Loose tea is often cheaper and of better quality in my experience. If you brew tea a lot using a reusable strainer seems like a much better choice. I'm also entirely convinced that these plastic pyramid-shaped bags are pure marketing. Then again, I find Lipton tea absolutely terrible regardless of the shape of the bag.
My buddy used to work for Lipton. He explained that they use the cheapest grade of tea (dust) available. Also many tea companies mix non-tea additives (fillers) to their tea bags.
After hearing this I decided, if it's not full loose leaf, I don't drink it. We found that companies like Elephant Chateau (http://elephantchateau.com) deliver the 3 highest grades of tea direct from Ceylon mountain estates with the option for plant-based pyramid bags (soilon) or a free stainless steel infuser.
Bonus, the tea actually tastes like tea and is tasty enough to drink plain unlike Lipton dust. It always funny to hear people promote all the health benefits of tea then turn around and dump 100 grams of sugar into a cup to make it palatable.
To be fair, bagged tea exists because there are lots of buyers who only want quick refreshing non-coffee caffeine, and don't care for taste that much. Or sometimes they just want a background for those 100 g. of sugar you mentioned. Tea dust is a perfect match for this market, because it releases everything it holds to water immediately, while whole leaves may require some patience, and proper procedure.
FWIW, I'm personally fond of tea dust for cold brew, too. This summer I've been very much enjoying gyokuro dust steeped overnight in the fridge as my morning beverage. Not only is it less expensive than the whole leaf stuff (essentially free vs. some of the most expensive tea I own), but I think that works better with that brewing method, too.
Probably the main reason I don't use Lipton instead of the good stuff when I'm making cold brew is that I dislike all the packaging waste. Between the brewing method and the serving temperature, I don't necessarily find the taste alone to be enough better to justify the higher price.
Gyokuro is supposed to be high grade tea leaves grown in the shade, which are then ground into powder. (This is basically how matcha is made.)
By contrast, the tea dust that Lipton uses is the leftovers when all the higher-grade roasted whole leaves have been taken out, and it's quite literally the worst/cheapest grade:
where do you get your gyokuro from? the last time I had it was literally almost a decade ago and I absolutely loved it but I haven't been able to really find it except for expensive online retailers that strike me more as vanity brands than anything. but if you know of any good sources, id love to check them out
I get it from a local tea place that specializes in chinese and japanese teas. It looks like the price I'm paying is a bit higher than what I'm seeing from a cursory look on the Internet. No idea how the quality compares.
I've been using Lipton for this purpose and don't like all the packaging either. What do you use to contain the dust while you brew overnight? I make mine in a pitcher that lasts a few days.
I use a travel mug with a strainer cup that fits snugly inside. In the morning I pour it out without removing the strainer, so whatever dust fell through and collected in the bottom ends up getting filtered out when it goes back through the wet bits of leaf.
Celestial Seasons uses high quality ingredients, offering tours for anyone in the Boulder, Colorado area. They also use a patented pillow bag according to their FAQ:
unique pillow-style tea bag that doesn't need a string, tag, staple or individual wrapper—and as a result, we save 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year.
> unique pillow-style tea bag that doesn't need a string, tag, staple or individual wrapper—and as a result, we save 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year.
Anecdotally, my mother has been drinking Celestial Seasons for as long as I can remember (i.e. 20-25 years), and at any given time has maybe a half dozen to a dozen boxes of various types of it. Given that I grew up drinking it, tea bags with a string and tag have always been super weird to me.
> Do the 'pillow-style tea bag's use plastic?
Based solely on appearance/texture, they seem to me like they're some type of paper or light fabric, but it might be made from plastic.
Our tea bags are manufactured through a totally chlorine-free (TCF) process, meaning that no dioxin is released into the environment. Plus, they never contain starch or gluten, and they're completely biodegradable and compostable—making them better for you and for our planet.
"On packaging, it’s important for you to know that our tea bag paper is made of a blend of natural, chlorine-free fibers, and does not contain epichlorohydrin."
The sentence comes off as a little evasive. It would have been better if they said exactly what the bags are made of. It seems reasonable to conclude they are plastic-free but I don't think you can be 100% sure unless it's explicitly stated.
Celestial Seasons FAQ [1] says they sell 1.6 billion cups of tea per year, so this would work out to about 5 grams per serving, which seems around the right ballpark for the entire tea bag. Maybe their thinking is that without the staples, the tea bags are compostable, so they don't go in a landfill?
Not all brands, obviously, but don't assume the 'bag' itself is biodegradable.
Anecdotally, certain fancy tea bags survived an 18 month composting cycle, which I had to then pluck out by hand before spreading said compost on my vegie patch.
That number looks about right for "because of this, every one of our teabags is recycled instead of thrown out", which is obviously not true. But it could also be a supply-chain stat, where the landfill mass of those strings and staples is measured from cotton and iron, instead of the finished products.
We took a tour of Loolecondera Tea Estate aka James Taylor Tea Museum a few years back. I left with the idea that high quality tea manufacturers consider dust almost waste material.
Not all bagged tea is terrible. I usually use bags from Pickwick, which is okay. Not great, certainly not as good as high quality loose leaf, but good enough when I'm lazy or in a hurry.
I recently used some Lipton yellow label, though, and that was terrible. There's absolutely variation in quality, even among bagged tea.
I really doubt you had a buddy that worked for Unilever who told you "Lipton uses the cheapest grade of tea (dust)" and that companies add non-tea additives.
This is a rumor that's swirling around sites like "Food Babe" but is pure nonsense.
