Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
What doesn’t these days, but now the latest Asian food scare is boba or “bubble tea”. It may have a carcinogen that shouldn’t be in food at all is what “they” are saying. What took them so long to figure this one out?! For those who are freaked out because you’re slurping up a ball as you read this, who knows… factories which make boba aren’t all equal. This is a single sample from a single place. But you never know. (Huffington Post – Boba)
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Panda Poo fertilizes tea that will become the most expensive in the world. $200 a cup. It’s not as if you’re drinking panda poo, but supposedly a lot of nutrients get passed through a panda since all they do is eat and sleep. Yes, it reminds you of the coffee, kopi luwak, but this isn’t tea passed though an animals body, it’s merely in the dirt. Imagine… what fertilizer is being used for the tea or coffee that you drink now? (Reuters – Panda Poo)
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Coffee in China. Instead of tea crops, coffee is where the money is at. Like all things, when it’s not working you have to change it. Yunnan was once a tea capital, to the point of building shapes, proper names, all worked to make it a tea like atmosphere. Perhaps it was just for good luck or the tiny bits of marketing, but now, it’s becoming a coffee area and growing. The Economist mentions, “A family with a hectare of coffee can earn more than $10,000 a year, triple the amount for tea, and five times more than for maize or rice” It’s growing. We can’t wait to see Yunnan written on a bag of coffee sitting next to Ethiopia and Honduras. It’s a changing world. (Economist – Coffee in China)
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“Nearly a third of our black tea consumption is Earl Grey, and we feel Tregothnan’s is outstanding compared with other brands.” Tea is tea is tea, and for centuries it has been an essential part of both Asian and English cuisine. And as you probably knew, the importation of tea from China and other parts of Asia to England formed one of the very first bonds of trade between the Eastern and Western worlds. Okay, so much for history, which is always evolving anyway and is often filled with irony. Because for one small company in England, the love for tea has led to a mastery in growing, harvesting and processing the precious leaves into a product which is very much coveted and sought out by tea connoisseurs in Asia. Tregothnan Estates in Cornwall produces numerous varieties of tea, including Earl Grey and Darjeeling, for which some high-end consumers in China and Japan have developed a taste. In Japan particularly, English Earl Grey has become a very popular beverage as casual Japanese cuisine has become more westernized. And apparently having a sip of English Breakfast tea is not all that uncommon these days among the more affluent residents of Beijing and Shanghai. So in an interesting flip-flop of history, at least one English tea company is making and exporting tea to the birthplace of those lovely leaves. As we said, history is not without a sense of irony. (CNNGo – English Tea For China)
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