Some people think she’s crazy. She’s burning the top layer of her skin away with tricholoroacetic acid.
Ronnie is regretting it. The healing process is really painful and somewhat unsightly.
The results are out. Ronnie’s “new age” is 37. She looks 12 years younger than her actual age.
These ladies are already in their 40s and 50s.
I highly recommend tea drinking as a health-promoting habit, but it seems that unscrupulous businessmen have resorted to immoral means to turn this healthy beverage into something toxic. The trend that is going on in China is more than just a little worrying. As demand for tea increases and the suppliers wish to sell more, they resort to dubious means to increase productivity. The long-term consumption of tea contaminated with pesticides can cause many chronic illnesses, including cancer.
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Tea, a key aspect of Chinese culture and a common household commodity, has for centuries been touted for its health benefits. That is, until recently.
Greenpeace, an environmental advocacy group, tested a few of China’s most popular teas. The results were disturbing.
In a sample of 18 different teas, tests showed that all of them had at least three different pesticides. 14 out of those had pesticides that could cause harm to unborn babies, affect fertility, and cause permanent genetic damage.
These toxic pesticides have not only been banned in China, but also in the countries they export to, such as the US, Europe, and Japan.
When confronted with the results of these tests, manufacturers assured that everything is under control.
[Wu Bilin, China Tea King Beijing General Manager]:
“China Tea King has its own farms, factories and line of stores. So from the sourcing stage we teach the farmers in the farms how to plant and how to fertilize. And our factories carry out routine checks, including checking through machines if the fresh tea leaves harvested pass the standards.”One avid tea drinker, who is wary of big businesses in China, is not assured by these claims.
[Jiang Xunqing, Tea Customer]:
“Well, of course I’m worried because of how it is these days. Because China has so many people, and if everyone is drinking tea, they definitely can’t produce enough. And if they can’t produce enough, they would just increase their use of fertilizer when supply falls short. Businesses are only out to make money.”China is the largest exporter of tea in the world and has around 8 million tea growers. It is also the largest user of pesticides, with farmers around the country spraying 1.76 million tons of chemicals a year.
Greenpeace points out that not only do pesticides harm the workers using them, but quote, “the fact of the matter is that in most cases less than 1% of the pesticide reaches the target- being the pest itself.” The rest, it says ends up polluting the air, water, and soil, harming both tea plants and humans alike.
[Wang Jing, Greenpeace Food and Agriculture]:
“We can only say that these tea companies – despite having the responsibility and the ability to create an effective traceability and supply chain control system, and to manage from the sourcing stage what pesticides and how much to use – they have simply neglected the health demand of consumers. They don’t bear the corporate responsibility of protecting consumers’ health and our environment.”Green Peace is making two demands of brands like China Tea, Zhang Yiyuan, Tenfu’s Teas, Wuyutai, and Richun, all of which are teas that it tested. One is to “Ensure a drastic reduction in pesticide application,” and the other is to, “Establish effective traceability and supply chain control systems that ensure compliance with the use reduction and the law by preventing the use of banned pesticides.”
In June of 2011, China’s Ministry of Agriculture released a statement saying that it aims to reduce pesticide use by 20% in the next three years. Greenpeace’s findings point to a serious threat to publich health if those standards aren’t met.
NEW YORK – People who ate chocolate a few times a week or more weighed less than those who rarely indulged, according to a United States study involving a thousand people.
Researchers said the findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, do not prove that adding a candy bar to your daily diet will help you shed pounds. Nor did the total amount of chocolate consumed have an impact.
But the researchers, led by Dr Beatrice Golomb, from the University of California San Diego, said it was possible that antioxidants in chocolate could be behind health benefits including lower blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as decreased body weight.
“People have just assumed that because it comes with calories and it’s typically eaten as a sweet, therefore it would inherently have been one way, bad,” said Dr Golomb.
She and her colleagues used data from a study on cholesterol-lowering drugs that surveyed 1,000 healthy adults on typical eating habits, including how often they ate chocolate.
The participants, who ranged from 20 to 85 years old, ate chocolate an average of twice per week and had an average body mass index, or BMI, of 28, which is considered overweight but not obese.
The researchers found that people who ate chocolate with greater frequency tended to eat more calories overall, including more saturated fat, than those who went light on the candy. But even so, chocolate lovers tended to have a lower body weight.
That was still the case after researchers accounted for age and gender, as well as how much they exercised.
The effect worked out to a 2.3 to 3.2 kg difference between people who ate five servings of chocolate a week compared to those who did not eat any, Dr Golomb said. However, it was only how often they ate chocolate, rather than the total amount, that was linked to their weight.
Past studies have tied chocolate to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and better insulin sensitivity, possibly because of antioxidants or other chemicals in cocoa.
There are a number of possible explanations for the results, said Dr Eric Ding, a nutritionist at the Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study.
One is that poorer people stick to the basics when they are buying food and do not eat as much chocolate. Poverty has been tied to higher body weight.
Another possibility is that “people who lost weight reward themselves with chocolate, more than chocolate causing the weight loss,” he told Reuters Health.
Because the new study is relatively small and could not prove cause-and-effect, it is hard to take any lessons from the findings, Dr Ding said. But the key for chocolate lovers seems to be considering calories and knowing that not all chocolate is created equal.
For example, past evidence suggests that antioxidants in chocolate called flavonoids are behind any benefits tied to chocolate – and dark chocolate has the most flavonoids.
“If you consume chocolate, consume it in place of something else, rather than adding to your net daily calories. Try to consume dark chocolate,” he said.
The researchers agreed that moderation is important.
“This certainly does not provide support for eating large amounts of chocolate,” Dr Golomb said. “For those of us who do eat a little bit of chocolate regularly, perhaps any guilt associated with that might be qualified.” REUTERS
This is not coffee but a puer tea. Because of post-fermentation aging, puer tea turns very dark and just a few tea leaves are enough to give you the colour of coffee. However, the dark colour belies the mild taste of puer. Those used to the stinging, bitter taste of green tea may find puer tasteless.
However, the health benefits of puer are well known. Most notable is its ability to aid digestion and “cool” the stomach after gastronomic indulgence. Individuals who experience gastric upset after drinking green tea may tolerate puer better.
My blood pressure can shoot up to 150/96 after drinking coffee. It’s probably not harmful as it’s transient – just like exercising. About 3 hours after a small cup of coffee, it’s back to normal.
Yunnan Hong 云南红 is a generic term for all black teas produced in Yunnan, China. One peculiar aspect of the Yunnanese taste for tea is that most of them prefer black tea over green tea. Puer 普洱 tea is the most popular tea in Yunnan and it’s a black tea, often aged to give it a deep colour and unique bland taste.
Extra marketing effort needs to be put into every green tea that is produced in Yunnan. Many stores in Kunming keep very low stocks of green tea. Almost everything on sale is puer 普洱. However, I’ve found a very beautifully packaged green tea, biluochun 碧螺春 sold at a supermarket in Kunming.
Beautiful tin. It looks nice enough to be mistaken for Japanese. This green tea was actually produced in puer! Imagine that. It’s like Brazil trying to promote tea instead of coffee.
The leaves look beautifully whole. I was expecting a strong taste, but that was not to be.
It tastes remarkably like longjing tea 龙井茶. Mild, but a pleasant woody after taste. I’ll leave the health benefits to the “experts”. I’m a tea chauvinist and research or no research, I know it’s good for me.
It gets worse before it gets better. Don’t be shocked. I believe it can remove acne and other “irregularities”, but wrinkles? Fine lines? I’m not so sure. These procedures are performed by “aestheticians”.