Can't compare the grade of loose leaf I'm talking about to the dust Lipton sells, having tasted the difference. Even visually...it's like comparing champagne to cooking wine.
IIRC (struggling to find a source), Thomas Lipton was the guy who formalized the tea-leaf grading process for Western Europe. The "legend" goes that back in the day, all of the imported tea would be dumped onto the floor of a particular room. The first round of tea producers would come and extract the full, unbroken tea leaves for top-shelf tea. The next round of producers would extract the broken leaves for mid-grade tea. On and on.
Finally, what was left would be the tea leaves that had been so crushed, broken, or pulverized that they were little more than a tea dust. This is what Lipton would then sweep up to make Lipton tea.
Which is to say, Lipton knew what he was doing. He went for the cheapest stuff possible. And that's what you get.
3) Boil a kettle of water and prepare a mug of each. Note the varying instructions: the teabag is only recommended to steep for about two minutes, because the tea dust is comprised of smaller particles and will overextract if left alone too long, while the loose leaf tea calls for about 4 minutes of steeping.
4) Taste and decide for yourself whether you feel there is a meaningful difference between the two. If not, then great! You can continue to buy the more convenient option without feeling like you're being deprived somehow.
* I'm sure there are other brands, but Twinings was the only one off the top of my head that sells both teabags and loose-leaf of the same flavor and can be found in most grocery stores.
First, the higher surface area brews differently - faster, which is convenient, but changes the ratios of what's infused. That's not inherently bad, matcha is green tea specifically prepared to be served that way, but it's usually detrimental to a tea intended for larger leaf brewing.
Second, sitting around powdered in paper sachets means far more air exposure. This is basically the same type of difference as fresh-ground and powdered coffee, which isn't hard to taste.
If you drink tea with milk and sugar, I'm not sure it matters. But for straight tea, it matters at least as much as for straight coffee.
Indian chais are commonly made in most Indian homes with dust tea. It's cheap, produces a very strong cup, which can stand up to the milk, sugar, and spices. Chai made with long leaf teas is just awful.
I wouldn't use a dust or CTC tea if I want to drink the tea straight, though. Different types of tea for different uses.
Yep, that makes a lot of sense. I suppose if cost were no object at all, you could approach it like matcha: de-vein and powder long leaves to get a strong, high-grade brew that doesn't have time to oxidize. But I'm not even sure it would be better, since Indian chai isn't spiced with that process in mind.
I was going to say I've had chais made with long leaf tea, but I realize those were middle eastern versions that are only spiced with a bit of cardamom. I'm sure it's not an accident that the recipe has a lot less spice where long leaves are in use, but I'd love to know how that difference came to be.
There is a long history of spiced drinks in India, drunk for their medicinal value. Most Indian kids have grown up drinking turmeric milk for sore throats, and strong decoctions of pepper, holy basil, and dried ginger for congestions.
From what I can ascertain, Indian Chais appeared in the early 1900s, when British owned tea estates tried to drum up local business among Indians. The best quality teas were exported, though the teas available to Indians were still expensive. Local tea vendors boosted the flavour with spices, and eventually milk.
In the most common variety of masala chai you'll find in India, lots of freshly grated ginger is boiled in water, before adding tea leaves and finally milk. The milk must come last, since raw ginger will split milk. We have different spice blends for different times of the year. We generally avoid masala chais in the hot summers. Ginger chai is great for the rainy season, along with some piping hot fritters. Cardamom and pepper are for the cold winter months.
In Kashmir, where the cuisine is much milder, you'll find kahwah, made from powdered green tea, along with cardamom and saffron.
No, lipton tends to get the cheap crushed remnants of better tea, and only processes whats left to consistency. Others start with whole leaf, and then diliberately crush and seive it to a givin size (selling the remnants to lipton). Not to say its bad tea, just a bit cheap and oxidized. And if going cheap, luzianne (sp?) is the one to grab. Lipton is reserved for weak iced tea imho.
> Elephant Chateau (http://elephantchateau.com) deliver the 3 highest grades of tea direct from Ceylon mountain estates with the option for plant-based pyramid bags (soilon) or a free stainless steel infuser.
I bought it on Amazon on a whim and it ended up being a great purchase. Hard to go back to normal tea and we haven't found this kind of leaf anywhere else.
pg tips used to sell a tea that came in a brown/oragne box. It was rich and tasty but somehow they discontinued it. Lipton and many teas in the US taste of cardboard. It baffles me how people find anything in it to keep buying it.
I just bought a 320 pack of Lipton black tea. I don't drink it for the caffeine. To me the black tea tastes good, but I know that better tea exists. I'll have "good tea" when I visit friends but I'm just not personally interested in hunting down the store in Dalat that my friend likes to get her tea from. Lipton still tastes good to me.
It’s part of people’s morning habit and tough to break. My grandparents drank a ton of Lipton or Tetley tea. I literally didn’t realize there was anything else until college!
I've switch 10 years ago from bags to loose tea and since that moment I can't drink tea with sugar anymore - maybe all that bagged dust stuff was more palatable sweetened back then? No idea. But one thing is sure, I can't switch back to bags and each time I have to drink such, it's a nightmare - esp. the occasional Lipton cup tastes like worst thing under the sun.
This really has me wondering. I have always really enjoyed coffee but found tea was just not for me. Thinking back, I have only ever tried cheap shelf tea such as Lipton as you mentioned. Perhaps I need to try a real tea and see the difference. How is it a company like Lipton who aims to use the cheapest quality product success in the market?
