Tea: Have you had your four a day?

Here’s some good news for all you tea lovers out there: tea is actually good for you. Read on for some fascinating facts about the nation’s favourite drink.

It’s official: the UK Tea Council recommend four cups of tea per day to help maintain one’s health. Tea, both green and black, is packed with antioxidants which fight cell-damaging free radicals. A cup of tea generally contains half the caffeine of a cup of coffee, and in fact, the moderate amounts of caffeine and fluoride in a cup of tea add more to its health benefits.

It is probably the case that you don’t need to be persuaded to appreciate tea by these scientific facts. After all, 80% of all tea exported from tea growing countries around the world is exported to the UK. Surprised? Here are some more shocking tea-time facts:

• A cup of tea with no milk has no calories.

• A cup with semi-skimmed milk has approximately 13 calories, but comes with the added benefits of minerals and calcium.

• In fact, tea with milk provides 21% of daily calcium requirement in just 4 cups.

• 98% of people take their tea with milk, and an extraordinary 20% of milk consumed in the UK is with tea!

• Tea cools you down in summer - by making you sweat.

• Approximately 40% of the nation's fluid intake on any given day will be tea.

• It is estimated that 70 million cups of tea are consumed every single day in the UK. Although, the Republic of Ireland drinks even more tea per capita than us.

So, next time you sit down with your morning cup of tea, you can think proudly of the institution behind this daily ritual. Beyond these current facts and figures, the historical significance of tea goes back hundreds of years.

No one knows how tea was discovered. There is a story that some tea leaves serendipitously fell into some boiling water that a Chinese emperor was going to drink, and thus he discovered tea.

There is another story that a Buddhist Indian prince wanted to be able to stay awake constantly to meditate and discovered that chewing tea leaves gave him the energy to do so. A corruption of this tale, however, suggests that this devout prince fell asleep whilst meditating, and was so appalled with himself that he cut off his eyelids and threw them away, where they spouted the first tea plant.

Tea was first introduced to England in the seventeenth century by the Portuguese wife of King Charles II, Catherine of Braganza. Tea was already popular in Portugal and Catherine missed it. When she married King Charles her father provided several ships worth of luxury goods – including tea – as a dowry.

Tea was thus initially an exotic drink for the wealthy. It remained a luxury drink for many years, as it was highly taxed and very expensive. It was a very desirable commodity, so desirable in fact that at the beginning of the eighteenth century tea smuggling flourished, millions of people acquiring their illicit leaves from smugglers.

Whilst tea is now such an easily available drink with such civilised associations – tea parties, tea with the vicar, cream teas, etc – next time you sit down, cuppa in hand, remember that it wasn’t always that way; once upon a time, tea was a foundation of gang culture in England. There was one particularly notorious gang of tea smugglers, who operated in the south of England – the Hawkhurst Gang. The Hawkhurst Gang were caught smuggling two tons of tea into England in September 1774, and 60 members of the gang raided customs to retrieve their goods.

They then went south to the Hampshire village of Fordingbridge where they had operated previously, intimidating the villagers into keeping quiet and burning down the houses of local magistrates who tried to put a stop to their lawlessness.

One villager, Daniel Chater, and a customs officer, William Galley, took it upon themselves to chase the gang. However, when the gang got wind of what Chater and Galley were up to, they caught them, horsewhipped them, and tied them up. Galley nearly died from this torture and the gang buried him alive; Chater was subjected to more torture until the gang slashed his face and threw him down a well. The gang leaders were eventually sentenced to death.

Thankfully nowadays the idea of a local ‘tea smuggler’ is long gone, and we can just pop into Costcutter for a selection of many different types of tea. Hopefully you now feel enlightened as to both the history and health properties of our national beverage, and next time you attend a tea party, will be able to share some of this social history with your fellow sippers.

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