SpecialTeas - Featured Defunct Tea Company

Back in June I featured an inactive tea blog, Tea Nerd. Today I follow suit by featuring a defunct tea company, SpecialTeas. SpecialTeas was still in business when I founded RateTea, but I did not have the opportunity to actually try any of their teas until after the company closed.

Most of what I know about this company is from reading the reviews and commentary of others. Here is a screenshot of the company's website in April of 2008, a typical example of what it looked like:

What did I like about SpecialTeas?

• A clear focus on single-origin pure teas - Although SpecialTeas had quite a selection of blends and herbal teas as well, the company had a strong emphasis on single-origin pure teas. The website classified tea both by type and region, drawing attention to the influence of region on tea.
• Large and diverse selection - SpecialTeas had a very large selection, not only carrying many different types of tea but many specific teas of certain types, such as a rather large selection of Chinese green teas and Indian black teas.
• Good prices - The prices of the few teas from this company that I tried were quite reasonable, and I heard good things about the company's prices from people who had sampled more of the company's teas. All but a few of the ratings of this company's teas on RateTea give this company 5/5 or 4/5 on value.

If you want to read what is probably going to be my last ever review of this company, I recently posted a review of SpecialTeas 546 Mountain Peak Mao Feng Organic, a green tea from Zhejiang province which was quite pleasing.

Why did SpecialTeas close?

SpecialTeas was bought out by Teavana, and then closed. The buyout may have happened as early as 2005, even though SpecialTeas remained open for years after that; there's some strongly suggestive evidence for this buyout highlighted on RateTea's page on SpecialTeas. In 2005, the company was bought by a company that shared a business address and two key corporate officers with Teavana. The company has now officially announced that SpecialTeas has been merged into Teavana. The domain name specialteas.com now redirects to a page on Teavana's website announcing this merger, and offering free shipping to former customers of SpecialTeas. You can use this as a clever trick if you wish to obtain free shipping when buying from Teavana's website.

I personally think that much was lost when Teavana closed SpecialTeas. The two companies had quite different selection and pricing. SpecialTeas in particular had a much broader selection of single origin pure teas, and their prices also tended to be lower. I also never heard any complaints about pushy sales practices associated with SpecialTeas, which has unfortunately been a persistent complaint about Teavana, although to be fair, SpecialTeas did not have physical store locations of its own so it is hard to compare the two companies on this level.

Dragonwater Tea closes:

As another loss, there used to be a company named Dragonwater tea, which was supplied by SpecialTeas, and which closed when SpecialTeas was closed. I learned about this company through a 2009 thread on TeaChat about Teavana and SpecialTeas, in which people were speculating about the relationship between these two companies before any information had been made public officially. I found it interesting to learn about this company, because it showed how value can be lost in society when a company buys out its supplier and closes it.

The economics and ethics of the buyout:

Acquisition of a competitor is a prime example of an anti-competitive practice, generally agreed on by economists as having a negative effect on the economy because it reduces competition and thus reduces market efficiency. As such, these sorts of buyouts and closings raise ethical concerns for me. They are usually legal (with the exception of certain buyouts, restricted under US anti-trust law), but I am not convinced that they are the most ethical decision. I recognize that people have different values and beliefs about business and economics, but personally, I believe anti-competitive business behavior to be something that is often unethical.

Beyond ethical concerns about indirect economic effects, in the tea industry there is an additional, more direct ethical and human rights concern related to anti-competitive behavior. If a company buys out and closes a competitor that sells the same tea for a lower price, leaving the tea only available on the market at the higher price, the result of people buying the tea at the higher price is that a smaller portion of the money being spent on tea reaches the original producer. This causes wealth to concentrate in the already wealthy country, keeping the poorer producing country poor.

This is also a matter that concerns me.

What do you think?

Did you ever try SpecialTeas? What do you think of their buyout and closing by Teavana? Do you think Teavana provides a comparable experience to SpecialTeas, or has something of value been lost by the closing of this company? Do you think that this buyout constitutes anti-competitive behavior, or just part of normal, healthy business activity? Have you ever thought about how this sort of buyout could hinder fair wages for tea producers by causing wealth to concentrate in already-wealthier Western countries?

Why I Don't Want You To Click This Headline

I want people to read the pieces I publish online; the more readers I reach, the better. My message reaches a broader audience, and in the long-run, I even earn more money as I gain visibility for RateTea indirectly. So why do I not want people to click on the headline for this blog post?

You're already here, so the headline already got your attention and drew you in. First I have a confession to make: The headline was not fully truthful. On some level, I wanted you to click it, but on another level I did not. Why not? The answer lies in how I feel about sensationalism. I included a less-than-truthful headline, a form of exaggeration, in order to draw in readers.

The part of me that did not want you to click the headline did not want you to because I do not want people to be swayed by sensationalistic headlines. In my ideal world, I would like people to be immune to these sorts of headlines. Below, I explain why I think this would make the world a better place, and how you can help to advance this goal.

What is sensationalism?

Wikipedia has a rather spotty and incomplete article on sensationalism, which, although the article as a whole could use some improvement, I think hits the nail on the head with its initial definition:

Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are over-hyped to increase viewership or readership numbers.

This definition cites a page about sensationalism on the website of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing media bias and censorship.

Sensationalism causes problems in the tea world:

I want to visit some topics that I have heard people in the tea community complain about frequently:

• Inaccurate public impression of science - My recent post about the tea and prostate cancer headline is an example of how even very mild sensationalism can have a powerfully negative impact on public perception of scientific knowledge.
• Tea and weight loss fads - Tea, particularly green tea and oolong tea, and to some degree Pu-erh and white tea as well, have become associated in American society with weight loss fads. There are numerous negative impacts to this association, from people being put off from green tea because they try bad green tea sold as a weight-loss product, to negative body image issues promoted by marketing aimed at women. And most importantly, this whole approach takes away from people focusing on the quality and taste of their tea, and enjoying tea and the process of drinking it. And lastly, sites promoting tea as a weight loss product are not particularly truthful; for a more truthful approach I recommend reading Gingko's post on the slimming effect of tea.
• Myths and falsehoods circulating about tea - A lot of the myths about tea surround the caffeine content of tea, such as the myth that white tea is lowest in caffeine among teas. A lot of other myths pertain to unsubstantiated health claims, which can range from the mundane to the absurd. Fortunately, there are a lot of people out there committed to ending these myths, including such people as Michael J. Coffee who runs Tea Geek, or Brandon of Wrong Fu Cha, who also administers WikiCha and is one of the numerous contributors to TeaDrunk, another great place to get solid info that breaks through myths and misconceptions. I also appreciate the casual skepticism expressed by bloggers like Lahikmajoe, or Nicole in her post Health Benefits Schmealth Benefits. And it's also worth noting the ATB (Association of Tea Bloggers) Criteria, point 6, also get at this issue; another thing I love about the ATB.

What can you do?

I think there are numerous things you can do to curb sensationalism in news, especially in how you read news online, and how you participate in social media and various online communities. Some of my recommendations:

• Slow down - Sensationalism thrives on speed. Sensationalism flourishes and sensationalistic headlines are rewarded in an environment where people act on snap judgments, rather than thinking deeply, which leads into the next points.
• Read deeply - Do not just skim pieces. Read them in their entirety and take time to think about them. Does this seem like more work? This leads into my next point.
• Read less - Be more selective of what you read. As you read more deeply, you may reach a point like I did, where I realized that an overwhelming majority of what I was reading was remarkably low-quality, in that it communicated little new information, or was hastily thrown together, or it cited no sources, or that it was presenting opinions or mere assertions as fact or objective truth. These realizations are a good thing; they will help you to cut out whole media outlets, blogs, and websites. You will also get a better idea of what sorts of topics you wish to read on which sites. You may subscribe to a blog that posts almost daily, like this one, but you may find that only a small portion of the posts interest you enough to actually read them. This is a good thing! When you have less to read, you will be able to read more deeply.
• Think carefully before sharing - Never share or re-share a post without reading it. Put some thought into what pieces you decide to share or re-share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, social bookmarking sites, or through linking to from your blog or website. Think about what effect you are having by sharing a work or webpage. Is the work truthful? What effect will it have on the world for you to share it?

