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.

"Herbal Water"? A Skeptical Review

This past thursday, July 19th, I had the pleasure of attending the Baltimore Ave Dollar Stroll, a fun and lively event that happens three times a year in West Philadelphia, twice in summer and once in early fall. This event features $1 items from a variety of restaurants and cafes. It falls on a thursday, so that it coincides with the smaller of the two days of the Clark Park Farmer's Market. This is the sort of event that I'd recommend going to if you know a lot of people who live in the neighborhood, and not otherwise. There are long lines, and the fun is mainly in the community and the opportunity to see and chat with your friends and neighbors while waiting and wandering. I loved it!

There wasn't much tea happening at this event, but I did notice a product which I found very intriguing, and which is tangentially related to the topic of herbal teas, and this was Ayala's Herbal Water:

This bucket of "herbal water" bottles, incidentally, was being sold by Mariposa Co-op, which I wrote about recently in my post about the tea bag selection in the co-op. I picked out a Lavender Mint "herbal water", pictured here:

I also had the opportunity to sample the Lemongrass Mint Vanilla flavor, which one of my friends bought.

What exactly is this "herbal water"?

These herbal waters are very simple: they are seltzer water or carbonated water, flavored with organic-certified herbal extracts and natural flavor.

How do I feel about these products?

I have mixed feelings about these products. On one level, I love that they offer a flavorful carbonated beverage that is not sweetened. As an alternative to typical soda / soft drinks, I think these are a great alternative, and given the choice of these herbal waters vs. conventional soda, I'd take these products any day.

But these products still seem like a bit of a waste to me; for a company emphasizing organics, they don't seem like the most sustainable choice. They involve a lot of energy-intensive activities, with the packaging, glass bottle, and marketing, merely for a small bottle of flavored water. Why not just fill your own bottle with tap water? They are also rather expensive, not particularly original, and have a much cheaper substitute good.

For years, supermarkets have been stocking flavored seltzer waters, which are just carbonated water with added natural flavorings. I have been buying these for a long time as an alternative to sweet sodas when I want a carbonated drink. These flavored seltzer waters are very cheap; most supermarkets sell them for under $1 a liter. The difference with Ayala's products are that they contain actual herbal extracts rather than being flavored exclusively with the vague "natural flavorings", which in the US, can refer to extracts and essential oils, but can also refer to highly-processed flavorings such as distillates, protein hydrolysates, and products of roasting, heating, or enzymolysis. Here's a link to the official definition of natural flavor in the US, in case anyone is interested.

For the record, Ayala's herbal waters still do contain natural flavorings. If you want a product flavored exclusively with extracts or essential oils, you'll need to locate your own water-soluble extracts and flavor your own seltzer water.

My review of the two "herbal waters" I tried:

To give Ayala credit, I did find each of these products considerably more nuanced tasting than the flavored seltzer waters available in the supermarket.

I preferred the lavender mint to the lemongrass mint vanilla, although I liked both. The lavender mint was crisp, clean, and refreshing. The flavoring struck me as relatively light. Overall, both bottles tasted more like seltzer water than they did like iced herbal tea. I would have preferred a significantly stronger flavoring.

My friend remarked that the lavender mint water tasted like soap to her. I can see this, but it did not bother me. I think a lot of people associate lavender with "soap" smells and less with "food" or "drink" smells. The lemongrass mint vanilla, I found slightly less refreshing, because the vanilla led to a creamy finish, rather than a crisp finish present in the other soda. As it was hot and I was drinking this drink to quench my thirst, I found the lavender mint more refreshing.

What do you think?

Have you tried these? Do you think you would try them? Would you ever buy them? Do you think these sorts of products are a good idea? Do you share my sentiment that it would be a great thing if people would switch away from sodas to these sorts of drinks, but that in the big picture, these are not the most sustainable option?

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?

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 Bag Selection in Mariposa Co-Op, and Tea Bags and Sustainability

This is the first of at least two posts on the topic of Mariposa Food Co-op. Mariposa has been in operation for quite some time, in West Philadelphia, but it recently moved into a large, new storefront on Baltimore Avenue, near 49th street. At the same time, the co-op opened up its store to the general public; in the past, they only allowed members to shop there.

