"Britain’s media has reacted with fury and bewilderment after a US scientist claimed the perfect cup of tea is made with a pinch of added salt"

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/24/travel/britain-us-scientist-tea-debate-intl/index.html

Apparently a soupçon of salt  takes away the supposed bitterness of the drink of tea.

I can't see that catching on but then I myself drink  very ,very weak green tea (obviously no milk -also no sugar)

I was never aware that bitterness was a problem with ordinary  black tea  but perhaps there is to some.

Edited January 24, 20241 yr by geordief

In the Vat household, where some are very particular about their brew, it is believed that loose leaves in a steel tea ball (or infuser) are the way to go.  None of that weird bag taste or potential polyester nanoparticles.  And brew times not to exceed five minutes - after that, tannins (the source of bitterness) tend to build up.  Milk or cream is considered an abomination.  As for listening to Yanks on arcane practices like adding salt, you should remember that we once had a famous tea party which resulted in very salty tea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

23 minutes ago, TheVat said:

In the Vat household, where some are very particular about their brew, it is believed that loose leaves in a steel tea ball (or infuser) are the way to go.  None of that weird bag taste or potential polyester nanoparticles.  And brew times not to exceed five minutes - after that, tannins (the source of bitterness) tend to build up.  Milk or cream is considered an abomination.  As for listening to Yanks on arcane practices like adding salt, you should remember that we once had a famous tea party which resulted in very salty tea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

I must have gone 60 years without going near a tea bag for various  reasons but have  adapted to the habit as some of the new flavours available in green teas  only come with bags.

I can't say I notice any taste from them  and I don't know about nano particles -I throw the bags ,along

with the coffee filters into the "donkey bucket" and have always supposed they are made from something compostable. 

The coffee filters,especially  are the thing they go after first.

 

Otherwise cabbage leaves are popular ,but I don't stand and watch-they never touch the grapefruit halves or ,obviously lemons.

 

I seem to remember the French hadn't a clue about making or serving tea and we used to be given a cup of warm water with a tea bag either in or beside the cup when we went into a cafe back then.

They probably pitied us for needing it in the first place.

Personally I take my tea strong, black and well stewed. The more astringent the better within reason.

But it seems there are some folks who just can't get enough blandness into their lives. Salting tea sounds to me as doolally as decaf, but whatever floats your ⛵.

27 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Personally I take my tea strong, black and well stewed. The more astringent the better within reason.

But it seems there are some folks who just can't get enough blandness into their lives. Salting tea sounds to me as doolally as decaf, but whatever floats your ⛵.

Back in the 60's our school teacher told us not to overstew tea because ,after a few days it contains arsenic!

I already mentioned this school teacher to @TheVat. in a previous,  completely unrelated thread.

He had been held in a  prisoner of war camp (shot down in a bombing sortie) in Germany  ,which might explain how he came to have such apparently arcane knowledge.

Edited January 25, 20241 yr by geordief

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Back in the 60's our school teacher told us not to overstew tea because ,after a few days it contains arsenic!

Tea always contains some arsenic, even green tea. This is what the teacher was talking about: long soaking in cold water leaches out more of it.

Quote

Total amount of arsenic in tea leaf samples was in the range below the detection limit to 4.81 μg/g. Leaching of arsenic was strongly affected by extraction time and temperature. Because arsenic leaching ability by hot water was low and most of the arsenic was left in tea leaf residues after infusion, the concentration of arsenic in tea infusion was low even when some original tea leaf samples contained high level of arsenic.

 

Three minutes in hot water is supposedly recommended; I generally do even less, since I drink it without sugar, lemon or (ugh!) milk. 

Edited January 25, 20241 yr by Peterkin

7 hours ago, geordief said:

Back in the 60's our school teacher told us not to overstew tea because ,after a few days it contains arsenic!

There's likely as much arsenic in the water you stew it in.

