In the world of tea there is “High Quality Loose Leaf Tea” and there is everything else. In recent years the supermarkets, including Whole Foods and Henry’s, have expanded their tea isles to astronomical proportions. There is also choosing between tea-bag tea, loose leaf tea, and ready-to-drink beverage tea. If a person is now choosing to drink tea because they’ve heard things like “green tea makes you healthier” or “black tea makes you slimmer” then it’s important to find out “Is all tea created equal?”

According to many scientific reports about tea, the benefits of tea primarily come from how many polyphenols the tea contains (it’s basically very important that the tea has lots of nutrients). Here is where High Quality Loose Leaf Tea separates itself by miles from the rest of the tea world! Let me start with some questions:
What tea do you think would have more polyphenols and health benefits:

A tea grown in nutrient rich soil or a tea grown in “normal” to “depleted” soil?

Tea grown at the most ideal altitude for tea to grow by families who have been growing tea for generations or tea grown on massive “tea farms” where companies bought land that could support a large tea farm?

Hand-picked tea (so that the leaves and stems are separated, healthy leaves are separated from unhealthy ones, etc) or tea picked by a machine?

I think we all know the correct answers to the above questions. There are anywhere from 18 to 26 different grades of specific white, green, oolong, and black teas on the tea market. Any of the tea-bag teas are usually filled with the bottom 24 to 26 grade tea…also known as “tea dust”. How many health benefits are in “tea dust” do you think? When a company tries to hide the fact they are serving their customers tea dust they add “natural” flavors, colors and even synthetic caffeine so a person feels they are getting “a kick”. Those are the teas that usually taste decent (because our pallets are used to chemicals and artificial things) but give people headaches and jitters (it’s not “tea” in general that gives headaches and jitters, it the additives to the “tea”). For example Lipton’s Citrus Green Tea is a brand that does contain synthetic dyes. And Arizona Green Tea with Honey and Lipton’s Citrus Green Tea contains as much sugar or high fructose corn syrup as a soda.

Yes High Quality Loose Leaf tea is more expensive per bag of tea (usually anywhere from $25 to $100 for 20g) but believe it or not when you factor into the equation that you can re-steep your tea leaves multiple times it usually comes out to being cheaper per cup than “cheap tea”…and of course you get all of the tea benefits that the medical studies promise and more!

So now you may ask “Where on earth can I get high quality loose leaf tea!?” Honestly the only place I have found it is on the internet at Blue Dragon Tea House…a tea importer in San Diego. Their tea is amazing…it tastes awesome! Makes you feel great! And it’s still such a new company that it’s “undiscovered”. So I recommend discovering it yourself! Go to www.bluedragonteahouse.com or google it to find where you can buy some! Good Luck and enjoy!

(P.S. I bought a blooming tea from Blue Dragon Tea House that yielded over 5 gallons of tea per bloom! I liked it so much I started selling it…see the blooming tea at the top right of this page:))