I am interested in Mariposa for a variety of reasons. One of them is that, like many cooperatives, it is run by consensus. I am particularly interested in consensus as my friends and I have recently founded a new religious group, called Why This Way, which is run by consensus. But in this post, I want to write not about the co-op itself, but about its selection of tea bags:

This photo looks remarkably similar to a photo I took recently in a Whole Foods supermarket, and have yet to post, but hope to post in the near future.

The brands represented here include brands specializing in organic tea bags, such as Eden Organic, Choice Organic Teas, and Organic India, as well as mainstream tea bag brands, such as Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. Another brand, Traditional Medicinals, focusing on medicinal herbs, I find is a frequently-stocked product in co-ops and health food stores. Yogi Teas also has a good presence, and Good Earth's flagship tea also makes an appearance.

This store also sells bulk loose-leaf tea, something I'm quite excited about, and which I will cover in a future post. The bottom shelf, not pictured, did include two loose-leaf items: Ajiri Tea, a Kenyan black tea that I would highly recommend and that has favorable reviews on RateTea, and loose-leaf Yerba Mate from EcoTeas.

How do I feel about this tea bag selection?

To be honest, I am not excited by the selection here. The prices seem high to me, running from about $3.50 to $5.00 for a box of about 20 tea bags, with most brands centering around the 4.70-4.80 price range. That seems a lot to pay for a box of tea bags, especially when the same store sells bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, which are, in my opinion, considerably higher in quality, and which are much cheaper per cup.

I also feel a bit ambivalent about the "eco-friendly" brands of tea bags, like Eden Organics and Choice Organic Teas. I care a lot about sustainability. I think organic agriculture is a good idea, and, all other things being equal, I would not only prefer organic certified tea but may even pay a slight premium for it. But I also think that there are other issues to consider when considering environment impact.

These products are all highly packaged...boxed, most shrink-wrapped, and containing individually-packaged tea bags. Not all the packaging is biodegradable. A few of the products are fair-trade certified, but, as I explored in my recent guest post on Journey for Fair Trade about fair trade and the tea industry, the "value-added" processes like tea bag packaging results in profit that tends to be taken by Western countries, not a higher price paid to the original producers. And, also relating to the portion of profits going to producers vs. blenders and packers, few, if any, of these boxed products contain high-grade, whole-leaf tea.

It seems a little misguided to me that people are paying such a premium ($4.80 seems like a lot of money to me) for a box of tea bags with the idea that it is "eco-friendly" because it is organic certified, when the whole act of buying tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea has environmental and economic impacts that most of the people who value organic tea would consider negative. I almost wish the Co-op could just put a giant sign in front of all these products with an arrow pointing over to their bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, saying: "BUY AND DRINK LOOSE-LEAF TEA, IT IS WAY BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!", and of course, selling some convenient tea infusers to make the loose tea easily accessible to newcomers.

How about you? What do you think?

Do you think I'm coming down a bit too hard here on the practice of buying and drinking tea bags? Or do you agree with my points here, that it would be warranted to have a more aggressive push towards drinking loose-leaf tea, among an audience of shoppers concerned about the environment?

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.

Rishi Tea - Featured Tea Company

Today's feature is about Rishi Tea. Rishi Tea has been one of my favorite tea companies for a long time, since before I started RateTea.

In case you haven't visited it recently, Rishi redesigned their website. I like this website a lot more than the old one, which I liked a lot, although there's a small caveat about this new site which I describe below.



What I like about Rishi Tea:

• Huge selection of organic and fair trade offerings - Rishi is a clear leader in the area of sustainability, and in particular, Fair Trade certified loose-leaf tea. Although there are several newer companies that also focus on loose-leaf fair trade teas, including Arbor Teas and Shanti Tea, both of which I have had positive experiences with, Rishi was around long before these other companies. One thing I like about Rishi is that they go above and beyond; rather than focusing exclusively on fair trade certification, they also sell a number of traditionally produced Chinese teas that are produced by small growers but are neither organic nor fair trade certified. Rishi is also involved in the development of new varieties of tea, working with farmers pioneering new production methods, and those carrying traditional methods into new regions.
• Teas with a bold flavor - As I recently mentioned in my post about the aesthetics of different tea companies, I find that, to me, Rishi has its own signature qualities, reflected in the flavors and aromas of their teas. And I find that Rishi tends to select teas that have bolder flavors and are more likely to be edgy, stronger, and, in my opinion, more interesting. Rishi's aesthetic seems quite different from that of any other company, and different from both the aesthetic of mainstream British tea culture and Chinese and Japanese tea culture.
• Unusual teas - Although Rishi does sell quite a few standard types of tea, what excites me more is how their catalogue is chock full of what I would consider "unusual offerings", including both types of tea not widely available in Western countries, and styles of tea produced in regions in which they are not typically produced, like black tea from Taiwan, or Keemun produced in Hubei province. Rishi seems to be a prime example of a company that follows the sort of advice I gave in my recent post about choosing which teas to sell.
• Teas sold by individual ounce - I like that Rishi sells teas in the size as small as an ounce (about 28 grams). This is larger than most companies' sample sizes, but small enough that you are unlikely to spend a lot of money to end up with a lot of tea you don't like. The larger sample size of one ounce gives enough leaf to experiment several time with gong fu style brewing, and enables you to try a tea over time and acquire a taste for it, which I find may be important with Rishi because some of their teas tend towards the more bitter side and have many aspects of aroma which may be unfamiliar at first, but very pleasing as one develops a taste for them.

Rishi's teas are markedly pricier than most of the other companies that I like to buy from, like Upton Tea Imports. But I find that the premium is worth paying for, not only because of their focus on sustainability, but because of the quality of the tea itself. And even though many of their teas do have slightly higher pricing, they still have a broad range of pricing, and many inexpensive offerings as well.

A quibble about the new website:

One little quibble, in case anyone from Rishi is reading, and a piece of advice to other web designers. It seems highly unnatural to me to see the "Sign up for our e-newsletter" box in the upper-right corner. Convention on the web is for search boxes to appear in the upper right of a webpage. Rishi's search box is pushed lower down on the page. I find myself repeatedly returning to Rishi's site and typing search terms into the newsletter subscription box. The presence of this box is annoying, to say the least.



The screenshot above shows that, on my browser, the search box is awkwardly pushed down below the header, overlapping other interactive features on the site, like the sorting of teas. This is a small complaint, and hopefully the bumping down of this box out of the header is a simple bug that can be quickly fixed; overall, I love the new website, and I especially like Rishi's teas and the company's philosophy and approach.

Have you tried Rishi?

Do you also like the aesthetic of Rishi's teas? And do you like their approach of encouraging the production of teas of a particular style, in new regions? Do you like the distribution of teas in their catalogue? Do you like their new website?

Featured Tea Company: Two Leaves and a Bud

Today's featured tea company is Two Leaves and a Bud. The company also recently launched a new brand, Paisley Tea Co., focusing on more British-style teas.

Pictured is a screenshot from their website:



Two Leaves and a Bud is a tea company that focuses on high-quality tea in pyramid sachets. Their name is a reference to the standard plucking of two leaves and one bud, used for many standard grades of tea. Their teas are available in upscale supermarkets and also are served in a number of coffee shops.

My experience with this company and its teas:

I became familiar with this brand, and sampled most of their teas, when I lived in Delaware and would work on my laptop from Saxby's Coffee. Much of RateTea was programmed and designed from that coffee shop. You can find my reviews of these teas along with reviews by other people (this brand is one of the most often-reviewed brands on RateTea) on RateTea's page for Two Leaves and a Bud. I have yet to try any of the newer Paisley Tea Co. teas.

Personally, I cannot see myself ever buying this company's boxes of tea sachets. Buying them online, a box of 15 sachets is just under $8, which makes for over 50 cents a tea bag. Their bulk tea, on the other hand, is much more reasonably priced: $17 for a half pound, which, using a generous 2.5 grams of leaf per cup, works out to be under 20 cents a cup. I like to use this brand as an example of how when buying tea bags, you are paying for packaging. The bulk pricing offered by this company is, in my opinion, quite reasonable.

In spite of the fact that I am unlikely to buy this company's sachets, their main product, there is a ton that I like about this company, and I frequently enjoy their teas when they are served in a coffee shop.