Sensationalism in the media only thrives when we fuel it. If we ignore it, and instead focus on high-quality, thoughtful journalism, scholarship, blogs, and other media, the sensationalists will just spin their wheels and eventually run out of steam.

Tea And Prostate Cancer: Keep Headlines Truthful and Stay Out of Advocacy on Points You Don't Know

This post centers around the relatively recent study published on the topic of Tea and Prostate Cancer. If you're interested, here is a link to the actual study: Tea Consumption and the Risk of Overall and Grade Specific Prostate Cancer: A Large Prospective Cohort Study of Scottish Men.

In this post, I highlight something that happens on a nearly daily basis, which oversteps an ethical boundary for me, in the area of popular science coverage by the media. I also examine the way the UK Tea Council reacted to this research, and I urge them to take a different approach, which I think would ultimately be more helpful not only for the tea industry as a whole, but for their own organization, and for the state of popular science in society at large.

Specifically, I call them to focus their efforts on the media, ensuring truthful comments, rather than making statements about scientific studies in which they had not played any direct role.

An article about tea and health, where the headline poses ethical problems for me:

An article was recently published in the Telegraph, a UK newspaper, with the headline "Men who drink 7 cups of tea are 50 per cent more likely to develop prostate cancer". I am not going to link to this article because I have ethical problems with the choice of headline, and I do not wish to endorse it. You can find it in a search engine if you want. Here is a screenshot of the article:

I see a serious ethical problem with the choice of headline: it is less than fully truthful, and, when read in isolation, could be misleading. The objective reality is that a recent study found evidence that men who drink 7 cups of tea are 50 per cent more likely to develop prostate cancer. It is not truthful to state as fact that "Men who drink 7 cups of tea are 50 per cent more likely to develop prostate cancer".

Because a far greater number of people see a headline than actually read the article, even though the sub-heading of the article, and the article's text itself, clarify the more truthful, objective reality of the matter, a large number of people are going to read only the headline, and settle on the piece of information presented as fact (which is the result of a single study, certainly not accepted as scientific fact). I think that, collectively, this sort of simplistic news coverage leads the public consciousness to oscillate between one-sided views, like "tea is healthy" or "tea is unhealthy" rather than thinking holistically, and in more balanced terms.

The fact that this practice is the norm in the mainstream media does not make it ethically okay. Personally, I find it conflicts with my beliefs, as it less than untruthful, and I think that this sort of sloppy choice of headline serves to encourage simplistic thinking and spread misinformation. I would urge all news media to put greater care into maintaining truthfulness in headlines, and I would encourage all readers of media to put pressure on the businesses that run these organizations, to have greater integrity in their choice of headlines.

The UK Tea Council's Reaction:

The Tea Advisory Panel, which is run by the UK Tea Council, issued a statement which was presented in this article, that the "research was flawed and the higher incidence of prostate cancer could be attributed to other factors, such as smoking, stress or diet."

I also have ethical problems with this advisory panel issuing a statement on this matter. Was the person who made this statement directly involved in the research? Did the council include one or more of the scientists who carried out the peer review in the journal in which the study was published? Have they conducted a thorough meta-analysis of the research to date on tea and prostate cancer? I suspect that the answer to all three of these questions is no.

From a scientific perspective, if this person is just making an assertion of fact not backed by any evidence, their statement has no validity whatsoever. I definitely think that scientific research needs to be approached with a critical mind, and I think people and groups outside the scientific establishment often offer valid and useful criticisms of science. But I also think that blind criticism coming from an industry interest group has no role in science, and no credibility in my eyes.

I would like to call anyone who is a member of the UK Tea Council, or who has any sway over them, to ask them to refrain from these sorts of statements, and instead, to focus their efforts on the media, like the Telegraph (and numerous other papers), who have chosen a less-than-truthful headline. The study was just a scientific study, and it found some strongly suggestive evidence, but it certainly did not establish anything as undisputable fact. If there are flaws with the study, it will take deeper scrutiny, considerable time, and possibly further research to uncover them. It is highly doubtful that anyone from the UK Tea Council would have had time to scrutinize this study deeply enough to uncover any serious flaws in it, in the brief time between when it was published and when the advisory panel issued their statement.

What do you think?

Do you agree with me that the original headline, as shown here, is less-than-truthful? Would you prefer media to use greater care in creating headlines that are truthful when read on their own?

How do you feel about the statement from the UK Tea Council's Tea Advisory Panel? Do you think they have also overstepped an ethical bound? Do you agree with me that it would advance the public interest more for them to focus more on the truthful presentation of the study by mainstream media, than to make statements about a study in which they had no involvement and have not taken the time to scrutinize in depth from a scientific perspective?

I think that if the UK Tea Council's Advisory Panel focused on the media in the manner described above, they would ultimately be having much more of a positive impact on the world, in terms of promoting an accurate public understanding of the facts in this case. I also think they would look a lot more credible, both to me, and to the scientific community as a whole.

Price and Deals When Buying Tea Online

I recently received a box of samples from the newly launched Paisley Tea Co, which is an effort of Two Leaves Tea (Formerly Two Leaves and a Bud).

This post is not about the company's teas; I have more to say about them later; if you're itching to read more, you can peek at my lengthy review of their English Breakfast on RateTea. This post, however, is about a phenomenon that I've seen occur with a variety of companies that sell online. This post is directed both at tea shoppers and tea companies, and I hope there will be some useful tidbits in the post for both audiences.

Pictured here is a clipping from a screenshot of the page for Paisley Tea Co's Organic English Breakfast, on the official online store of Two Leaves Tea:

The price, for a box of 24 tea bags, is $5.95. Now, take a peek at this screenshot, taken from Amazon.com:

Now the price is $3.82. But the product is out of stock. I discovered this page, supposedly selling this tea, after reading a post on The Everyday Tea Blog, titled Paisley Tea Co, Organic Double Earl Grey. This price is discounted over 35% off the price listed on the company's official site. A little more searching turns up the following listings:

These are sold by Amazon.com's Add-on program, and some of them are in stock. This program lists items that would be cost-prohibitive to ship on their own, and they are intended to be purchased when someone makes a larger ($25 or more) purchase from Amazon, and they ship for free in these large purchases.

Sometimes you can find deals online:

If you are looking to buy a product online, you can sometimes find it cheaper than the list price on the company's main website. You may also sometimes find coupon codes if you search for them. This can be good news if you are a tea drinker looking to buy tea online. Three suggestions I'd have if you want to look for deals on a product you've already decided to buy would be:

• Check Amazon.com, eBay, and other major online marketplaces.
• Try searching Google shopping.
• Do a basic search for coupon codes for the company you are buying from.

Is this sort of setup beneficial for the company selling the tea? Often, yes, as I explain below. I do want to point out, however, that these "off-the-main-website" deals usually are limited to larger, more mainstream tea companies.

Why do such discounts exist?

