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Sunday, December 28, 2014

Pesticides in Coffee and Tea

This really sucks, but it was brought to my attention yesterday about the growing concern for pesticides in our tea products. I really like tea, and I definitely prefer it over coffee. However, it seems that certain brands of tea have just got out of hand. What makes this suck even more, is that some of the most popular brands are the worst, such as Lipton and Celestial Seasonings. Now, of course we live in a world full of poisons, chemicals and food additives, and a lot of our produce (fruits & vegetables) are already loaded, but we can at least wash some of it off. I can't really wash my tea leaves off before brewing them nor am I going to even try.

Update: As for the popular brands, it seems that Celestial Seasonings had some type of rebuttal from all the bad press they were getting on the Internet. I read a comment from them on another website that said: "In response, we sent the same teas for independent, third-party testing by the industry-leading National Food Lab (NFL). Their test results detected no pesticides in the brewed Celestial Seasonings teas. NFL’s testing reaffirmed that Celestial Seasonings teas are safe and follow strict industry guidelines." I must say, though, I've heard that some testing agencies doesn't count stuff like this until it gets over a certain unacceptable level or threshold. Do I still trust this tea now?  Uh, I still think I will seek out some organic tea and hope for the best... ---End of Update

Instead of me giving out facts and figures, if you are interested, check out the following link:
www.riseearth.com/2013/08/do-you-know-whats-really-in-your-tea.html (unfortunately, that link is no longer active)

After reading all of that crap, I quickly got online and ordered me some Organic Green Tea from Legends of China (or whatever it was called) and Organic Chamomile Tea and, while I was at it, even though I normally would buy this as non-organic, I even ordered organic honey. Ha-ha! A few pesticides here and there, I can live with. But they acted like certain brands of tea have far exceeded the limit that the FDA allows. Yikes!

Update #2: Now I just ran across an article talking about pesticides found in both regular and organic varieties of tea. Coffee is still in the clear. Good grief, do I need to grow my own dang tea, as well!? Resource Link, here: https://wuhealing.com/blog/2020/4/15/dangerous-tea-warning-exposing-the-health-risks-of-conventional-and-organic-varieties 
This could also simply mean that many of the ones that claim to be totally organic are not. One way to at least partially counter this is to delve through the databases of the companies (and products) that are truly certified organic through a web page called "USDA Organic Integrity Database" and you can find it, here: https://organic.ams.usda.gov/integrity/
---End of Update #2

As for the coffee, it appears to be much safer even though it also has pesticides. A quote from Coffee Review states: "The flesh of this fruit is discarded. Along the way the seed is soaked, fermented, and subject to a thorough drying process. Later it is roasted at temperatures exceeding 400°F, and finally broken apart and soaked in near boiling water. Given this history of relentless attrition, it hardly seems possible that much if any of the small amounts of pesticide/fungicide residue permitted by law in green coffee ever make it into the cup." If you are a big coffee fanatic, feel free to read more about that, here: www.coffeereview.com/reference.cfm?ID=121 [link is no longer active]

Anyway, I just thought I'd bring that to the surface, in case anybody isn't aware of this. Thank God there isn't pesticide in my beer yet! Well, even if there is trace amounts in beer, I'm not going to perform any research on that one!

Shopping (Affiliate) Link:

'Click Here' to Shop for Organic Green Tea

---End of Post "Pesticides in Coffee and Tea"


P.S. - I realize that this post was mainly about the poisons and/or pesticides found within various types of common brand-name tea, but coffee was still included in the title albeit there really isn't much concern for that type of brew when it comes to those pesky pesticides.  However, to make 'coffee' more relevant to the title, I will link to a post that I recently written on another blog: "Random Tidbits about Coffee"

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