What I like about Two Leaves and a Bud:

• The company offers loose-leaf tea - This point is not a given. Many companies who make the bulk of their sales in tea bags or sachets do not sell any loose tea. I don't know the exact portion of this company's sales that come through loose tea, but I suspect it is small, as I see their boxes of sachets for sale (and served in coffee shops) widely, and have only ever seen their loose tea displayed on their own website. But I would applaud this company for still offering loose leaf tea, even if it is not their big seller.
• Their tea is quite good - Among the mainstream brands of tea that I've sampled, the quality of the teas sold by this company is consistently high. I don't like all of their teas, but I like most of them, and many I even prefer to a number of loose-leaf teas I've sampled. The teas also have been rated favorably on RateTea by other reviewers. The company sells a number of pure teas, and I find does not skimp on the quality of the base teas used in their flavored teas and blends as well. The sachets contain generous quantities of relatively intact tea leaf, and intact herbs and spices, producing sachets that all can be successfully used with multiple infusions.
• Their selections are well-balanced - While I might be tempted to change a few of their offerings, Two Leaves and a Bud is actually one of the companies that inspired my recent post about choosing which teas to sell. This company carries a First Flush Darjeeling that, while it varies from year to year, is consistently on the greener side. This tea is a sharp contrast with the other black tea they sell, a strong, malty Assam. They carry a white peony, and a Tamaryokucha (unusual for a Western-focused company). Among flavored teas there is an Earl Grey and a Masala Chai, and they have some herbal blends, including straight chamomile, and a Rooibos-lemongrass blend, called African Sunset, which I like very much.
• A focus on sustainability - A majority of this company's teas are organic certified, but it doesn't stop there. In August of 2011, the company announced moving to biodegradable packaging. While I'd like to see more testing on whether this packaging (using the Reverte™ Oxo-Biodegradable system for biodegradation) actually biodegrades gracefully (my research suggests that it may not), I do think that this is a major step in the right direction, and places this company far ahead of other mainstream companies, like Lipton and many others, which are still using straight Nylon tea bags for their Pyramid Sachets, and have not expressed a commitment to move towards biodegradable packaging.

What do you think?

Have you tried any of this company's teas? How about the newly launched Paisley Tea Co. teas? What are your thoughts on the biodegradibilty of their packaging? Or their choices of teas to carry?

Featured Tea Company: Hampstead Tea

In addition to starting a series featuring tea bloggers, I am also starting a series featuring tea companies.

Today's tea company is Hampstead Tea. Hampstead Tea is based in the UK, and accordingly, is not well-known in the US. The company has a small selection of teas, and specializes in organic, fair trade, and biodynamic teas, also focusing on whole-leaf, loose-leaf teas, although they also sell whole-leaf tea in sachets. My experience has been that people in the U.S. tend not to know of this company; I rarely hear or read people commenting about it, and as of writing this post, there are no reviews of Hampstead on RateTea other than my own. Since my audience is primarily in the U.S., I'd like to draw attention to this company.

I don't know if Hampstead sells tea directly outside of the UK (their website's prices are in pounds), but a quick search with Google Products shows that their teas are easily available for ordering in the U.S., and, as I describe below, I have even seen them in stores here.

How did I learn about this company?

I learned of this company through a rather unusual means, through the discount food section in TJ Maxx. TJ Maxx is a discount store best known for selling clothing (which constitutes an overwhelming majority of the store's stock). But these stores also sell some food products, and among them, typically sell some tea. The tea selection is very hit-or-miss; the few times I have been in the store, I haven't found anything I wanted to buy. But one time, my dad saw some Darjeeling tea from Hampstead Tea, certified both organic and fair trade, and picked it up for me.

When I tried it, I was impressed. The tea was from Makaibari Estate, which I wrote about previously, and which is my favorite Darjeeling estate, both by flavor and by its ecologically-friendly practices. And when I looked up the price of the tea sold by Hampstead, I was also impressed: it was quite reasoanble.

How good was their Darjeeling? I'll just say it was one of those teas that I kept wanting to drink every morning until it was gone, and then wished I had more of. I later tried their English Breakfast, and it was also quite good (although lighter than typical for this style) and I used it up rather quickly as well, although I preferred their Darjeeling.

What do I like about Hampstead Tea?

• Their loose-leaf Darjeeling is unparalleled in quality in its price range.
• Hampstead focuses on organic, fair-trade, and biodynamically grown teas.
• Hampstead offers an unusual combination of a company that is rooted solidly in the British tea tradition, yet is a leader both in terms of organics and fair-trade, and the quality and value of its tea.

So, if you value sustainability and like Darjeeling tea, and you have an opportunity to pick up something from Hampstead, I'd recommend doing so. I have yet to try anything other than their Darjeeling or English Breakfast, so I'd be curious to see if their other teas are also good as well.

