Last week, we began our look at tea and learned that some conventional teas can infuse some heavy duty pesticides to your otherwise healthful cup of tea. Thankfully, organic options guarantee you a toxin-free cup of tea. I took a long (like, awkwardly long) walk around the grocery store tea aisle this week, made some notes, and did a little research in toxins in tea.

Here’s the scoop:
If you want a toxin-free cup of tea, there are more factors to consider besides organic or conventional tea leaves.

The Tea Itself and Its Not-So-Natural Flavorings
I went tea shopping this week. Thanks to last week’s research, I knew I only wanted to consider organic teas (because of the whole pesticide thing). Don’t have organic options in your store? 1. Ask for some. 2. Use this info anyways, it’s not unique to organic teas. However, don’t overlook organic options assuming they’re more expensive than conventional teas – they aren’t. In fact, the cheapest tea I found in my store ($2.96 for 20 tea bags) was certified organic. Some of the most expensive teas were conventional.

As I read every stinkin’ label in that aisle, I noticed that most teas have other ingredients besides tea leaves. The most common non-tea ingredients were: other herbs, essential oils, and synthetic (natural or artificial) flavorings. Flavorings were incredibly common in almost every brand of tea, even the organic ones! Larger tea companies were the most likely to contain flavorings. I assume that’s to develop their proprietary “brand” flavor. Read More→