It's the same principle as fast food. A McDonalds hamburger is very different from a "normal" burger - but it's cheaper, quicker, more standardized, and someone has to use the trimmings. There are a few edge cases who like burgers but hate McDonalds, but for most people it's close enough to be a suitable replacement.
I simply use loose-leaf Twinings Earl Grey, the kind that comes in the light yellow tin. It's easy to find everywhere, even in some fairly unexciting supermarkets, and the quality and price are in the tea sweet spot for me. And to your point, it has enough bergamot but not too much. Just the right amount for me.
Curiously, the world is a big place, filled with a variety of people who do things differently to each other.
I'm from 'The North' in Britain and I was raised to drink tea that would be bitter as hell if it didn't have at least a small amount of sugar and a light dash of milk in it. It's the sort of stuff that 'puts hairs on your chest' and gets me through a hard day's work, much like it did for my forebears.
I also like posh black tea on its own and I personally frown upon people who put loads of milk in the stuff, yet apparently quite a few tens of millions of people in India have it just so.
Tea + lemon + sugar is the only way to drink it. True madness is milk in tea, those two liquids should just never go together. And coffee...I guess that's why the best most delicious coffee I buy is literally whatever is cheapest at Lidl - milk and sugar make all coffee taste acceptable.
//obviously, I realize that people around the world have different tastes :P Where I am from literally no one drinks tea with milk, but adding a slice of lemon is extremely popular(I can guarantee that if you order tea at a restaurant it will be served with a slice of lemon to the side), but in the UK it's the opposite - people look at you like you are some kind of demon for adding lemon to tea.
Logically, even if milk and sugar made all coffee taste acceptable (spoiler - they don't) that still wouldn't explain why specifically the coffee you buy from Lidl is "the best, most delicious coffee you buy".
In point of fact, cheap Lidl coffee is actually weirdly really really good.
I was being facetious obviously, by trying to imply that even the cheapest coffee is "the best and most delicious" because the milk and sugar make it all taste the same regardless of coffee beans used. But yes, Lidl's coffee is actually weirdly good despite being unrealistically cheap.
I find most tea (baggies, leaves in a strainer, etc) taste the same and mainly just bitter. Same thing with coffee and alcohol, I can discern no difference between types when drinking anything containing any amount each. Tea is definitely bearable with some honey and milk though.
That's just my crazy taste buds though. The closest explanation for this is being a "supertaster"[1]. I've done the supertaster blue-dye tongue test but compared to my friends we saw no noticeable difference.
I remember a local guide in Uzbekistan (I was on vacation there years ago) "The good tea, we keep it. The average one, we sell it. The bad one we send it to Europe to make tea bags."
Luckily I had been using leaves to make my tea at home. Probably the average quality one.
That’s funny! In Guatemala it’s the opposite for coffee. They sell the fancy stuff to McDonald’s and drink the lower quality coffee locally. Still pretty good imho
In Robert Sabbag's excellent book about marijuana smuggling in the 1960s and '70s, Smokescreen (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1841953792/ref=dbs_a_def_r..., published in the US as Loaded: A Misadventure on the Marijuana Trail), much of the story revolves around the same being true of pot.
The smuggler at the center of the story discovers that his Colombian suppliers are routinely packing all different strains of marijuana together, with a single bale containing everything from low-grade weed to the Santa Marta Gold that American potheads would pay top-dollar for. To the Colombians there's no difference between one strain of weed and another, but the smuggler knows to the American buyer it can mean a huge difference in price. So he works with them to start separating the different strains and buys every bale of Santa Marta Gold he can get his hands on, becoming the first smuggler who can bring his customers a consistent, reliable supply of the Good Stuff. Which of course makes him a fortune, and which of course leads to all sorts of other problems.
(Sabbag's book is a fantastic read, I recommend it highly. And if you want a shorter-form introduction to the story, here's an interview with the smuggler in question after his lawbreaking days were over: https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/allen-longs-days-as-an-...)
Tea bag tea is much finer dust compared to loose leaf of the same brand. So it brews faster (and worse). They change the blend to try and compensate.
Tried Liptons once. On our very first trip to the USA, we needed a decent cup of tea. Visited Walmart, bought really expensive pack of Liptons which I think was one of just a very few teas among millions of coffees. Made tea, instantly regretted it. Surprising considering it's from Unilever who make the UK's best seller: PG, which is OK but a bit weak.
The place we stayed that leg got most of a pack of free tea bags, and we found somewhere that could make tea - without ice or lemon. :)
Thankfully plastic tea bags don't seem to have become popular here. Asda (Walmart) did them for a while, so we switched brands.
> "Tea bag tea is much finer dust compared to loose leaf of the same brand."
Right, the "tea dust" is what goes in to your regular cheap paper tea bags. But the contents of plastic tea bags are usually more "premium", basically the same as good quality loose-leaf tea.
Some super-premium brands like TWG use cotton tea bags, which give you the same high quality tea and brewing without the dose of micro-plastics.
Regardless of any potential health effects, I think plastic tea bags are a pointless single-use plastic that should be banned.
Here tea bags always seem to come with much shorter brewing times. So if the pack, nylon or paper, gives shorter than loose leaf brewing time it's dust - not necessarily the estate grade "dust". Perhaps from premium leaves and tips going into the blend, but cut/ground far, far finer than loose leaf.
By the time we get to super-premium, I'd just go loose leaf always. Quite agree nylon is an innovation we shouldn't have. :)
Alright, I left out OK as far as mass market bulk supermarket tea bag brands go.