Teas can be available at a discount for a variety of reasons. Some of them include:

• If a company is hoping to sell a major portion of their products through Amazon, eBay, or any other marketplace website which has its own reputation system, sellers sometimes initially sell products at a discounted price in order to establish a track record. They forgo additional profits as an investment to establish their reputation. This practice is most common with smaller companies.
• If a company is launching a new line of teas, or a new tea brand, like Paisley tea in this example, they may offer a discount to help jump start their new products.
• Sometimes packaged teas end up in the hands of a company (or individual) that cannot easily sell them or put them to use, and wants to get rid of them, and they then mark the price down below the company's list price, as a way of recovering some of their loss. Discount stores can also buy random shipments of tea for discounted prices, and sell them at a modest profit, still below list price.

A word of caution on bargains being displayed but not available:

I just want to highlight one potential problem that can arise from a setup like the one here, especially if it persists in the long-run.

I think that it can be potentially problematic, and can hurt companies, when there is a lower-priced item available on a third party website, but the item is out of stock. This is especially true if the price is presented as a normal price, rather than being advertised as a special discount (sometimes this can be harmful even if it is in stock). If a person searches around and somehow finds the bargain-priced item labelled as normal (like the Amazon example above), they may get excited and think: "Wow, at that price, I want to buy this product." But then they go to buy it and it is out of stock. But then they see the same product for sale on the company's official site, or in a supermarket, or another store, for the normal price, and it seems overpriced, in comparison to the discount price. They'll be likely to think: "Wow, this store is price gouging." or "This tea is overpriced." and not buy it.

Policing prices:

Pictured here is a rather old police car, a Ford Mustang to be precise; the concept of price policing really has nothing to do with the actual police, and tends to be enforced through contracts between wholesalers and distributors, rather than criminal law. This picture is included strictly for amusement.

Some companies actively police their pricing, enforcing minimum retail prices, because they worry that if their products are too widely available for low prices, they will lose money because people will become less interested in buying the products at a higher price. For example, there is a shoe store that I like very much, called The Natural Shoe Store, on 40th street in Philadelphia. The staff of this store have told me that one company threatened to stop selling them shoes because they had priced them too low, even though they were still selling the shoes at a comfortable profit over the wholesale price.

I don't like the idea of price policing like I described here. I think it goes against the idea of the free market economy, and even if it benefits one business, I think it tends to harm the economy as a whole. But I do think that it is good for businesses to think critically about who is going to see what prices where, and what conclusions they will draw from them. Offering discounts and deals can be a great way to jump-start a new line of teas, or a new brand of tea like Paisley here. In some cases, though, it may be better not to discount.

Rather than policing prices, I think a better approach is to be cautious about where, when, and how much you discount your products.

What do you think?

Do you ever shop around for deals on tea online, that is, deals that go beyond the price listed on the company's main website? How about when buying other sorts of products? For companies: when do you think the best time is to discount? And what do you think of the idea of price policing. Tea companies: would you ever do it? And tea drinkers, do you think it's acceptable for a company to do, or does it undermine the ideals of a market economy?

Frontier Co-op - A Leader In Sustainability

Today's post is the second post inspired by my visit to Mariposa Food Co-op in West Philadelphia. In the first post, I wrote about the tea bag selection in the co-op. This post focuses the company that provides the loose-leaf teas and bulk herbs in the same store: Frontier Co-op:

This station doubles as a showcase or display for the herbs and tea, and a self-serve station where people can fill their own bags of herbs. Although the jars are glass jars, which are not ideal because they allow for some break-down of the herbs with light, the display was located in a dark back corner of the store, minimizing the negative effects of the light.

Pictured here are the implements for filling bags, which include scoops and funnels:

Self-serve setups like this are relatively common in natural food stores and co-ops across the country. There is a lot that I like about these sort of self-serve displays. In particular:

• These displays can offer a large selection of herbs and/or tea while taking up minimal space. The space taken up by the display is smaller than that taken up by many supermarkets' packaged tea bag selections.
• The small size of the jars allows for high turnover of the jars' contents, ensuring freshness.
• The self-service station keeps costs down, enabling customers to purchase tea and herbs for a reasonable price, while the store can still make a comfortable profit, without needing to expend employee time for measuring and serving herbs.
• Allowing people to measure out their own herbs and tea enables people to buy the exact quantity they want. This is convenient both for very small sizes (such as for sampling loose-leaf tea, or buying infrequently-used spices) or very large sizes (such as for someone like me, who goes through ground coriander faster than most households use salt or sugar). Most supermarkets offer only fixed sizes of herbs and spices, which are often either too small or too large for people's needs.

What I like about Frontier Co-Op:

First, before I go into depth about what I like about Co-op, I want to point out that the company not only sells loose-leaf tea and bulk herbs in stores, but also through their website:

Some of the things I like most about Frontier Co-op:

• Frontier is organized as a cooperative, wholly owned by its wholesale customers, many of which are in turn cooperatives, like Mariposa co-op, owned by individual people. The co-op model has a number of compelling advantages over other models of ownership; the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) has a website that explains this model of business ownership in depth.
• Through its displays in retail stores, Frontier makes a wide selection of herbs available that are not widely available in stores in the U.S., and it also sells loose-leaf orthodox teas of decent quality, which, unfortunately do not tend to be widely available in the U.S. either.
• Frontier Co-op is strongly committed to sustainability, and is a definitive leader in this area, going above and beyond even what many of the more environmentally- and ethically-conscious tea companies are doing. There is so much that this organization is doing to promote sustainability that it is not possible to cover it all here; if you want to read more, I'd invite you to read the sustainability section on Frontier's site. Frontier publishes an annual sustainability report, and has a tangible pathway towards achieving certain goals, with measurable milestones. They also have a great deal more transparency than is the norm in the tea industry. Perhaps some other tea companies can get some good ideas and inspiration in here!
• The quality of the bulk herbs is top-notch, and the teas are not bad. Although Frontier unfortunately does not sell what I would consider to be true artisan tea (single-harvest, single-estate teas), they sell a number of single-region orthodox teas of reasonable quality. And their prices are much lower than the prices on similar teas. The low prices, including on products that are both organic and fair trade certified, sold from a company that has gone above and beyond in the area of sustainability, provide proof that tea companies can deliver sustainably-sourced products at low cost. I have tried a few of Frontier's teas, and while they did not wow me as being otherworldly, they were solidly good. You can find reviews of the few teas I've sampled on RateTea's page on Frontier.

I hope that individuals reading this post can have the opportunity to try out Frontier Co-op's herbs, spices, and teas, if they have not already done so. And I hope that people working within the tea industry can look into the various things Frontier is doing to promote sustainability, and can get some good ideas and inspiration. I am hopeful that relatively soon, many of the practices that Frontier is spearheading will become the norm.

What do you think?

Have you tried the teas from Frontier Co-op? How about their herbs and spices? And what do you think about what they are doing to promote sustainability? What do you think of the co-operative model in general? And, for those who work within the tea industry, do you have any plans to implement any of the practices that Frontier has been engaging in in terms of sustainable sourcing, operations, or transparency?

British Oppression: Top 5 Google Searches

When Americans think of tea, many of us think of the British. Nowadays, Americans are more likely to picture the British as pleasant, tea-drinking people, less so in the role of heinous oppressors, imperialists and colonialists. The attitude has shifted quite a ways from the days of the American revolutionary war, in which the United States achieved independence from Great Britain. In contrast to the pre-revolutionary colonies, where the British were seen largely as extracting wealth from the colonies without giving back proportionate value or influence (taxation without representation), the British have more recently been seen as equals and allies.

The history of oppression, imperialism, and colonialism by the British, however, is more recent in some other countries.

Look at the following Google search, which shows Google's top five auto-complete suggestions when typing in British Oppression In:

These suggestions reflect the terms that are most likely typed into the search box.