Have you heard of Hampstead Tea or tried their teas?

I'm a bit curious...how many of you all knew of this company? How many of you have tried their teas? Have you tried anything other than the two teas of theirs that I sampled? And how many of you are learning about this company for the first time?

Systems Thinking and the Benefits of Thinking Holistically About Tea and Everything

This post is about systems thinking, which is related to thinking holistically. Wikipedia has an extensive article about systems thinking; it's a useful article, but is a bit rough around the edges. Here I want to explain, in the context of the world of tea, what systems thinking is, and how it can benefit you.

An illustration of systems:

A system, generally defined, is a combination of interacting components which form a cohesive whole with interesting properties of its own.



Pictured here are four systems: M51: Cosmic Whirlpool, two colliding galaxies, some tea gardens in Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India, a tea shop in Kunming, Yunnan, China, and a diagram of a typical plant cell (which could easily be the cell of a tea plant). These pictures illustrate that systems can exist at vastly different spatial scales, from the cosmic to the microscopic, and that they can be natural or can involve human civilization.

Systems are complex, and often exhibit bizarre, interesting, and beautiful phenomena, which is what leads people to describe them at times as complex systems.

What exactly is a system?

A system is more than just a collection of things. If you collect a bunch of loose teas and throw them in your cupboard, you have a tea collection, not a system. A system is something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You might have a system of organizing your tea, but in this case, the system lies in your thoughts and practices, not the teas themselves.



This picture, titled "Tea in the Garden" by Albert Chevallier Tayler, shows a group of people gathered for tea. Groups of people are examples of systems.

Have you ever noticed that when a group of people gets together, the group takes on characteristics that the individuals in the group do not have alone? In some cases, a group might be much more effective at solving problems or getting work done than the individuals alone, or perhaps a quirky and fun sort of humor comes out, but in other cases, conflicts arise that did not exist when people were just operating as individuals. These new properties of the group are one of the key features of complex systems. Any group of interacting people forms a system: families, communities, classes in school, businesses and organization, casual social circles, political groups.

Systems are ubiquitous in biology and ecology. Individual biological cells are systems, as they have many individual parts that work together in complex ways. Within the human body, there are many systems: the circulatory system, the digestive system, the brain and nervous system. A person, or any life form, is also a system.



Cities, like one of my favorite cities pictured here, are systems.

Systems also abound in business: each individual business is a system, and the economy of a town, city, or region is itself a system. Furthermore, businesses operate within and are constrained by systems, including the economic system of society as a whole, as well as local and national political systems, and the system of culture in society, as well as local and regional subcultures.

Systems thinking vs. mechanical or linear thinking:

I find that systems thinking is best described by contrasting it with other types of thinking, which I like to call mechanical thinking or linear thinking. Mechanical thinking treats things as machines, and tends to use reductionist reasoning (understanding something by taking it apart or looking at the pieces). This type of thinking is highly logical, and is often very good at solving problems that are clearly stated.

Mechanical thinking has its place; without engineering, which is a discipline founded mostly on linear thinking, we would not have the complex buildings or technology that many of us take for granted in our modern world. And straightforward, linear thinking is also necessary in many aspects of life, and business. But this way of thinking can be severely limiting when dealing with systems when we rely on it exclusively.

Examples demonstrating the misapplication of mechanical thinking:

• This tea, which tasted great yesterday, tastes bad today. I must have steeped it too long, or used water which was too hot.


• I want to make more money through my tea website. I need to get more visitors to my site, to increase the conversion rate (rate of making a sale) for visitors, or to increase the amount of tea purchased per sale.


• My tea growing operation (or anything-growing operation) is struggling to make ends meet. I need to find some way to cut my costs, or increase the yield per acre.

These misuses of mechanical thinking can lead from relatively unimportant consequences, like a person puzzling for no good reason at why they can't brew their tea properly, to more serious ones, like an online tea company owner making some bad business decisions, to catastrophic ones, such as agribusiness engaging in farming practices that lay off workers and destroy the environment.

One particularly straightforward example of the failure of linear thinking, in engineering, is explained in an article I wrote about flood prevention. An individual property owner can protect themselves from some short-term flooding damage by making changes to their property to run water off their property as quickly as possible. But, collectively, if everyone in a region follows these practices, catastrophic flooding will become a much bigger problem. The optimal solution for a region as a whole is for each property owner to minimize the runoff from their property.