Yorkshire Gold is distinctly better, Tetley and supermarket own brands are mostly about the same: OK depending on your taste, a couple of supermarket and Twinings that are a bit crap. There are cheaper brands that are awful. PG loose leaf is a refreshing blend, far better than bags, but it's not a premium tea.
The tea bag problem is mostly not enough tea and 1-2 minute brewing dust can't give the flavours that take 4-5 mins to come out. That and they all reduced the weight of the packs for the same number of tea bags. 20 or 25 years ago they all increased the number of tea bags for the same weight of tea.
Even slightly premium loose leaf is vastly better. e.g. Tesco's cheapest Finest - the non-estate specific one, or Booth's quality loose leaf is leagues ahead of PG loose leaf, let alone bags (and cheaper!) etc.
Locally I have a bloody marvellous specialist tea shop with far, far too many excellent own blends. :)
Not nearly enough tea in their tea bags. Here they were the first to reduce the weight of packs, and it hurt their blends. Hotels seem to like Twinings for some reason. Find a way to sneak an extra tea bag into the mug or pot. ;)
Their loose leaf are decent enough blends, but increasingly uncommon here.
Putting aside the quality of the tea, a reusable strainer is always going to be a more environmentally friendly choice than one-time-use bags, and it may be a healthier choice as well (depending on how sanitary you keep the strainer).
But if you have to go with a one-time-use container, a paper bag seems like an improvement on both counts versus a plastic one. The article indicates that the only reason some brands go with the plastic bags is to appear more "premium," which if true is a great testament for how people are willing to strangle both themselves and the planet in order to accrue a couple extra status points.
As I understand it even the 'paper' teabags contain plastic which is why they shouldn't ever be disposed with any organics waste (and possibly raise similar health concerns due to being immersed in boiling water before being ingested).
A quick search reveals an article[1] stating:
> Most bags, including those made by the five leading tea brands in the UK – PG Tips, Tetley, Twinings, Typhoo, and Yorkshire Tea – use non-biodegradable polypropylene as sealants in their bags. A spokesperson from the makers of Yorkshire Tea confirmed to Resource: “Our tea bag material contains around 25 per cent polypropylene (PP) which we believe is typical for the market. It’s a component of the material that allows us to heat seal the bag.”
That's an excellent page - I wish I had found that while I was browsing around. I've long been suspicious of the materials of these 'luxury' teabags (but that's probably the traditionalist in me).
EDIT: in fact, looking at this page[1], it seems they might be one of the only ones who do make a biodegradable bag ...
T2 is all about drowning out a mid-grade tea with random fruity flavors. Their actual high-quality teas are dangerously overpriced. I guess they make an okay Earl Grey, but I'm not a huge fan of the brand generally.
Try Lupicia (which has retail shops in the Bay Area), or Rare Tea Co, or Kettl, or something.
From an ecological standpoint it makes much more sense too. When you buy a box of lipton tea bags you basically get 20x2g of tea in 20x2 grams of trash packaged in a box inside a plastic film.
> Loose tea is often cheaper and of better quality in my experience.
This is indeed my experience as well. Still, the convenience factor of Lipton tea cannot be understated.
I'm personally willing to bring in my own tea, metal strainers + teaspoon measurement to my workplace for example (hot-water is usually available in most offices). But that's probably too much for a lot of people.
In contrast, you can usually get Lipton Tea from the office supplies, use some paper cups (also office supplies), and get to tea drinking without having to buy the supplies.
I find tea-balls fiddly and hard to clean. The Ikea strainer looks better but still small. What I found easiest is a Chinese tea strainer: it's a metal mesh (stainless, hopefully) that is as large in diameter as a standard (American) mug, so it just sits on the rim and curves down half-way into the mug.
Put in your dose of loose-leaf (black or green), pour water over it, and when done steeping just let drip over your mug and place on a saucer nearby (as you would a tea-bag). Some strainers have a small handle, but the rim is usually cool enough to grab after steeping. When cleaning, put used tea into the compost, and rinse the strainer as you would your cup. Set to dry on your mug, ready for next time.
These are available in any Chinatown dry-goods store, and similar shops (or Chinese supermarkets such as Ranch 99 in California).
BTW, this article comes as no surprise, but I'm happy to see basic science prove what we often think about plastics. I've been drinking loose-leaf tea for years for flavor and lack of wasteful packaging.
I too can't stand typical ball strainers and use a big one taken from an Ikea tea pot. It fits most mugs perfectly filling up almost the whole space inside.
My favorite tool is #1: the "springy clasp ball on the end of a stick". So I can recommend that to everyone over the other two devices. #2 isn't bad, but there's a lot of convenience factor to #1's spring design.
> In terms of convenience I don't think it's significantly worse than sachets.
In making tea, no, not much difference. But I dislike cleaning metal-meshes. Cleaning is a minor inconvenience... but if you've ever just used a paper-cup + Lipton tea bag and just trash everything when you're done... lol. Lazy lifestyle (but wasteful).
But yeah, its probably better for the environment to have these reusable tools, like a coffee mug.
---------
By the way, Lipton does sell loose tea, if you're a fan of Lipton. But I live near a tea / coffee shop with superior teas at low prices, so I just grab what they have instead.
As far as store-bought tea is concerned, Twinings is tasty and widely available. I'd take Twinings > Lipton any day. Lipton is slightly cheaper, but Twinings really does taste better.
Wow, that thing has GPL’ed code in it. Who says GPL code is anathema for business?
Personally, I prefer my tea makers without Apache in them; I recently got the Breville BTM800XL (a.k.a. Sage The Tea Maker™), and it is very nice, in that it is fully automated.
