Green Tea Can Save America
In addition to lots of anime-related panels, video rooms and other interesting events, anime conventions are great because you can wander the dealer's room and find some cool things to buy, like, well, J-List stuff. While there are always plenty of companies selling anime, manga and similar products, I like to check out what non-anime booths there are at a given show, hawking things like swords or vampire contact lenses or steampunk art. At Anime Expo I happened across an interesting booth by Japanese bottled tea company Ito En, giving out samples of that most Japanese of beverages, green tea, and carrying their marketing message of Oi, ocha! ("Hey! Tea!") to Americans. Bottled tea beverages are extremely popular in Japan, with twice the volume sold compared to carbonated soft drinks (6 million vs. 3 million kiloliters, if you're curious). Since all Asian-style teas are consumed without sugar of any kind, they're extremely healthy, and it seems clear to me that the #1 beverage of choice among Japanese being naturally free of sugar (unlike, say, Coca-Cola, or virtually everything sold in any store in America, as I learned today when the store I went in didn't stock even non-sweetened iced tea) is probably the single most important reason why Japanese are among the thinnest nations on Earth, which is certainly something to think about. (As an aside, today I was eating some tuna salad from a supermarket here in the States and was surprised to find there was sugar in it -- ack.) Incidentally, J-List offers various kinds of good Japanese tea for you to sample and enjoy, including a beverage I can't recommend enough, mugi-cha, the refreshing Japanese barley tea that's so cold and good in the summer. It comes in handy cold-water tea bags so you can always keep some in the fridge.
posted by Peter in Japan at 5:00 PM
11 Comments:
It's not necessarily just the high sugar content of all of our food. Most American food is sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is harder for your body to process and is addictive, at least in my opinion. I was drinking six or more cans of soda a day before I gave it up for good.
There's a lot of proof that consumption of sugar has increased exponentially since HFCS has been introduced as a sweetener.
But that's my take. I'll get off the soapbox.
11:00 PM
Yes, I've read a few of the many pages about why America uses HFCS, and it's scary. We subsidize corn and raise sugar tariffs and put corn syrup in everything, and gee, at that exact moment in time Americans start to get really overweight.
I tried to calculate how much coke Americans drink to compare it to green tea in Japan, but a) I couldn't find several data sources that agreed with each other and b) Excel kept displaying the numbers in scientific notation which was hard to read. That's kind of bad sign ^_^ I did see that Americans drink 597 cans of Coke on average per year.
I'll get off the soapbox too. It's easy to get on ^_^
12:28 AM
My local grocery store has just started carrying an English-labeled Oi, ocha!, which make me very happy because I think I drank one of those every time we passed a vending machine on our trip to Japan last year.
Now if I could only find a US distributor for Georgia coffee. (Hint, hint!) ^_^
1:57 AM
Blech! I can't stand unsweetened tea. I don't drink that much pop, and I tend to stick to drinks that don't use as much corn syrup (or any at all), but I would think that the exercise that the Japanese get from walking everywhere is a high contributor to the thinness of Japanese people over beverages that have no sugar (and the Japanese beverages that do have sugar are rather sweet).
And it's not like there's no such thing as a fat Japanese person, either.
3:37 AM
OMG, yes -- oi ocha! I have two cases of the stuff sitting next to me, because I got totally addicted to that wonderfully yummy cold tea in the vending machines in Japan. I also enjoy the Kirin and Suntory brand of cold green tea but it seems Ito En has done a much better job of marketing their product in Canada. Too bad I have to pay almost $3 a bottle for it, and can only find it at a couple of Asian food stores here in Vancouver (a city that's more Asian than anything else, nowadays). Any suggestions of a good brand of tea bags or leaves I could use to try and create my own homemade cold green tea, Peter?
4:57 AM
Itoen is good stuff.
If I might also suggest a black tea that is without sugar and simply great tasting, TeJava.
http://www.tejava.com/
$1.50 a liter, so the price beats any I've seen for the swell teas from Japan you can find here. Sold at Cost Plus World Market and Whole Foods Markets around here. Sadly, not easy to find everywhere.
My main source ran out this week, so I'm drinking House Brand mugi-cha. Brews up good in the fridge.
5:29 AM
Kali, yes, Georgia Coffee is good, although a might on the heavy side for shipping. (This is why we don't carry Ramune either).
Aside, did you know about the Georgia Coffee Twin Peaks commercials? They were quite the rage back in 1992. ^_^
Vicki, yes, they need to get the economy of scale going there. I remember trying to buy the big 2 liter bottles of Japanese tea and other stuff at Japanese supermarkets here, and it was like $5-6 -- not happening. Tea bags are a good idea though. We'll try to carry more types, although they come in and out of stock.
Sailoralpha, I know that it's hard to get past it, but you need to embrace the taste of the tea even if it's a little bitter, and do your best to make that the main thing you reach for. The Japanese can do it, although many other countries like really sweet tea, like Thailand. Even Oolong Tea in China is sweetened.
11:03 AM
As for this gaijin, I utterly hate sugar in tea - yuck.
and I absolutely adore mugi-ha! There is nothign better on a really hot day than that poured over ice (and it's also good on shaved ice). But I can hardly find it anywhere. I am considering making my own mugi-ha, by roasting and grinding some barley myself. Did you say you sell the bags?
If you are ever travelling in the American Southeast (Georgia, Florida, Alabama, the Carolinas, etc.) do NOT just order "iced tea" you'll get what they call "sweet tea" (pronounced "su-wheat tay")which has so much sugar syrup in it that my teeth scream in dread and fear before the straw reaches my mouth! This stuff will put you into a diabetic coma just being poured into a glass.
You have to ask specifically fo "UN-sweet tea" if you want anything drinkable.
12:08 AM
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12:08 AM
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12:09 AM
Target stores carry "Teas' Tea" from Ito En in 2-litre bottles. (Google "Teas' Tea")
Pretty much exactly like the vending machine bottles of Ito En I get when back in Japan. But bigger.
It says "Product of Japan" on the label, which means the leaves come from Japan, I believe. Whole Foods also sells it sometimes.
5:35 AM
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