I find it interesting that the top two results are both major tea-producing countries. This is no coincidence. The British were responsible for introducing large-scale tea production to both India and Kenya. Kenya only achieved independence from Britain in 1963, and India in 1947. It is also no coincidence that the third country, Ireland, is a major tea-drinking country, as the British introduced tea to the Irish.

The legacy of British Colonialism in the tea industry:

The large-scale production of tea in India primarily served British interests, specifically, that of the East India Company. In most cases, freedom from oppression does not come in one step, but rather, is a continuous process. Recall how when slavery was abolished in the U.S., the system of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws still left southern blacks in a position of little power and autonomy relative to whites. Unfortunately, there are economic analogues to this process, not only in the tea industry, but in the economic relationship in general between wealthy Western countries and the countries which had been colonized by them.

It is easy to forget that our society has come a long way, even in relatively recent years. This photo was taken in 1940.

One topic that I have been increasingly thinking and writing about lately is the way, in the tea industry, profits tend to be greatest in the wealthy Western countries, and the share of the final price of a product that reaches the original producers (in countries like Kenya and India) is very small relative to the share that is taken by blenders, packers, and tea marketers in wealthy countries. A report that explores this in more depth is Sustainability Issues in the Tea Sector. This is one reason I both support the goals behind fair trade tea, and think it is important to criticize the fair trade movement to ensure that it is actually achieving what it sets out to do.

Let us be mindful of these issues:

I would like to call people to be aware of these issues, both when buying tea and when selling tea. Thankfully, we are past the days of overt forms of discrimination like Jim Crow laws or colonialism and imperialism, but subtle forms of exploitation persist. The global economic system extracts wealth from poorer regions and keeps the wealth concentrated in already wealthy regions, and, what is perhaps most heinous, it does so in such a way that is largely hidden from the view of not only the typical tea drinker, but many businesses and industry insiders as well.

I think awareness of these issues, and a push for greater transparency in the tea industry, and the economic system in general, is a good first step to take. In the end, I would like us to imagine and bring into being a way of living and doing business which is based on the idea that all people are valuable, and which rewards people equally for equal work, and does not give the people in any one country a disproportionate amount of power or influence in the global economic system.

Honesty and Dishonesty in American Business

Min River Tea recently left a comment on my recent blog post More Is Not Better: How To Balance Freshness and Turnover for Small Tea Companies, highlighting something that I had overlooked in that post. This is the fact that companies with a business model like Min River Tea keep their catalogue small in large part because they want to be able to actually visit the farms producing their teas, both for quality and ethical reasons.

The comment also raises the question of whether or not it is ethical to make claims about tea being "direct from the farm" or practicing "ethical sourcing" without having ever visited the areas in which a tea is produced.

The above photo, by vera46, shows tea pickers in Minamiyamashiro, Kyoto. Photo licensed under CC BY 2.0 license. Like many people who work within the tea industry in the U.S. and other Western countries, I have never visited a region in which tea is produced.

No consensus on what constitutes "ethical" sourcing:

Ethics can be a tricky subject, because different people have different fundamental beliefs or assumptions both about the basis of their moral systems, and about how the world works. An example is the issue of abortion, where people reach vastly different conclusions on the basis of certain beliefs or assumptions, including whether or not they believe human life begins at conception.

In economic matters, things become even muddier, as not only do people have different fundamental values surrounding money, business, and ownership of property, but people also have vastly different ideas about cause-and-effect, and about which sorts of outcomes in society are "good" or "bad". Some people may care primarily about increasing GDP or business activity, others may care more about reducing pollution or carbon emissions, others may care more about reducing human suffering and promoting human rights. This disagreement exists among academic economists, political figures, business leaders, and everyday people.

Disagreement on ethical issues is not necessarily bad, but casual labels of "ethical sourcing" are usually problematic:

I do not necessarily think that it is problematic that there is no consensus about what constitutes "ethical" sourcing. Quite to the contrary, I think that vigorous debate about ethics is healthy and perhaps even essential to address social and economic problems related to the tea industry (or any ethical problems in the world, for that matter). But what I think is more problematic or harmful is that people throw around words like "ethical" or phrases like "ethical sourcing" without explaining what they mean.

Whether one is dealing with the Ethical Tea Partnership, or fair trade certification for tea, there is still little transparency about where most tea comes from. When I buy fair trade tea, I know that there is a whole organization behind the fair trade logo. But I still do not know the exact portion of the price that I am paying that is reaching the individual producer. I do not know what percentage of revenue the company selling the tea to me is taking as profit, and what percentage is spent on business expenses. I do not know what portion of the price goes towards packing and shipping costs, or what portion is spent on marketing. And, in spite of all the bureaucracy and energy expended on the certification process, I still do not know where exactly the tea came from.

True transparency, whether in naturally-occurring minerals, or businesses in American society, is quite rare. Just as a majority of quartz crystals are not as transparent as this one pictured above, a majority of businesses and organizations are quite opaque about key points of ethical relevance.

To me, transparency is a key part of ethics. Without transparency, one lacks even the basic facts of the situation, and without the basic facts, even if one has clear morals, one cannot reach truthful conclusions about the moral or ethical status of a given action or practice. This belief comes in part comes from my religious beliefs, which have been increasingly taking form as I've been working with Why This Way and hashing out my views on different issues in a group of people who share certain foundational values.

Deeper problems with honesty and transparency, not limited to the tea industry:

I think the problem that Min River Tea was getting at in the original comment runs deeper than just the tea industry. Most of consumer culture in America is dominated by claims of dubious honesty, that is, products which are marketed in an overtly dishonest spirit. Often these claims take the form of brief phrases or labels, a lot like the claim of being "ethically sourced".

One of the most glaring, recent examples of this is what I like to call the "0 grams trans fat" loophole. This loophole is the result of a policy or law that specifies that, in food labelling, amounts of trans fat less than 0.5 grams can be rounded down to 0. Another, broader problem is when products are marketed under the guise of being "healthy" when they are loaded with unhealthy ingredients. Two common examples are when "low fat" products are loaded with sugar, or when "whole grain" products are made primarily with refined flour, and contain only insignificant amounts of whole grain.

The above label shows 3 grams of trans fat. If the quantity were less than 1/6th as much, or if the serving size were smaller, it could legally be rounded down to 0 even though the product still contained trans fat.

These practices may satisfy the letter of the laws in the U.S., but I think a majority of Americans would agree that they are thoroughly dishonest in spirit.

I think that part of the problem is that the culture in the U.S. has been one that emphasizes a literalistic, legal-definition-based approach to product advertising. I think this is in large part because we have relied on legal regulation, rather than informed choice and moral integrity, to shape our marketplace.

Taking responsibility to solve these problems:

I believe that the only way to fully and sustainably address the issues of dishonesty in marketing is to take personal responsibility, that is, for all the choices we can make in our daily lives that can impact these issues.

Americans have been tolerating these sorts of practices for years. These products would not be on the shelf if people did not buy them. And marketing teams would not even consider making claims that were dishonest in spirit if they knew that the marketplace would swiftly and severely punish them with product boycotts in the case that they made dishonest claims. Moreover, marketers would not make these claims if they were strongly committed to integrity in marketing, and if their business decisions were driven by their own personal moral values.

It's for this reason that I don't tolerate these sorts of labelling practices. I don't buy these products, but it doesn't stop there. I often write letters to companies urging them to be more forthcoming in their labelling--in the case of trans fats, to remove all trans fats from their products, and in the case of "whole grain" products, to actually make products out of primarily (or exclusively) whole grain flours. But I also appeal to the individual moral conscience of the people who work within these industries. I do believe that most people want to be honest people. People are more likely to get sucked into dishonesty when they are simply not thinking about how much they value honesty. If everyone woke up every morning thinking about how much they valued honesty and integrity, and embraced this as an essential part of their identity, they would likely make different decisions in business settings.