I've had one of these for what feels like centuries. Sturdy. Machine washable. Inexpensive as hell. Along with my single-serving french press also from Ikea[0] some of the most value per dollar I've ever got.
I've considered that too to get better tea at work, but for me the biggest blocker so far is that I'm so doubtful of some random chinese bags from ebay, considering how steeping in my view feels very adept process of extracting any harmful crap that the bags might have and this is something that very much would give repeated exposure. Am I just being too paranoid?
I don't use reusable tea bags, nor do I resteep. If simple paper/bamboo fiber bags are that bad, you'd be in trouble either way, since they're also used as spice bags for soups, curries, sauces, etc.
> Then again, I find Lipton tea absolutely terrible regardless of the shape of the bag.
I was gonna say, they literally taste worse than the cheaper paper-based tea bags. I mean loose leaf is nice, but those plastic pyramid things are just shit.
Hm I'd say Yorkshire Gold is the best tea bag. Second tier are Williamson Afternoon and Ringtons Breakfast, Yorkshire Red. Third tier, Twinings etc, acceptable but not lovely. PG Tips is on the third or fourth tier, at least.
really? Loose tea is available in supermarkets in Australia, its actually a lot cheaper than tea bags, if you count by the cup. Its usually with the tea bags but up higher or lower on the shelves. 250g costs about $3.50AUD.
Though I have noticed the amount of loose leaf tea is getting less over the years on the shelves. There's also less variety than they're used to be, I have to hunt around if I want an unusual one. Its way cheaper than specialty tea shops - they're around $10 to $20 for 100grams, way to much for the amount of tea I drink :-), but nice for a weekend change.
Ugh, yet another "hmm, never thought of that" thing to worry about, but it comes at a good time. I was just giving thought to going to back to loose leaf and a tea ball as I was preparing some Trader Joe's Earl Grey that comes in an individual plastic wrapper, along with a string and a bag, and whatever else. For a cup of tea. I'm one step away from a Kuerig. Other brands in the cupboard aren't a whole lot better on packaging.
And now plastic in my tea. The wife's got to have a tea strainer in here somewhere...
I've been trying to avoid groceries that come with single-use plastic and it's tough. Grapes and cherry tomatoes come in plastic bags or cartons, even at salt-of-the-earth type places. Meat or cheese from the deli gets a zip lock. There's no way to use the olive bar without grabbing a plastic carton, in various sizes.
I wouldn't have even suspected the tea bags themselves. I assume some of them are still made with natural fibers but how would you know?
The truth is single-use plastics are very useful in certain applications. Sanitation and reducing food waste likely outweigh the cost. I do think it's great we're being more thoughtful in our consumption and thinking more about where stuff goes when we throw it "away."
I do think you can address some of your issues assuming your grocer is a bit accommodating and you don't mind the perception of being a bit odd. Farmer's Markets rarely package things like grapes and cherry tomatoes. I got some reusable produce bags that have a tare weight written on them [1] (I don't usually bother having them tare it). I just stuff the produce bags into one of my grocery bags.
There are a bunch of "zero-waste blogs." I can't seem to find it, but I remember watching one video bio where she went grocery shopping. She had them put cuts of meat into jars and brought her own containers for everything. The only "waste" was the paper sticker they put on her jar. She did say it was a bit odd at first and she had built a relationship with the grocer, but I'm pretty sure it was just a local Whole Foods.
The "bags" that they're alluding to are "Tea Forté" - but they're carefully avoiding naming names. It's pretty easy to tell that the material is plastic.
It's loose tea in a finely perforated plastic pyramid with a paper leaf on top as a handle. They're marketed to people willing to pay extra for the appearance of the bag.
At the higher-end grocery stores near me (Whole Foods, Nugget, etc), you can bring your own container and tare it before filling. Maybe you can see if your local grocery store can do this at the deli/olive bar?
I've been doing this a while. At the big stores, cashiers are always happy to do it, it's just a mild inconvenience because they rarely know how to tare on their machines–they always have to call over a manager and figure it out together. I figure if enough people do it, they'll get used to it, but I don't hold hope for that, judging by the stares we get from everyone waiting in line behind us. It feels like the average person feels more averse to what we're trying to accomplish.
Our local co-op is a lot more streamlined for this, they even do periodical sales for people who bring reusable containers.
Our next goal is to bring our own containers when we eat out, in case we don't finish the food and want to bring the rest home. Often times we purposely order more than we can finish so we get a greater variety of things to share and a whole extra meal the next day.
Some of these fancy bags (e.g. from tea pigs) are made from polylactic acid. This is derived from corn starch and used in temporary medical implants (it degrades to lactic acid) so hopefully it's safe.
I drink a decent amount of tea, and I feel like this is largely confined to the mid-grade teas that are fancier than your basic Lipton or Twinings, but not-so-fancy as to be loose-leaf.
I also see grocery-store versions at Target and such. Those appear to be the ones that employee the plastic triangle satchet. The cheaper stuff, from what I can tell, is still using paper.
Many cheap Lipton teas have this type of sachet. Using this plastic is a horrible trend and I'm not sure how it started. My worry was always more about leeching, but the microplastic results might even be more disturbing. Such a shame that a natural simple solution is compromised. I'm sticking to my looseleaf.
If I had to guess, the "plastic triangle" is a bit larger and would potentially allow larger tea-leaves to move more freely within the water and infuse better.
The cheapest end of commercial tea bags are all basically tea powder, so they don't need the larger bags to infuse.
That's possible, but I think you've already reached a point of diminishing returns with a standard teabag. They do have a more premium feel, so it's probably a combination of perceived quality and cost savings.