See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25526572/

 

Quote

Results: Green teas were found to be more highly contaminated with both total and inorganic arsenic than black teas. Contamination of black teas total and inorganic arsenic was mean: 0.058 mg/kg (median: 0.042 mg/kg, 90th percentile: 0.114 mg/kg), and 0.030 mg/kg, (median: 0.025 mg/kg, 90th percentile: 0.030 mg/kg) respectively. Whilst for the green teas, these were correspondingly mean total arsenic content: 0.134 mg/kg (median: 0.114 mg/kg, 90th percentile: 0.234 mg/kg) and inorganic arsenic, mean: 0.100 mg/kg (median: 0.098 mg/kg, 90th percentile: 0.150 mg/kg). The estimated average adult exposures to inorganic arsenic in black and green tea were less than 1% of the BMDL05. Green tea samples, with the highest measured inorganic arsenic, were found to cause an intake exceeding 0.5% of the BMDL05 value. However when the drinking water is also accounted for when teas are prepared, then the exposure from black and green tea becomes exceeding 0.7% and 1.3% of the BMDL05 value respectively.

Conclusions: Findings thus demonstrate that drinking black or green teas does not pose a significant health threat to consumers, even though contaminations in some individual samples were significant.

Key words: total arsenic, inorganic arsenic, tea consumption, exposure assessment.

 

11 hours ago, geordief said:

 

"Britain’s media has reacted with fury and bewilderment after a US scientist claimed the perfect cup of tea is made with a pinch of added salt"

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/24/travel/britain-us-scientist-tea-debate-intl/index.html

Apparently a soupçon of salt  takes away the supposed bitterness of the drink of tea.

I can't see that catching on but then I myself drink  very ,very weak green tea (obviously no milk -also no sugar)

I was never aware that bitterness was a problem with ordinary  black tea  but perhaps there is to some.

The person behind this is apparently a serious tea drinker who puts milk in her tea a l'anglaise and says Britain is one of the few places where can reliably expect a decent cup of tea. So she's not some wacky Californian vagina-steaming nutcase, apparently. She says a very small amount of salt, not enough to make the tea perceptibly salty in taste, deactivates the taste buds that detect bitterness.

What I don't quite follow is that if you put milk in your tea (a habit I think we got from India), that too cuts the bitterness from the tannins. So why do we need both? However I might try it this afternoon, just to see if I can detect a difference.

What is funny about this story is the humorous, faux-panicky statement put out by the US embassy in London, averring that no way was the USA now trying to tell the Brits how to make tea!   

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

The person behind this is apparently a serious tea drinker who puts milk in her tea a l'anglaise and says Britain is one of the few places where can reliably expect a decent cup of tea. So she's not some wacky Californian vagina-steaming nutcase, apparently. She says a very small amount of salt, not enough to make the tea perceptibly salty in taste, deactivates the taste buds that detect bitterness.

What I don't quite follow is that if you put milk in your tea (a habit I think we got from India), that too cuts the bitterness from the tannins. So why do we need both? However I might try it this afternoon, just to see if I can detect a difference.

What is funny about this story is the humorous, faux-panicky statement put out by the US embassy in London, averring that no way was the USA now trying to tell the Brits how to make tea!   

Be careful not to get culturally  expropriated.Don't put on a checked shirt  and camera for the tasting session.

Oh boy, it's really kicking off over here, all the builder's have vowed to creat a wall to protect their elevenses. 

1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

Oh boy, it's really kicking off over here, all the builder's have vowed to creat a wall to protect their elevenses. 

I have heard  some of the sugar cubes  imported  via Canada may have been predoped with  a sodium substitute.

29 minutes ago, geordief said:

Be careful not to get culturally  expropriated.Don't put on a checked shirt  and camera for the tasting session.

Yes I'll wear a pinstriped suit and bowler and carry a furled umbrella. No baseball cap and hideous golfing trousers for me!  

35 minutes ago, geordief said:

I have heard  some of the sugar cubes  imported  via Canada may have been predoped with  a sodium substitute.