Another way I try to address these issues is to talk and write about them with other people who might buy these products. I talk frequently not only to my friends, but to acquaintances, and to people who I see buying these products, and explain to them about things like the "0 grams trans fat" loophole, and I urge them to avoid products labelled as "low fat" but high in sugar, and to read labels on products labelled as "whole grain" to see that they actually are made primarily from whole grain flour rather than just including it as a minor ingredient.

Putting yourself on the line:

Sometimes I even go out on the line a little. It can be hard to point out concerns like the ones I discussed here, in casual social settings. One example of this is when someone brings a box of cookies to a party, a box that displays marketing that I find dishonest in spirit. It can seem a bit abrasive to comment on things like this, but I do believe it can be done respectfully. Sometimes all you need to say is: "Hey, I would really prefer if you did not buy this product, because I think their marketing is dishonest." and I explain a little bit about why. You can conclude by reassuring the person that it is okay that they brought it and telling them to not feel bad about it, worry about it, or think too much about it.

Some people may not care or may not want to hear it, but if they don't, or if they are offended, that is their issue, not mine or yours. And I do think that a large number of people actually do like to learn about these sorts of issues, and will act on the basis of them. They just never stopped to think about it.

What do you think?

What do you think about the comment that Min River Tea made? What do you think about the lack of transparency in the tea industry? How about the phenomenon of marketing claims that are dishonest in spirit? And of my recommendations of how to address these claims through choice and discussion, without resorting to legal battles?

Tea Being Hip and the Dark Side of Trends

This post is inspired by a recent post on the English Tea Store's blog, written by William I. Lengeman III of Tea Guy speaks, titled How Tea Became Hip. I originally posted a rather detailed comment on that post, but I decided that the material in the comment was important enough to me to warrant a detailed post of its own.

In this post I want to write about the concept or phenomenon of something being "hip", "cool", "trendy", "in", or "the latest thing". And I will make a distinction between what I see as a healthy way of recognizing (and acting on) trends, and an unhealthy way of viewing or chasing them. This is what I describe as the "dark side of trends".

Pictured here is an image representation of a human hip bone; picture by Stephen Woods, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The relationship between the body part and the slang expression is not clear. Wikpedia's article on Hip (slang) has some good discussion on this matter, if you are interested.

Trends are natural, and it is good to be aware of them:

Because this post risks coming across otherwise, I want to begin by acknowledging that trends are a natural part of human society, and that it is good to be aware of them and to work with them in positive ways. It is especially important to be aware of trends if you run a business.

For example, if you run a small tea shop, and some specific type of tea or herb suddenly explodes in popularity, it would be wise to stock the tea or herb in question, if it fits naturally within your offerings. If it does not fit naturally and you wish not to stock it, it would be benificial to have something in mind, such as a truthful and convincing sales pitch, that would help connect customers seeking that tea or herb with the products you sell.

Another example, which I hope to expound fully in a later post, is that Teavana is very popular, and is one of the most common entry points into loose-leaf tea for Americans. Teavana is a bit of a trend. It can thus be beneficial for people running a loose tea business to be familiar with Teavana's most popular products, and to have something compelling to say (and teas to recommend) to people who express that they like certain of the teas sold by Teavana.

The dark side of trends:

Just like in Star Wars, where there is a good and bad side of the force, I think there is a good and bad side to trends, or to the concept of something being "hip". So that you can get into the mood for understanding this dark side of trends, I would encourage you to meditate on this picture of Darth Vader. Darth Vader is one of the classic "bad guys", but, like all people, he is not wholly evil, and he exhibits good qualities when he saves Luke Skywalker's life at the end of the Star Wars Trilogy.

The above picture is included courtesy of Andres Rueda, Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

How does the concept of trends go wrong? How can the idea of something being "in" or "cool" or "the latest thing" be harmful in society?

• Unhealthy ideas can become trendy - A good example of this is the negative ideas of body image, which can contribute to eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Yes, this is an issue that comes up in the tea industry; see my earlier post on tea and gender roles, in which I go into this issue in more depth.
• Trends can be manipulated by money and power interests - Trends can be shaped (or even started) by money and power, such as when a corporation pumps money into a marketing campaign to create demand for a new product, or when an individual or business uses their social connections (a form of social power) to induce influential or high-profile individuals to support their trend.
  
  Because of the profit motive, these manipulations usually lead to trends that enrich the wealthy and powerful interests behind them, rather than trends that are actually most beneficial to society or beneficial to the people following them. This phenomenon is common in the fashion industry, where companies work hard to fuel trends of certain clothing being "in" and then "out", in order to encourage people to continuously spend more money on clothing, when it would be more beneficial to these people and to society to embrace practical clothing and timeless fashions.
  
  In the tea industry, these sorts of power interests and profit motives are less pronounced, but they do create an incentive for companies to create trends for the teas that generate the most profit for them, and these teas are not necessarily the highest quality teas, since the highest-quality pure teas often result in a greater share of profits reaching the producer, with less room for mark-up by retailers. I explore this issue in more depth on my recent guest post Fair Trade and the Tea Industry on the Journey for Fair Trade blog.
• The concept of "trendiness" can become associated with an unhealthy way of thinking and acting - I explain this below, because I think it is the most sinister element of the culture of trends.

Trendiness and healthy thinking:

One belief that I embrace as a fundamental belief, is the idea that all people are valuable--innately valuable, not valuable because of their wealth, appearance, or even because of their intellect or character. One way that I think trends can become unhealthy are when they are used to negatively judge or dismiss other people (or groups of people, or businesses or organizations) as being somehow less worthwhile, because they are seen as less "trendy". Some examples of this are:

• That dress is SO 90's (when said in a negative tone)
• I can't believe he's still thinking like that (said with disgust)
• This business doesn't sell X, they clearly don't know what they're doing.

These statements have in common that they express some sort of negative judgement on a person, business, or group, like disdain, disgust, disapproval, because of a failure to follow a certain trend. I find that this is overstepping a boundary for me, crossing the line from disapproval or dislike of the activity or action (which is okay by me) to complete dismissal of the person or group (which I do not think is healthy).

Think you don't do these things yourself? I'd be cautious about jumping to the conclusion that you don't. There's one particular example that I've struggled with recently, and that is racism.

This photo of the KKK was taken by a photographer only identified as "Image Editor"; the photo is Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Racism, at least in its more overt forms, like those symbolized by the KKK (Ku Klux Klan), is "out". It is "uncool". A majority of people in the US not only dislike it, but, in its more extreme forms, find it disgusting, disturbing. The trend in American society is away from overtly racist statements. But when someone makes a remark that you perceive as racist, it is easy to jump on them, in your mind, or even out loud. But there is a difference between calling out a person on their remark, or believing that the remark is genuinely racist and disrespectful, and dismissing the person as a human being. This distinction took me quite some time to grasp; I do not think I had fully grasped it even at the age of 28. I find it hard to communicate this distinction, but here is my best attempt to sum it up:

• The unhealthy approach is to think or say something like: you're a really rotten or worthless human being for thinking or saying that.
• The healthy approach is to communicate something like: you're so much better than a rotten remark like that.

If you struggle with embracing the second way of thinking, remember Darth Vader; if Luke had killed him, he would have himself been killed. Luke, indeed, had tried to kill him repeatedly, and had solidly expressed the first way of thinking (disgust, hate) again and again. Yet Darth Vader still came through and saved Luke's life. If Darth Vader, one of the most famous bad-guys of all time, can come around, think of what a typical KKK member is capable of.

