the ship was a fan.

Tam came across a witches’ coven in a churchyard late one night and fell under the spell of Nannie, the most beautiful. She was wearing a short petticoat called a 'cutty sark' which is an old regional Scottish name for this garment …

Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.

The witches turned on Tam and chased him across a river, but not before Nannie pulled off his horse’s tail

“For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle!
Ae spring brought off her master hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail:
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.”

Here’s the full poem

 

Fancy a Cuppa?

It seems everywhere I turn these days someone is getting into the importance and significance of having tea. Sometimes it's quite obvious what the attractions are (see nicecupofteaandasitdown), sometimes less so.
Here is an art installation by Geraldine Pilgrim at Belsay Hall, an English Heritage property.
The table is set up for tea, so maybe the strewn china represents all the tea that's been drunk in that room over the centuries. Ooo, the strories they could tell, eh? Or maybe not.