Nothing gets through OUR wall, esspecially Canadians... 

22 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Nothing gets through OUR wall, esspecially Canadians... 

Are you quite sure there is no Muscovite Mica in the building blocks?

Salt can be an insidious menace that builds up and crosses boundaries  over time

 

https://www.thejournal.ie/mica-explainer-5467214-Jun2021/

8 minutes ago, geordief said:

Are you quite sure there is no Muscovite Mica in the building blocks?

Sorry, I forgot to include the sarcasm emoji...😣

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

So she's not some wacky Californian vagina-steaming nutcase, apparently.

Now there's a use for tea I had not considered.

5 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

There's likely as much arsenic in the water you stew it in.

I've heard brown rice is a bigger threat for that (especially rice grown in former cotton fields), so I stick with brown basmati grown in California, a state which never grew cotton.

14 hours ago, geordief said:

must have gone 60 years without going near a tea bag for various  reasons but have  adapted to the habit as some of the new flavours available in green teas  only come with bags.

I can't say I notice any taste from them  and I don't know about nano particles -I throw the bags ,along

with the coffee filters into the "donkey bucket" and have always supposed they are made from something compostable. 

The coffee filters,especially  are the thing they go after first.

I think the better brands have gone back to natural fiber bags - will post a link if I can figure out where I read that.  Anyway, glad to hear your donkeys are getting some stimulants.  I recall a chat here about them eating wood ashes.

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Yes I'll wear a pinstriped suit and bowler and carry a furled umbrella. No baseball cap and hideous golfing trousers for me!  

Seems that for a Brit there is never a bad time to wear a bowler and carry an umbrella.

Quote

Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter DSO (21 May 1917 – 21 March 1993), also known as Digby Tatham-Warter or just Digby, was a British Army officer who fought in the Second World War and was famed for wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella into battle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digby_Tatham-Warter

27 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Seems that for a Brit there is never a bad time to wear a bowler and carry an umbrella.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digby_Tatham-Warter

Haha, what a nutter! 

I’ve just tried a tiny pinch of salt in my tea. Can’t taste the salt and the tea certainly does not seem bitter, but then it doesn’t usually. Maybe it makes the 2nd half of the cup, when the tea has cooled below the optimum, a bit nicer. Interesting.

I've tried this with coffee but never tea... I prefer my Earl Grey hot with a pinch of butter and a teaspoon of honey!  

6 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I've tried this with coffee but never tea... I prefer my Earl Grey hot with a pinch of butter and a teaspoon of honey!  

How horrible.

13 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I've tried this with coffee but never tea... I prefer my Earl Grey hot with a pinch of butter and a teaspoon of honey!  

If your doctor is after you about the fats and sweets, the bergamot in Earl Grey tea pairs really, really well with lemon, and not just because the British say so. In this case, they are spot on.

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

How horrible.

I think he's channeling Jean-Luc Picard.

 

I considered posting this anonymously lest I bring down the wrath of the British Empire, but I guess I'll proudly show my American roots; I like my tea iced, with a bit of lemon juice. I only drink hot tea when I am cold or under the weather.

15 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I considered posting this anonymously lest I bring down the wrath of the British Empire, but I guess I'll proudly show my American roots; I like my tea iced, with a bit of lemon juice. I only drink hot tea when I am cold or under the weather.

For me, tea needs to either be icy cold or blisteringly hot, and I'll keep sipping as long as it stays at the extremes. And I prefer fresh mint to lemon juice, which is weird because the only other place I like mint is in toothpaste or breath mints. I love peppermint Altoids, but I'll turn down a peppermint candy cane at Christmas every time. And while I appreciate a little honey in tea sometimes, no sweetener ever touches my coffee. Bleh, just bleh!

I remember being at a school trip exchange with a Polish school and attending an English lesson. The whole lessons was basically basically bashing the British for putting milk into their tea. They learned phrases like " tastes like gargle water", which I found hilarious and apparently remember to this day.