This kind of “silken” sachet is what you get when you buy sachets from Harney, but they also sell a lot of loose-leaf. I would even say that’s closer to the original core of their business. I used to order big bags of hot cinnamon spice, a decade or so ago.
The use of "some" and "may" in titles always bothers me. Seems like there should be more concrete language available to state the point the article is attempting to make.
The flip side of this is that scientists are terribly difficult people to get to not hedge their statements.
It's just a consequence of the scientific mindset -- scientists are aware that today's results are always provisional, someone may come along tomorrow with a new discovery that overturns them. So they tend to avoid making definitive statements like saying something applies to all things, or that some thing is, favoring less definitive statements like something applies to some things, some thing may be, etc.
This is bad, but most "paper" tea bags still include plastic in their manufacture as part of the heat sealing. English article about which brands do and don't here, note that it's all the mass market brands that include plastic, so that's most of the market.
I drink tea over coffee (for digestive reasons), and I assume I am missing out on really good tea. Any readily-available loose-leaf tea recommendations?
I mail ordered from TeeGschwendner (https://www.teegschwendner.de/en) for years, and their quality is very solid. I stopped because our local yarn store (!) had a truly excellent looseleaf tea selection.
Sadly, going to an upscale tea place in an urban area does not guarantee you decent tea, nor are places consistent. There are places that have nice blacks and greens, but utterly miserable rooibos (this is quite common).
Thanks. I bought some loose black tea from a shop in NYC's Chelsea Market last year. I figured I would be in for a treat, but it was completely bland and tasteless. Been hesitant to splurge much since then, but will definitely be checking these recommendations.
Depending on what you mean by "really good tea". There are both varieties of tea, and then grades of quality within the same variety.
For Chinese teas easily found in the US, dragon well (longjing) and iron buddha (tie guan yin) are very drinkable green teas. Iron Buddha tends to taste a bit more metallic, leafy, and sweet, Dragon Well tends to have a warmer flavor with a tiny hint of savoriness. Both are much lighter in flavor than, say, Earl Grey, which makes them very drinkable even in large quantities, but if you're used to Earl Grey you might not be able to taste these teas. If you want a stronger, more earthy, less leafy flavor, you can find puerh fairly easily. There's a very large range of quality for puerh, so this can be a rabbit hole. As a general rule, you should only buy loose leaf for Chinese tea varieties. I've had dragon well in a bag/sachet before and it tastes like a poor facsimile.
I specifically didn't mention Jasmine because Jasmine tea is often a lower grade of quality in the US, which has the downside of tasting too leafy/bitter/heavy on tannin. If you find a higher quality loose leaf Jasmine, it's also a very drinkable tea that you might like.
In general, I personally prefer leaf-only-no-added-flavors teas, but everyone's tastes differ. What I recommend to everyone who asks is to try a lot of varieties from different countries (mainly China, Japan, India, and try white, green, red, and black varieties), try a few of the flowery/herbal/fruity blends, and settle on whatever you like.
I found a green-ish oolong tea I liked, it's one of these: http://teapedia.org/en/Formosa_oolong_tea (Formosa Jade mountain or Formosa dongding). I don't know about availability, you'll need to find a tea shop and I'm sure they have something similar.
The aroma of it is something completely different than cheaper green teas.
Be aware that you might a lot of very different (and relatively unrelated) things if you just search for "Formosa oolong". Based on your description, you might have better luck with "Taiwanese oolongs", "dingdong oolong", "high mountain oolong and "Alishan oolong".
I drink a lot of tea and my dealer of choice is uptontea.com (by coincidence I ordered $80 of tea today). Pretty much everything they have is high quality. I prefer Darjeeling black teas; try one of the cheaper blends to see if you like it. Get a good $5 strainer and you'll be good to go.
Pu'er isn't that uncommon and has a rather unique, earthy almost smoky flavor do to aging and fermentation. Personally I like it aged about 10 years as 5 is too weak and 15-20 too strong.
Consumed... and then excreted. Honestly, I mostly agree with the statement "Some experts remain sceptical about longterm impacts" since plastics are famously inert.
> the tea bags released microplastic and even smaller nanoplastic particles — and not just the hundreds or thousands Tufenkji had been expecting.
this is a misleading title. if one microplastic is a thousand nanoplastics then obviously it's going to be trillions of nanoplastics and billions of microplastics.
> "We were shocked when we saw billions of particles in a single cup of tea," she said.
So if you get this "bubble tea" with tapioca balls in it, are they macro particles?
No, because it depends on how it's breaking down. If you have one cohesive sheet of plastic, it would be wrong to say that you have trillions of nanoparticles of plastic.
The concerns with plastics that break up into many smaller pieces and enter the body and wider ecosystem are different (and potentially worse) than the concerns of the impacts of a single macro piece.
This is the big question. I think people around the world have been ingesting microplastic for 30 years or longer, yet there's no reported case of any direct toxic effects. So I guess microplastic doesn't have immediately effects on health, but I won't be surprised if future studies find longterm effects, such as increasing the risk of cancer, damage to the circulatory system or the brain.
Overall, I think we must take actions immediately for solutions, but I won't particularly worry about this problem and I'll continue buying bottled water. It's not unlike the air pollution in the 20th century, one has to live with it.
Nevertheless, "microplastic is going to kill all of us" surely is going to be the trope of the next decade.
Anecdotally, the "Waste Wizard" app in Toronto specifies that normal tea bags should be composted, nylon and silk tea bags go in the garbage. I've always assumed they know what they're talking about, so I expect the recycling/compost system here can handle the staples.