Hopefully, most of us are past (or were never into) the idea of judging another person by how "trendy" their clothing is, but I suspect that many of us still wrestle with the tougher issue of judging or dismissing people on the basis of things they do which we genuinely dislike or are genuinely disgusted by.

What do I do with this?

Because of the potential ugly side to the cultural construct of "trendiness", "coolness", or "hipness", I try to avoid promoting things as being "trendy" or "in", and I invite others to do the same. If you wish to promote something, whether it be a specific tea or type of tea, or a specific concept or idea, or even a certain fashion, I think that the most compelling way to do so is to share your own personal reason for liking it. The same goes for when you dislike something. Share your reasoning or just your feelings or intuition. But I would recommend to avoid making statements about something being "in" or "out", or any equivalent statements, because I think that this way of thinking can easily go in an unhealthy direction.

What do you think?

How do you feel about trends and trendiness? Do you think the advice I give tea companies in this post is sound? Do you believe that there is a relationship between a certain view of trendiness and the unhealthy ways of thinking that I described above? Does the racism example resonate with you? Can you think of other examples of these sorts of things in your life?

Fair Trade and the Tea Industry on Journey for Fair Trade

I recently shared a guest post with the blog Journey for Fair Trade. Journey for Fair Trade is a blog, run by Mitch Teberg, focusing on fair trade. Mitch is currently working with the United Nations Development Program, and recently moved from Vietnam to Afghanistan.



One thing I really like about this blog is that Mitch Teberg is looking to promote fair trade, but he also examines the fair trade organizations with a critical eye, and looks to give as much of a voice as possible to the producers of the products which are imported to the U.S. and other Western countries with fair trade certification labels. The blog often goes into considerable depth about potential criticisms of fair trade, and in one case, even organized some activism surrounding a fabricated news article about fair trade producers and child labor. I also like the way the blog integrates discussion of other sustainability-related issues, as I think fair trade is not just about wages or working conditions, but is also about long-term health and environmental issues in the communities producing the goods imported to the Western world.

If you're interested in reading a blog that is focused on fair trade, and that addresses all types of producers, broader than just tea, and broader than just agriculture in general, you may find this blog very interesting. Updates are relatively infrequent, but posts are quite deep.

My guest post, specifically about tea:

You can find my post on the blog; it is titled Fair Trade and the Tea Industry.

Truthfulness: Tea Companies: Be Cautious With Claims of Uniqueness

I recently read a post on SororiTea Sisters, a review of Assam Mothola White (White Assam) from Grey’s Teas. This post shared a commercial description of this tea, from the seller, which claims that "No other white teas are known to be produced in Assam." For those of you who don't know them, Grey's Teas is a tea company, based in the UK, which has quite a few interesting offerings in their catalog, such as an oolong produced in Assam, and white teas from Assam, Darjeeling, and other regions. I have never tried any of their teas though, but the company has definitely gotten my attention.

But their claim about no other white teas being produced in Assam raised a red flag for me. I'm not crazy about the passive voice ("...are known...") as it doesn't identify who is doing the "knowing" (or lack thereof). But I also had a gut feeling that this statement was untrue, when I read it. I have a good intuition for which types of teas, produced in which regions, are available, because of my work on RateTea. I did a quick check, using the powerful tools in RateTea that allow anyone (yes, you can do this too!) to search and filter for teas of a specific type or style, from a specific region. RateTea's listings of White Teas produced in Assam, India turned up 7 results:



Checking this list, I found Upton's offering (since retired from their catalogue) is indeed the same tea sold by Grey's Teas, from Methola or Mothola estate, as is the Assam white tea sold by Canton Tea Co and Stash Tea. But the other teas are different. Many are from Satrupa Tea Estate, and there are several distinct types or grades of tea available from this estate in Assam, all available through the Assam Tea Company, and some through other retailers.

So, this claim of uniqueness is an overstatement; Assam does indeed produce other white teas. I would urge Grey's Teas to update their description to reflect this!

Tea companies: be careful with claims (including uniqueness claims):

I urge companies to be cautious about making claims about your teas which depend on information that you may not have. Uniqueness is one example of this--uniqueness makes a claim not only about the tea you are describing, but about all other teas in an area or of a certain type. When making a claim of uniqueness, unless you have exhaustively travelled to a whole area and checked every estate, I don't think it's safe to make a claim about uniqueness. And keep in mind that producers and sellers may make false claims about their products' uniqueness in order to sell them, so be cautious about passing on a claim of uniqueness that a seller made to you. Instead, say: "We are not aware of any other white teas produced in Assam..."

This statement is more truthful because it speaks from your own personal experience rather than making a global statement. A global statement may or may not be true; a statement of your own personal knowledge is true.

Some ideas for rewording the description from Grey's Teas include:

• "Very few white teas are produced in Assam."
• "This is only one of a few white teas produced in Assam."

It is perfectly possible that Grey's tea wrote their description a long time ago, and that, when it was written, the statement was actually true. It is also possible that the company did not know of any other Assam white teas. In these cases, they could have written:

• "As of [whatever date], this was the only white tea produced in Assam."
• "This tea is to our knowledge the only white tea produced in Assam."
• "When we began carrying it, this was the only white tea we knew of produced in Assam."

These claims are more truthful, and their truth does not change when new information becomes available. This is because they speak from personal experience and/or include dates or historical info rather than making a claim of universal truth. These sorts of descriptions protect a company in the long-run, because they do not require diligently checking the description in the case that something changes and the description is no longer true.

False advertising can become legally problematic:

False claims of the uniqueness of a product are a form of false advertising that can range from a legal gray area to solidly illegal.

I seriously doubt that anyone would want to start a legal battle over something as trivial as the claim mentioned above, but as a general rule, making any false statement about your company's products can open you up to legal exposure, such as lawsuits from customers, competitors, or activist groups, or action from governmental agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. It also can look bad and discourage potential customers from buying your products, especially when you make a statement that a potential buyer knows to be untrue.

To impress potential customers with your knowledge, you want to speak from your experience and limit your marketing to material you know to be 100% truthful. No one knows everything, but it often conveys wisdom when a person communicates that they're aware of exactly where their knowledge ends.

What do you think?

As a tea shopper, how do you react when you encounter a claim that seems to be an overreach? How about if you work within a tea company? How do you react when a competing business makes a claim that somehow infringes on one of the products you sell? Do you consider how things might change in the future when you write descriptions of your products? Do you think that I am being nitpicky here, focusing on a tiny point, or do you think this is getting at an important issue of truthfulness in advertising?

And do you agree that in general, speaking from your direct experience and avoiding uncertain generalizations produces more truthful statements, and statements that retain their truthfulness better as time passes?

FTRN Fair Trade Photo Contest: Submit Your Photos Of Fair Trade Tea Producers

I am very interested in promoting fair trade in the world of tea, as it is a sad reality that the bulk of the profit margins on tea production still flow primarily into wealthier countries, whereas the poorer countries that account for most tea production enjoy a much smaller share of the profits. Fair trade is a powerful social movement, which aims to address this disparity of wealth and empower producers, as well as to work to promote sustainability in the communities that produce the goods imported into wealthier countries. There are a growing number of fair trade certified teas on the market, but tea remains a relatively small and obscure product within the total aggregation of all fair trade certified products.

A contest for fair trade photos:



I recently learned that the Fair Trade Resource Network is having a photo contest. The contest is already open, and will accept submissions through June 26th. Since I know that some of the readers of this blog have traveled to regions of tea production, and some of them work for tea companies that sell fair trade certified products, I wanted to bring this contest to people's attention. I think it would be great if there could be some photos submitted to this contest that come from areas of fair trade tea production.