Much of the flooding that happens in the U.S. is preventable, as it is caused by land-use practices that speed the runoff of water.

There are numerous similar issues in tea production, and in agriculture in general. I don't have any experience with tea cultivation, but I have a lot of experience with small-scale gardening, and I have researched the agricultural system in the U.S. a lot. Here in the U.S., mechanistic thinking has resulted in a move towards monoculture crops, cultivated by chemically-intensive farming methods...fewer people are involved in farming, the farming happens in ways that are damaging to the environment, and the produced food is of much lower quality.

Systems thinking, or holistic thinking, can lead us out of these sorts of binds. Thinking holistically is an essential part of sustainability. Systems thinking does not replace or contradict linear thinking, it just steps back and looks at the big picture in addition to the details. Often, whereas linear thinking is good at answering questions that are correctly posed, systems thinking is good at evaluating whether we are asking the right question, or coming up with creative solutions.

Examples of systems thinking in these same cases:

• This tea, which tasted great yesterday, tastes bad today. Maybe I steeped it too long or used water which was too hot, or maybe I'm perceiving it differently because I'm in a bad mood today, or because I ate different food before drinking it.


• I want to make more money through my tea website. I could try reaching a new audience, try improving the experience people have on the site, or try carrying unique offerings which will make my company stand out.


• My tea growing operation is struggling to make ends meet. Maybe by developing new cultivars, pioneering new ecologically-friendly farming methods, I can attract attention and sell the teas for a higher price. Maybe by banding together with other tea producers, we can solve problems that we cannot overcome on our own. Maybe we can find ways to eliminate middlemen and more directly access the higher profit-margins historically available in Western markets. Maybe we can influence local or national government policies and regulations in ways that reshape the business environment in ways that are better both for me and for my community.

The latter approach is highlighted in the approach Kenya has been taking to tea cultivation. RateTea's page on Kenya explains this in more depth. The approach being taken in Kenya does focus on bottom-line factors like cost and yield-per-acre, but it also seeks, unlike agriculture policies in the U.S., to reduce costs through reducing energy and chemical inputs, and to create cultivars with a broad range of adaptability in the face of global climate change, which poses a particular risk to farming in Kenya, where much of the country is too arid for normal western-style agriculture. Another example, which I discovered through a post by Jackie on the Tea Trade forums, from a different part of the world, is happening in India, where small tea growers are creating their own brand of tea, an idea that came up in self-help groups of small tea growers and tea factories. The people involved in this movement have also worked to encourage the Tea Board of India to get on board with some of these initiatives, and they seem to be having some success.

What do you think?

Do you think about systems and systems thinking? Do you find systems thinking helpful in your life and/or in your business?

Tea Tree Oil - Not Related to Tea, But Interesting On Its Own

In my recent top 5 post, I noted that tea tree oil was the number two search result starting with "tea". I actually just bought some tea tree oil, and, although it is not related to tea in any way other than by name, I thought, having had it come up on my blog as well as finding its way into my medicine cabinet, it would be worth writing about.



Tea tree oil, shown above, is colorless and watery, with a slightly herbal, anti-septic sort of odor. Although it is called an oil, it mixes more readily with water or alcohol than with true oils.

What exactly is "tea tree oil"?

Tea tree oil refers to the essential oil of a plant, Melaleuca alternifolia, which is in the Myrtle family, related to lemon myrtle, but not closely related to the tea plant, not even in the same order. Wikipedia has a good article on tea tree oil as well as an article on the species.

Uses of tea tree oil:

Tea tree oil is used primarily as an antiseptic. It has antibacterial and antifungal properties, which have been well-established through scientific study, and it also has antiviral properties. It can also be used against infections caused by parasites, such as mites or lice.



There is solid science backing many of these uses, and the oil has been found to be as effective as a number of synthetic drugs; the Wikipedia article has numerous links to scientific studies, and google scholar turns up a lot more (thousands of results) than can be found on that page. The chemical responsible for many of tea tree oil's antimicrobial properties is called Terpinen-4-ol; this chemical, pictured above, is also present in other plants, and is the main component of the essential oil of nutmeg.

