Tea Knowledge & Friendship
wave_code wrote: ↑Thu Feb 10, 2022 1:11 pmCelestial Seasonings' history goes pretty far out and back around again... including connections to a new age UFO cult and a very disturbing advocacy for eugenics
https://www.foodandwine.com/drinks/slee ... -behind-it
George Ohsawa wrote:MU TEA
This is the most Yang of beverages. It contains the legendary herb ginseng -- the most Yang of all herbs used to make tea and fifteen other medicinal plants: peony; root of Angelica; sea thistle; carthanne; rush; ginger; hoelen; japonica; licorice; cinnamon; bitter orange rind; rehmanial radix; moutan cortex; carophyll flos and persical semen. The word mu means space or infinity in Japanese, and Mu tea is so named because it is the beverage for development of superior judgment. It is usually obtainable only through macrobiotic channels and comes in small packages. Open a package and pour the Mu tea into 32 ounces of cold water. Bring it to a boil and let it boil from five to ten minutes. Here again you will discover for yourself what amount of boiling best suits your taste. If the Mu tea is being prepared for someone who is very Yin, the water should be boiled away to make the tea stronger -- until there remains merely 16 to 20 ounces of the original 32. This will be enough for two days. It can, of course, be reheated each time it is served. Mu tea is another delicious and exotic introduction to macrobiotic foods for friends and skeptics who have tried everything -- from cannabis sativa to d-lysergic acid diethylamide. For children who need to be withdrawn gradually from orange juice and other sugared drinks, Mu tea can be spiked with a few drops of natural unsugared apple juice. Give them less and less apple juice in their tea until they come to appreciate the delicious Mu flavor completely on its own.
mbanu wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 8:06 amAnother old competitor, Portland's Dragon Herbarium (https://dragonherbarium.com) has an alfalfa-mint loose-leaf, as does St. John's.
Another frequently copied blend is "Lazy Daze". This was apparently one of two blends produced by a company called Golden Sun Inc., "Lazy Daze" and "Gentle Nites". I'm guessing that Gentle Nites was a competitor to Celestial's popular nighttime blend -- hard to tell, as Golden Sun seems long gone. Not sure about this, other than the name registrations, the internet seems convinced this never happened.
If anyone is curious, here is a brief biography of the old owner of Mother's Tea Parlor & Natural Food Shoppe, Roy Rickus.mbanu wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 12:52 amOne style worth calling out is "Mu tea" (sometimes Moo tea or M.U. tea) -- this was an herbal blend developed by George Ohsawa that became a part of the early macrobiotics movement in the U.S., as described in his 1965 book, You are all Sanpaku.
Supposedly this was the blend that got Mo Siegel interested in herbal tea back in 1969 -- free cups were offered to shoppers at the store he sold band posters through in Aspen, Mother's Tea Parlor and Natural Foods Shoppe.
mbanu wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 2:54 pm
Not sure if this was another Rance Barela package, but the back is fairly helpful...
Mostly because it partially gives away the secret that allowed Celestial Seasonings to pull ahead from the other hippie blends, "natural essential oils and flavors". They would spike their herbs with essential oils of that herb in imitation of higher-quality herbs, while the standard health food shops mostly used pure herb blends. So in this case, I imagine it would be cinnamon with cinnamon oil, orange peel with orange oil, cloves with clove oil, sweetening their licorice root, etc.
As for what SoNoMore Atomics used the funds for, I suspect it was to pay the bands that came to their rallies, folks like Aircastle.
(http://www.itmonline.org/jintu/smoking.htm)This also hit Traditional Medicinals, I think. In 1990 they were featured negatively in a syndicated newspaper article that mentioned issues with both comfrey and lobelia.mbanu wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 8:06 am
Celestial Seasoning's alfalfa-mint was "Mellow Mint", which also added papaya, comfrey, and licorice.
Another old competitor, Portland's Dragon Herbarium (https://dragonherbarium.com) has an alfalfa-mint loose-leaf, as does St. John's. I think Celestial discontinued their version after it was discovered that habitual recreational consumption of comfrey could cause liver damage.
(https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xp ... story.html)Alexis Beck wrote:For one woman, a Boston-area business owner who considers herself nutritionally conscientious, a cup of comfrey tea, intended to ease her chronically upset stomach, turned into a frightening bout of stomach cramps, diarrhea and eventual dehydration.
Credited with purifying the blood and easing stomach ailments, this herb in the form of tea is available in health-food stores despite the fact its safety is classified by the FDA as "undefined." It contains an alkaloid, lasiocarpine, which has induced liver cancer in rats and can poison the liver, according to pharmacist Dr. Varro E. Tyler in his book, The Honest Herbal.
An extreme example of marketing herbal teas involves a group of teas manufactured by Traditional Medicinals of northern California. They are available in health food stores and supermarkets under such names as "Smooth Move," "Smoker's Tea," "PMS Tea," "Weightless Tea," "Mothers Tea," "Pregnancy Tea," "Female Toner," "Easy Now" and "Herbal Pharmacy." But more than half of them, on closer examination, turn out to be classified drugs.
This company is a food company and a licensed drug company in the state of California and can, as a result, include herbs in their teas that are otherwise banned from foods.
The most striking example of this is in the company's "Smoker's Tea," which contains lobelia, one of the 27 herbs considered unsafe for food use by the FDA because of the alkaloid lobeline, which allegedly acts as a substitute for nicotine without the addictive side effects. But according to the FDA, lobelia is a poisonous substance, an overdose of which can produce vomiting, sweating, paralysis, a rapid but feeble pulse, and in extreme instances, coma and death.
"The concentration of lobeline in even a box of our tea will not have a toxic effect if taken according to our package directions (1 cup every hour not to exceed 12 per 24-hour period and should not be used for more than 6 weeks) but will make eliminating nicotine easier," says the company's vice president, Lynda Sadler, who is also a past president of the American Herbal Products Association.
While the FDA agrees that the two-tenths of a milligram of lobeline per cup is not likely to be harmful, according to Paula Fairfield, its effectiveness as a nicotine substitute is questionable at best.
(They also offered a tea-based version.)