Staples can't be microwaved. Yes I know, you can microwave the cup and then put the bags in, but some people make that mistake and (rightly) freak out when they see the fireworks.
Not to mention the water it is submerged in absorbs the actual radiation, so it generally doesn't even make it to the staple to begin with (at least, if you push the bad down to flood it before heating).
There are not many types of tea which should be infused for ten minutes! Most "builders tea" in the UK get less than a minute, most just get dunked to colour the milk.
The instructions say around three minutes. Loose leaf tea should be between three and five or more depending on grade.
However I did note that the plastic tea bags get in the cups in the USA for longer as the water is lower temperature. It appears as if American baristas use coffee brewing temperature for the teas so a customer has to leave the tea bag in for the length of the drink.
Even when dried and set? I'm having a lot of trouble finding info on the safety of it in food online, but it seems like egg whites have been used for centuries as a glue for a whole bunch of things.
The other problem, in the US at least, is that many coffee shops and restaurants are sellers of a popular brand of tea that comes with plastic mesh bags (Might Leaf) yet have not thought through/do not understand (/do not care?) they are mixing compostable matter with non-compostable matter. The results are tea in the trash or plastic in compostables.
It's stunning how there's an ancient, effective, wasteless, flavorless, attractive and elegant alternative to tea bags that western culture simply has no clue about. The Chinese and other asian cultures have been using it for thousands of years. (Or at least since the Ming dynasty, and far earlier if you include the "tea bowl" precursors.)
There is zero need for a tea bag when you have such a simple, elegant, and effective ceramic dish in which to steep tea.
That and the fact that tea bag tea is virtually synonymous with ignorance of the full range of quality that exists in the world of tea, as far I can tell. The good teas from around the world just do not come in tea bags, and routinely when I share them with friends who think tea comes in tea bags, they are blown away.
Forget about Lipton, Celestial Seasonings, anything that comes in tea bags, or has a name brand on it.
If there's a Chinatown or international market street in your area, go there. Ask around for where there's a tea shop.
A good tea shop will offer to make you some tea when you walk in. Accept and try whatever they give you. Buy what you like. There are hundreds of varieties of green tea alone, not to mention white, black, oolong, pu-erh, etc.
Tea is sold loose and by weight. When you make it, you can put water just off the boil in a tall glass with the tea leaves. They will sink to the bottom and you don't need to filter it. Later you can get more sophisticated about your brewing and buy a clay teapot, or a special glass flask with a pop-in stainless steel strainer at the mouth.
If you live in the DC Area, Victoria (who runs Meimei Fine Teas) hosts tea classes, and is happy to share stores of her annual tea sourcing trips to China. Really high quality products from a trustworthy source.
There's something really special about knowing trusting an individual (rather than a company) to deliver you a fantastic product and experience.
Thanks for these. I've been looking for an alternative to https://www.rareteacompany.com/ – which also supplies great tea, but seems to have issues (reliably) shipping internationally.
For Boston area I recommend Mem Tea: https://www.memteaimports.com/ Definitely worth a visit in person for samples and advice. A lot of local restaurants stock their stuff too.
Lipton tea in mainstream US stores has always suffered by comparison to the English brands. (Tea-drinking is relatively uncommon in the US.)
If they even have any, many US restaurants will often serve tea that's obviously been open-to-the-atmosphere for a long time. They just don't know any better.
In the northern US, we could border-cross to buy Canadian teabags which were far better than US bags ... owing, no doubt, to the number of Canadians of UK-extraction. (Which may also explain why most Canadian beer is better.)
The good thing, if you can call it that, is PET and nylon (what these silk teabags are made of) are some of the least reactive and most human-safe plastics you can put in your body.
Researching this it seems like PLA is also common. "Plastic" is a super vague term, and it seems like non-petroleum plastics are the norm for this application. One benefit is that these types of plastics readily biodegrade into lactic acid (which naturally occurs in many foods). From a health standpoint it seems like they could be safer than some petroleum based plastics. Would be interested to learn more from someone who knows this area better.
So what? Doesn't mean we're expelling them. They could all be settling somewhere in our gut until one day we complain of an ache and find out we have a plastic tumor in us. Ending up like so many sea creatures dying from ingesting too much plastic.
Commentary published in Environmental Health Perspectives in April 2010 suggested that PET might yield endocrine disruptors under conditions of common use and recommended research on this topic.[26]
One should also mention that tea is an imported good in most developed countries. It's externalities and environmental impact go far beyond microplastics.
I hope this news tempts some convenience-tea drinkers to explore the incredible world of loose, whole leaf tea.
Many aromatic and delicious rabbit holes await you if you start to explore the original world of tea which is still very much alive and well.
All the styles and sub-styles of Chinese and Japanese teas are rewarding to prepare and serve and drink. Smaller footprint for processing, packaging, transport, storage, and waste.
I am a fan of buying empty tea bags and then filling them with loose-leaf tea. The more enviromentally friendly way to have tea that is not oversteeped would be to use a metal strainer, but those can be a pain to clean.
I didn't know to check what those bags are made of, but now I do.
I use a Japanese teapot, and most have a metal mesh inside. You can just give it a rinse with water after using it and you’re pretty much done. If you’re using decent quality tea leaves, they’ll expand to a pretty large size within the pot and there’s really nothing to get caught in the filter. Just flip it over and dump it.
Definitely a worthwhile purchase if you’re a big drinker.