The contest is time-sensitive: photos submitted sooner will appear higher up in the list for voting. Currently, there are only four entries though, making it an excellent time to submit new entries. The current photos depict producers of baskets, beads, bananas, and coffee. You may also want to see the winning photos from 2011's contest for ideas. Winning photos will be featured in the FTRN's calendar, with the top photo shown on the cover.

Using Screenshots To Comment Critically On Websites

I recently read a post by Ken MacBeth (Lahikmajoe) titled Trashing the Tea Competition. This post was very interesting to me, and is likely to inspire a second post beyond this one, but in this post, I want to talk about something that happens often, not just on the web, not just in tea culture, but across the board in our society. This is when people get curious about a negative perspective being expressed somewhere, and end up inadvertently giving this negative perspective a lot of voice.

In this post, Lahikmajoe describes what he thought was a particularly nasty commentary on a specific company's tea, tea that he actually enjoyed. In the comments, several people spoke up and said that they wished he would provide a link to this commentary.

Why I think it is not a good idea to include such a link:

Linking to a website sends traffic to the site, and also makes it more likely for that page to be returned higher in search results, and thus get more traffic. Web traffic has financial benefits, as it can lead to sales and increased advertising revenue. It also makes a message more likely to be repeated--in this case, a message that the author commenting on it (Lahikmajoe in this case) thinks is negative. So it is not in the best interests of the author (which might be you!) to link to the site that contains the message you are critical of.

My general rule:

It is best to avoid publicly linking to any site that you do not wish to encourage or promote.

This rule can be applied to negative commentary that you think oversteps some sort of ethical line, to tea company websites of businesses that you think engage in questionable practices, or to any website voicing views or engaging in practices that you do not wish to support.

If someone contacts you and is curious, you can share a link in private, but what can you do when you really want to comment on a site publicly? I think that in this case, the best way of handling it is a screenshot.

Why screenshots?

Displayed here is a screenshot of Cazort.net, included only as an example. I own the copyright on this site, so I can use this screenshot however I please. When using screenshots on which you own the copyright, care must be taken to see that your use constitutes fair use.



A screenshot displays the content of the website that you wish to comment on, but enables you to describe it, in the way it appears on the website, without actually linking to the website. A screenshot is often more informative to your readers than simply quoting the material, because it shows the material in context. Screenshots also allow you to blur out or paint over sensitive material, such as profanity, personal information, or anything else you wish not to display:



Websites are copyrighted, and taking a screenshot of a website constitutes making a copy of copyrighted material. However, the use of a screenshot, for the sole purpose of commentary, and showing only a small portion of the site, is protected under fair use. For a brief legal explanation, I recommend reading Copyright & Fair Use: Commentary and Criticism on the Stanford University Library's website; this is the best, most concise explanation of fair use that I have been able to find. There is a more detailed article on the use of screenshots in particular on lifehacker, Ask the Law Geek: Is publishing screenshots Fair Use?. In general, screenshots can infringe copyright, but, if used for commentary and in ways that do not reproduce more of a website than is needed for commentary, are allowed under fair use. When the amount of text or images included in a screenshot may cause problems with fair use, you can always crop the image or blur out more material.

Using a screenshot also avoids the duplication of text within search engines, which, if you are copying a large block of text, can make it appear as if you are stealing content with ill intentions.

How to make a screenshot differs depending on your operating system. Wikipedia's page on Screenshots has some explanations for different operating systems.

What do you think?

Do you use screenshots in the way described in this post? Do you think I have convinced you to avoid linking to websites with a negative message or other sites that you do not wish to support, and instead use screenshots for commentary?

Revisiting The Question Of Whether To Say "Herbal Tea"

Back in early 2010, I wrote a post Is Herbal Tea Tea? in which I explain. Recently, I read a post Let’s go there, shall we? on Joie de Tea, which expressed a similar sentiment. However, this post gets into an interesting aspect of this terminology, the question of inclusiveness vs. divisiveness:

...I regularly see people having other people jump down their throats before they can even have a sip of their lovely herbal tea, because the herbal-tea-drinking people called it tea rather than a tisane or an infusion. How tedious.

Let’s be inclusive, not divisive...

I found this post resonated with me quite deeply, not just because I also call these drinks "herbal teas", but because I could relate to the question of inclusiveness. I also get a gut feeling of some sort of exclusivity or snobbishness when I hear people forcefully insist on the correctness of the terms "tisane" or "herbal infusion", and even more so when they frame their statements in the negative, insisting on the "wrongness" of the term "herbal tea", or, in the most extreme cases, making personal attacks on people who use the phrase "herbal tea", such as by claiming that they "don't know anything about tea".

Why do I react this way? Experience with other pushy groups sheds some light:

Language is complex and dynamic. The meaning and connotations of words evolve over time, and even at a given time, not all people will use the same word a certain way. Furthermore, many words have specialized meanings within certain subcultures. Often, these "subcultures" can constitute people of a particular political ideology, or of particular religious beliefs.

There's nothing wrong with having specialized terminology, when it is necessary. But specialized language and jargon can cause harm in several ways. One way such language can go wrong is when it is used to exclude others, such as when people are judged by whether or not they follow the linguistic conventions of a small subculture (even when those conventions go against the usage of similar words in mainstream society). Another way in which language can go wrong is when it is used to push an ideology onto someone else.

Examples of pushy language:

An example of pushy political language would be how far-right conservatives describe as "socialist" any more liberal policy which they disagree with, or how far-left liberals might describe as "reactionary" or "facist" any conservative policy they disagree with. These uses of language, which differ from the widely-accepted definitions of these terms, serve to advance the agenda of the person using them, because they paint the opposing viewpoint in a negative light. Religion can also be one of the biggest offenders when it comes to using these sorts of negative labels (think "unbelievers", "heretics"); I am confident you can think up many of your own examples here.

Pushy language, in religion, politics, and other spheres, is usually much more subtle. One Philosophy or movement that I find uses language in ways I react negatively to is Ayn Rand's Objectivism. This movement uses language in several non-standard ways: one, the choice of name implies that the philosophy itself is objective--rather than having a neutral name and allowing people to choose for themselves whether or not they personally find the philosophy to be objective. Secondly, the philosophy uses certain words, like selfishness, quite differently from the mainstream uses of these words. The word "selfish" has a strong negative connotation in mainstream society, yet within the "Objectivist" philosophy it has a positive connotation.

Non-standard uses of language can restructure a person's value system:

I find these non-standard uses of language to be pushy because they can restructure a person's value system without their consent. When people begin to use language in a different way, it changes how they think. I am a huge believer in continuously questioning your beliefs, but I believe that people reach healthier conclusions when they question their beliefs consciously, rather than allowing their beliefs to be unconsciously restructured through processes like using special jargon. I find this to be a particular matter of concern because groups often choose their jargon or special language in such a way as to promote their own agenda (like the political examples above). When people allow for their beliefs to be restructured unconsciously, they open themselves up to being influenced by people or groups who would manipulate them for profit or gain, against the person's best interest, and also in potentially untruthful ways.

I think that this potential for unconscious manipulation of value systems is a very legitimate reason that people have for reacting negatively and defensively to language that is used in non-standard ways.

The religious group my friends and I are in the process of founding has discussed these issues at length. From the start, there was a strong resolve in our group to do everything we could to avoid being pushy or overstepping people's boundaries in attempts to advance our views. Because of this, one of the core rules of communication that we agreed upon was to Use language and definitions based on societal consensus. We are hoping that this rule, which few groups of any sort embrace as centrally as we do, will help us to create a novel religious organization that will succeed at avoiding the pitfalls of pushiness more successfully than past organizations have done.

Back to tea: what exactly is the mainstream definition of tea?

