Tea Benefits: Tea Benefits
Tea Benefits:
Tea has been drunk and shared as a beverage for thousands of years. Legend has it that the Chinese emperor and herbalist, Shennong, discovered tea by accident in 2737 BC.
He liked to drink his water boiled, and one day the dried leaves of a nearby plant fell into his cup. However, the drink was still considered purely medicinal until around 300 BC. It wasn’t until many years later that tea became a booming business around the world.
DRINKING TEA / Tea Benefits
Drinking tea became fashionable in Britain in the 17th century. However, it was expensive to import so commonly was smuggled to avoid paying customs fees. These illegal teas would contain dry leaves of other plants and pieces of bark to increase profit. Tea taxes were lowered to combat this trade, and in fact, tea bags were invented partly to regulate the supply. The tea business has been complex for a long time!
Since this surge into the mainstream, and following a social movement to replace liquor as the working classes’ standard drink, tea shops opened up, and tea has been a firm favorite ever since. Turkey consumes the most tea globally, with an average of seven pounds per person every year. That’s a lot of tea!
While Turkey grows one-fifth of the world’s supply to keep up with demand, two other countries dominate. Tea may have been born in China, but India is the other giant of production, with their tea trade second only to tourism. The industry there was created by the British to rival China’s monopoly.
Over the years different countries have experimented with the various tea flavors and many teas have emerged to represent specific regions.
Now we’ve found out where tea comes from, let’s look at some of the top types of tea and perhaps discover which is the most popular tea in the world.
As with other products, the popularity of certain teas rises and falls over time. But some types of tea have remained consistently popular for hundreds of years. Let’s find out more about the teas that continue to be drunk around the world.
