With a taste of a poison paradise

[venta]

Today, I am drinking Organic Qi Detox Green Tea. Not because I feel that my qi (or indeed any other part of me) is particularly toxic, but because the list of ingredients made it sound like it might be nice.

The box says it has "the fresh taste of orange and lemon". Actually, what sold it to me was the peppermint, ginger and fennel in the ingredients list.

Having finished my first mugful, I can confirm that the actual flavour of the tea is "the inside of a health food shop".

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I'm always disappointed by herbal teas. They're never as nice as they look or smell they're going to be.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I find that the Yogi Tea range has actual flavour. If you like fennel/aniseed their Egyptian Spice is lovely (they seem to have recently renamed it Egyptian Licorice, which makes sense). Their cocoa teas are also nice, if you can cope with the dark chocolate flavour in a watery product, which I found a bit too cognitive-dissonance for me. And if their Classic India Spice is the same tea I remember, it really doesn't lack flavour. Too. Much. Cinnamon...

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Also they have fortune cookie messages on the tags.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

And random yoga positions on the boxes :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I don't like licorice/aniseed flavours much. I often drink chai but that's just a black tea with spices rather than a herbal one, and I have it with milk and honey in.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Mmm, chai. I love chai but I really don't drink it often; it's too hard to find what I think of as proper chai, with the flavours really strong (both of the tea and of the spices) and with black pepper you can taste.

I ordered about ten different types of chai to test a couple of years ago, and only one of them was even drinkable, IMO.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It probably says a lot about me that my first association with Yogi is "come along, BooBoo" rather than far Eastern wisdom...

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think that's true of fruity teas, certainly. They're a snare and a delusion.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I can confirm that the actual flavour of the tea is "the inside of a health food shop".

I'll still take that over rosehip, which is what most herbal teas seem to taste of. :-(

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Ah, but does your Qi (whatever that is) feel amazing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Qi (Chi) is the natural energy of life. Balance and harmony in nature, body and mind.

Or so it says in the box. I can't help feeling the second sentence is missing a verb.

Once I work out where it is, I'll ask it how it feels. Right now, I've just eaten my own body weight in lamb curry and I suspect my Qi is decidedly repressed (or possibly asleep).

You're toxic

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I seem to be in a minority in that I really like herbal and fruit teas - but then I don't like actual tea.

I am liking the sound of the teas lanfykins mentions above ... cocoa tea sounds excellent. *makes notes*

[marjory.livejournal.com]

I'm back trying to limit/eliminate caffeine again, so I've been hitting the herbal teas.- Twinings and Pukka are pretty good IMHO, depending on one's expectations going in. Most others appear to confirm my hitherto held observation of either warm, soapy water with a hint of bath cube or rosehippy water with a hint of vinegar.

Pukka Love Tea works with nary a whiff of slowly decaying mung beans and tiger nuts.

[venta.livejournal.com]

My recommendation for tea-alternative drinks is slices of lemon in hot water. If racy, add slices of fresh ginger. Certainly way better than the tastes-of-nowt-but-catches-your-throat lemon-and-ginger teabags.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Where did you and I have that wonderful "tea" with chunks of fresh lemon and fresh ginger when we'd expected the usual tastes-of-nowt? C# House?

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

I was recently told that anarchists like herbal tea, because all proper tea is theft.

As for me, I like some black teas, some cinnamon and similar, some chocolate and spice, but I don't get on with fruity teas. And as previously noted, anything with blackcurrant (and a lot of them are) is poisonous to me.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

There is a good one by Clipper called Sleep Easy, which has valerian, camomile blah blah, and tastes quite nice (nicer than camomile on its own anyway) and amazingly has no hibiscus whatsoever. Not much good for waking you up though.

I have also found that avoiding anything with Twinings written on it is a good bet for not ending up with nasty acidy herbal tea.

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

I went to have my Qi balanced last year (it was on a Groupon deal and I am all for interesting new experiences). It was like a massage except the "Qi Master" made strange exhaling type huffing noises. I found it very hard not to laugh. Though I did feel amazing afterwards.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I really like the Qi range, in general. There seems to be some evidence that green tea and white tea have beneficial effects. Nothing to do with balancing yer Qi though. The term Qi is silly, faintly racist, Orientalism / mysticism. Unless you're doing tai chi, it's irrelevant. Even then: Qi or Chi literaly just means "breath", just like Prana does in yogic practice. I balk at the idea that my Chi/Qi or Prana needs balancing. But I can accept that there are provable benefits to, say, controlling one's breath, as one does in tai chi or yoga. No need for any mystic bollocks. Unless you're selling tea.

Still -- the Qi range is mostly good quality, and does have a good balance, ironically enough, in that they tend to lob just enough other flavours in there to counteract the bitterness of pure green tea or white tea.