The mainstream definition of tea is a broad one. The word tea is not only used to refer to true teas, but also to a wide variety of other beverages prepared in the same manner as true tea. You can check the Dictionary.com definition of tea, which pulls from a number of different mainstream dictionaries, to verify this. The strict definition of tea as only referring to true teas made from the Camellia sinensis plant is one that is only agreed upon in a small subculture.

In conclusion: yes, I do think that insisting "tea" only be used to refer to true tea is divisive:

I hope I have convinced some people that there is indeed something inherently divisive about insisting that the word "tea" only be used to refer to true tea. I am a huge advocate for pure teas, and I have done and continue to do a lot of things to promote them, both in terms of sharing them with my friends, in terms of what I recommend to others, and in terms of how RateTea is structured. But I think that when people get too pedantic about the use of the term "tea", it actually harms this cause. It makes people react defensively, and it creates an inclusion-exclusion dynamic. This sort of decision harms the advancement of tea culture, and, if carried out in a business context, is a bad business decision because it can alienate potential customers.

You don't need to use the word "herbal tea". If you don't like it, then use whatever other term you'd like (tisane, herbal infusion, etc.). But, if you're going to criticize the use of this term, be mindful of how this criticism will be perceived...you may be having the opposite effect that you actually want to have!

Tea Companies Are Like People: Neither All Good Nor Evil

Recently, I've been involved in starting a novel religious group called Why This Way. One of the topics that we have discussed at length in the group is the idea of viewing people as whole people, rather than characterizing them in one-sided ways. In Why This Way, we have taken great care to agree on how we want to communicate with each other, and one of the key rules of communication we have agreed upon is that we do not want to attach subjective negative labels to people or groups of people.

In this post I want to explore the same concept as applied to tea companies. Tea companies are groups of people, made up of employees and owners. In the context of tea companies, some examples of subjective negative labels might be:

• Such-and-such company is an evil corporation.
• XYZ tea company is totally incompetent.
• That company is one giant scam.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, some of this may sound familiar, from my earlier post Constructive Criticism vs. Diatribes & Rants. If you've been reading my blog for even longer, you might find that I myself have not always been consistent about following this rule. This is in large part because it has only been recently in my life that I have come to learn the value of being conscious of these sorts of statements while communicating. So, before you say: "You are a hypocrite!" (A subjective negative label.) I want to come clean and admit that, if you look at my whole record of behavior and communication, yes, you will find certain hypocritical actions. But I am committed to following this sort of rule...it does not mean I will always do so perfectly, just that it is something I value.

In our group, we discussed many reasons for creating this rule. A lot of it, however, comes down to the fact that these sorts of statements are not truthful. Beyond this, however, we agreed that these sorts of statements tend not to be empowering, in that they are not good for effecting change in the world, and they also tend to have polarizing effects on people, often making people become defensive and making it less likely for them to listen. I want to delve into the question of the truthfulness of these statements.

People and tea companies are never wholly evil (nor wholly good):

The following picture shows the famous illustration of the devil, from the Codex Gigas, a famous medieval manuscript:

I find the devil to be an interesting concept. Whether viewed as a real entity, a spiritual abstraction, or a mythological entity, the devil is usually agreed to be wholly evil. People and tea companies, on the other hand, are never wholly evil (nor are they wholly good). Most people would agree that the first statement above about a company being an "evil corporation" is a subjective negative label, and a sort of exaggeration or distortion of truth. Corporations may do some harmful things, including things that are dishonest or even illegal, and they may act in ways that seem to show a prioritization of profit above the good of society, but it isn't terribly useful to characterize them as "evil", because even ones that ruthlessly pursue profits will usually carry out some positive functions in society, and even if the management is pursuing profit at all costs, there may be other employees within the corporation acting in more caring ways.

The second statement seems a little less strongly worded, but upon reflection, one realizes that it is also limited in its truthfulness. Competence (and incompetence) is relative, and the mere fact that a company is still in existence in some form or another shows a certain base level of competence. If a company (and all its employees) were truly "totally incompetent", it would not exist.

What about the third statement? I want to use this example because there are some companies out there that run scams, such as using false information to sell their products, or pocketing money and leaving creditors unpaid when a business folds. But is it necessarily useful or constructive to call a company something globally negative, like "one giant scam"?

An example: what exactly is a "scam" tea company?

In the course of my work on RateTea, I have come into contact with a broad range of tea companies. None of them is without flaws, but, no matter how bad any one of them gets, there is always a way it could be worse. There comes a point at which I make a decision (sometimes somewhat arbitrary) of whether or not to list the company on RateTea, but there is a whole range of tea companies out there. Let me give you an example of some companies that fall into the grey area:

• There are quite a few tea companies which sell high-quality tea, honestly labelled, at reasonable prices, and provide good customer service, but provide some false information, often about health or caffeine content, on their website, in order to promote their products.
• There are some tea companies which sell very low-quality tea, which, in my opinion, is not really worth buying (or drinking). As an example, I've received a few tea samples that I've thrown out without drinking. Thankfully, these sorts of examples are rare.
• There are some websites which look a little like tea company websites, but which consist exclusively of affiliate links to other websites--what looks superficially like a legitimate business is just a commission-based model. Thankfully, I've actually seen a pretty steep decline in these sorts of websites over the three years that I've been working on RateTea, which may be in part due to Google and other search engines getting smarter about preventing these sorts of people from drawing in web traffic.
• Some tea companies may sell decent-quality tea at a decent price, but use black hat (unethical) search engine optimization techniques to manipulate their visibility in search engines.
• I've encountered allegations of one company deliberately misrepresenting their products, and then going out of business, leaving a large amount of debt unpaid.
• There are a large number of companies that sell low-quality tea at high prices, promoted as a weight loss product. These companies range from packaged brands which actually can be found in some stores, to online companies consisting of a very simple website selling a single product. Some of these sites also do not sell directly, but just make money through affiliate links like the others mentioned above.

These sorts of situations are quite different from each other in their level of "scamminess", but they are also different from each other in how they are like scams.

I find it problematic to call a company a "scam" because this sort of statement does not communicate exactly what is going on. A global statement about a tea company being a complete scam communicates neither the severity nor type of scam being carried out. Also, from the perspective of the tea company, levying an accusation of being a "scam" seems like a hostile action intended only to harm the company, rather than a constructive criticism intended to encourage the company to improve its practices. If a company has some flaws, it can work to improve them, but if it is a "scam" the implication is that its whole business model is fraudulent and that it is beyond hope. And companies, even ones running the most harmful, overt scams, are still run by people, and like companies, people always have some redeeming good qualities.

I also find it problematic because people often use this sort of word in situations where it is not warranted. For example, I have seen people throw around these sorts of accusations in response to a bad customer service experience like a botched order that a company did not correct or handle to the customer's satisfaction.

If you want your message to be heard:

Making strong statements like calling a company evil, or calling a company a scam, in my opinion, is not the best way to get your message across. Although this sort of statement may attract attention, it is unlikely to encourage the company to improve its ethics or practices. And in the cases where a company really has done something egregiously terrible, I think it is best to communicate exactly what the company did, and let the action in question speak for itself.

Please hold me to these standards:

I have one last request for readers of this blog. If you see me making these sorts of statements about any tea company, any person, or any other group of people, please call me out on it. Like I said above, if you've read my blog for a long time you will realize that sometimes I have made these sorts of statements in the past. My work with Why This Way has inspired me to hold myself to a higher standard of communication, but it is hard to accomplish these sorts of changes alone, so I'd appreciate it if you can bug me if you see me slipping into any of these sorts of negative generalizations about people or groups of people. Thank you!

What do you think?

Do you agree with my general advice here? Have you ever thought about these sorts of issues? Are you willing to give me a hard time and call me out if you see me making these sorts of statements?