My pet peeve is piping hot coffee which is brewed or delivered using plastic. It is almost impossible to buy prepared coffee that doesn't come in contact with some kind of plastic. I don't trust any of it.
Very slightly related. I thought I could throw tetley tea bags in the yard, turns out they do not biodegrade at all. Even though the thing looks like natural fibers.. maybe they're just thin plastic fibers ?
Commentary published in Environmental Health Perspectives in April 2010 suggested that PET might yield endocrine disruptors under conditions of common use and recommended research on this topic.[26]
I would assume anything that uses the triangle tea bag would all be about the same. I can only remember getting them from Teavana, but I don’t spend a ton on prepackaged expensive Tea.
If I understand correctly you can easily spot those types of bags. Instead of paper they look like a fine plastic mesh. Lipton uses them in their pyramid-shaped sachets.
With an electron microscope and infrared and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. From the article:
The researchers counted the plastic particles by cutting open bags of tea, removing the tea, rinsing off any pieces that might have come off during cutting, and then steeping the bags in distilled water at 95 C. They then took a sample, let the water evaporate, and counted the plastic particles under an electron microscope, then extrapolated to get the amount in one cup. They also used other instruments to identify the type of plastic in each bag.
The researchers also repeated the experiment with uncut bags that still contained tea to make sure the cutting didn't cause the bags to shed, and with loose tea leaves, confirming that uncut bags shed microplastics too (although they were harder to count) and the plastic didn't originate from the tea itself.
The original study references the use of Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
I would imagine at this scale, It's not so much counting particles, but weighing them. So you need to separate them out to do that.
Elements of different mass can be separated using centrifuges. Not 100% sure for this case, but I know that's how it's done for certain kinds of refinement.
There is no going back about cleaning plastics by traditional methods now unfortunately.
The only real solution I see is if we bio-engineer some bacteria/microorganism capable of decomposing it and release it in the environment. It might be a danregous proposition, but (expect the even more advanced and potentially dangerous proposition of nanites) I can't see any other way of getting rid of all the plastic we already put into the environment even if we stop producing it.
And add the problem with plastics with the fact that this marketing stunt with pyramidal tea bags, occupies about 3x more volume and as such take 3x more resources to store and transport than traditional tea bags.
Modern tea paraphernalia is stupid. Like those fancy woven strings that act like wicks and dribble tea down the side. It's hard to even find normal tea anymore. I ask for tea and people ask "what flavor." And I'm like "tea flavor." My Bangladeshi mom uses Lipton tea bags and a bit of milk. Should be good enough for everybody.
Which flavor is "tea flavor"? Black, pu-erh, oolong, green, white? For black, is it Assam, Ceylon, Darjeeling, etc, etc? Why should the specific flavor blend that Lipton's tasters put together for their Yellow Label be good enough for everybody?
I had the opposite experience in many coffee shops when asking what kind of teas are offered and the answer was "black and green" as if that told me anything.
In case you're not, that's a frankly silly take. The sachets TFA talks about are not generally used for fancy "hipster" tea but rather the super mainstream commercial "tea-flavoured tea" and industrial herbal teas you like so much. Unless you consider Lipton to be fancy niche tea artisans: http://img.webme.com/pic/m/megisti/ethel-lipton-all.jpg
Beyond that the "standard" tea you seem to enjoy is probably "English breakfast tea" and you can probably still find it extremely easily in any tea shop in the world, alongside Earl Grey and a few other classics.
Huh? Speaking as a Chinese American who grew up drinking tea brought back from China, that's the equivalent of telling wine drinkers that "Manischewitz should be good enough for everybody."
There's a huge amount of variety when it comes to tea, even when it's just different varieties and preparations of tea leaves without added herbs/spices.
At least in the US I've noticed pre-brewed iced tea has often switched to some sort of flavored tea (or a fountain drink). My best guess from working at a place that had pre-brewed tea is that they're hard to keep clean and people tend to like novelty. "Normal" (black iced) tea can taste really gross if the container isn't cleaned properly (or the water is bad quality). I've also seen where the container was soaked in chemicals and not washed out well. "Flavored" tea would mask this.
As for hot tea, unless you're at some specific restaurant where the default is more obvious I would at least expect "black or green" if not Earl Gray or a few other choices.
My Bangladeshi mom uses Lipton tea bags and a bit of milk.
I hope that wasn't an appeal to some kind of authority. All that tells me is that some Bangladeshi women have even worst taste in tea than this ignorant American. There's quite a wide gulf between not wanting to consume the least common denominator and making a lifestyle out of it. As for flavors, just because one's view says tea should only come in one flavor doesn't mean reality has to agree.
> “In the past, people used to drink normal black tea. But now, they are not satisfied with the normal tea and moved to organic and value added products, concerned about their health benefits and taste,” SM Didarul Hasan, senior manager (marketing) of MM Ispahani Limited, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“Normal black tea” is what everyone drank when I lived there. “Normal black tea” was universal and egalitarian, instead of individualistic and self indulgent. Appropriately conformist and British.
Eh, I used to think the same thing about coffee, but here I am with a grinder and a plunger. Instant coffee is okay at a push, but the taste improvement is massive, especially when grinding your own coffee (you can actually taste the flavours they claim to put in there).
As for tea flavours, the difference is usually just the addition of herbs and spices.
Any string dipped in tea is going to wick moisture and dribble on the side of the tea cup. This is due to a property of liquids known as capillary action.
You sound really smart in your other comments usually, but this comment is dumb and dumber. Who cares what tea people drink? Why did you have to get so mean about tea? Are you having a bad day? Seriously, life is too short to get angry over some fancy teas.
