Tip-Top Tea Talks with a Tea Trainee

I’m going to flush out the elephant in the room (Just like the fellow below).

Some of you guys don’t know you like tea yet. That’s ok. I was in that position at one time, too. You just need to be nudged in the right direction. Believe me, I’ve seen and heard it before.

“Blech, it’s just water with leaves in it.”

“Blech, it doesn’t taste like anything.”

“Blech, it’s bitter.”

“Blech, it’s just hot water.”

“Blech, Blech, Blech, tea.”

Well! Someone at sometime is going to gently guide you, to show you the beauties that are the leaves. Don’t you worry.

I remember my first cup of tea. I was knee-high in preschool, and that day we were learning about China. Each of us got a little paper cup of tea. Ah, it was hot to the touch. I took a sip. And right there I knew. I knew.

I hated tea.

I was once a non-tea-leaver. Wretched stuff. It was an old person drink, something that doesn’t actually taste good at all, but old people drink it because it makes them feel cool and grown up. Or something like that.

Luckily, our taste develops with experiences, but some of these experiences go back all the way to before we were born. Sounds funky? Indeed! Fetuses start tasting and swallowing at different stages, and the flavors of the amniotic fluid they swallow is, of course, affected by what the mom in eating. For example, according to psychcentral.com a study showed that children of mothers who consumed a lot of carrot juice during pregnancy were more likely to like the carrot-flavored cereal than the kids whose mom’s didn’t eat a lot of carrots. (I know, right? Gross! Carrot-flavored cereal? I guess my mom didn’t eat a lot carrots while I was chilling in the womb.) A similar effect can be found in breast-milk.

Still, a few taste preferences are inherent, such as the general dislike for bitter tastes. This probably comes from way back when mankind was stumbling around, trying new plants to eat.  Toxic compounds have a tendency to be bitter to the taste, so the dislike was a survival technique: when in doubt, if it’s bitter, spit it out! Sweet foods were good foods. We were able to sort good and bad foods with taste.

However, there’s a big different between taste and flavor. Taste is that classic tongue diagram (like the one below) that depicts the different areas: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and, recently, umami (umami, the “meat” taste, is basically the taste of proteins). Flavor is the subtle combination of taste, smell, and chemosensory stuff. Chemosensory has to do with spiciness and coolness, like the hot zip of a habanero or the zinging, cold pow of drinking water after chewing mint gum. It has nothing to do with temperature, but it feels like it does.

Taste does change with age. So-called “acquired tastes” come about with increased exposure. Also, taste buds atrophy. By sixty, tastes really start to go. Kids go from hating broccoli to not really minding it because the effect of bitter-sensitivity fades away as they get older.

So this is my recommendation for you guys that aren’t so into those brews. Keep giving it a chance. Tea is a wide world of awesomeness. Don’t miss out. Maybe you’ve tried Lipton, but keep sipping new stuff. Try different herbals and tisanes like chamomile, peppermint, lemongrass, and licorice. The fruity ones aren’t bad either. Try blends like SleepyTime, Chai, Earl Grey, Throat-coat, rose and jasmine-scented teas. Try the different process types like green, red, and oolong. Try different combinations of milk, sugar, and honey. Come check out the Tea House in the basement of Ritenour in State College. The tea is straightforward and will blow your mind.

Tea is a world I almost missed out on. I’m glad I didn’t. I hope you don’t either.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/03/geography-taste-how-food-preferences-formed

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/taste-healthy-foods/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/booming/sense-of-taste-changes-with-age.html

http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-development-of-food-preferences/0008423

http://www.eufic.org/article/en/artid/how-taste-preferences-develop/