Points of caution when using tea tree oil:

Tea tree oil is toxic if eaten or taken internally. This issue is especially a matter of concern for pets, as many pets groom themselves (involving licking) and can poison themselves by licking an area of their skin to which tea tree oil has been applied. A certain portion of people react allergically or with skin irritation to its application. When I purchased this product, it came with a sensible warning to, before using it, apply a small amount of oil to a healthy test area on the forearm, and wait 24 hours to assess whether you have a reaction.

Why did I buy it?

One thing that I have been doing, gradually, over the course of many years, is phasing out the use of synthetic chemicals in personal care products, and replacing them with natural products. There are compelling reasons to use natural products over synthetic products, both from a personal health perspective, and from the perspective of environmental sustainability.

Herbal products tend to be safer (although this is not always the case) than synthetic drugs:

In terms of health, a lot of natural products are much safer than synthetic drugs, at the doses required to be similarly effective. This safety can be measured in terms of lower rates of side effects and toxicity. I see this pattern all the time in the course of researching herbs on RateTea, such as hibiscus, which is as effective as, and much safer than, certain prescription anti-hypertensive medications. (RateTea, in case you have not noticed, has a growing collection of articles on specific herbal teas, with extensive sections on the health and medicinal properties of a number of herbs.) The body of scientific research for most herbs is smaller than the body of scientific research on most drugs, in part because of the absence of the profit motive, and in part because of a historical (and hopefully, waning) focus in Western society on synthetic drugs. However, as time goes on, the body of research supporting herbal products is continually growing, and we are learning more about their safety and efficacy. Tea tree oil is one product which has been fairly well-studied, and is considerably safer than a number of other topical antimicrobial agents.

Synthetic drugs can be persistent in the environment and damage ecosystems:

Synthetic drugs, including common over-the-counter ones, can be persistent in the environment. For example, clotrimazole, a common ingredient in over-the-counter antifungal creams, and triclosan, a common anti-microbial agent used in many personal care products, have been found to act together as marine pollutants, harming communities of microalgae and disrupting aquatic ecosystems. I picked these two examples because they are typically used for the same purposes as tea tree oil, so the natural oil would make a good alternative or substitute to these products. Incidentally, these two synthetic drugs are not without concerns about their safety and impacts on health.

Naturally occurring chemicals are not always safer or less persistent, but as a general trend, they tend to be more likely to break down. Part of this is because naturally-occurring chemicals have existed for years, so organisms have already evolved ways to break them down.

What do you think?

Have you ever used tea tree oil, or any products containing it? Do you have any opinion on it or any relevant experiences to share? Do you think about the persistence of chemicals in the environment when choosing what sorts of products to buy? Do you make an effort to use natural products in place of synthetic drugs wherever possible?

Trader Joe's Tea - And Commentary On The Chain As A Whole

Some time ago I wrote a long post about Tea at Wegmans Supermarket, which I followed up on by reviewing nine of Wemgans' Teas and herbal teas on RateTea. This post is about another supermarket chain: Trader Joe's. The following picture shows a Trader Joe's that I have visited before, in Media, PA, although this is not the store I regularly shop at. If you've seen me with my hat, the flower (a poppy) in my hat was a gift from a veteran outside this store, after I donated some money. This store was built inside the old Media armory, which also houses the Pennsylvania Veteran's Museum:



Trader Joe's and Wegmans share a few things in common: they are both perceived as relatively high-end supermarket chains, catering to people who like food and want higher-quality products. But the similarities end there. Both the tea selection and the stores as a whole are vastly different.

Trader Joe's Tea:

Tea is not Trader Joe's strong suit. The company does sell its own brand of tea. However, the tea is only available in tea bags, and as tea bags go, I personally find them quite disappointing. If you read reviews of Trader Joe's Tea on RateTea, you'll see that, as of writing this, all of their tea ratings on the site are in the 40-50 range (out of 100). They're not terrible, but no one seems to love them either. There are no single-region teas, and no loose-leaf teas.



Trader Joe's also does not seem to put as much effort into tea as they do coffee. The company has a full four pages on their website about coffee, and not one page on tea. Their coffee offerings are also, in my opinion, clearly superior to their tea offerings: they sell single-origin coffee, including some shade-grown coffee.

I do believe that, with little effort, Trader Joe's could do better. Most of Trader Joe's products are consistently high quality for a relatively low price, and their tea seems to fall outside this pattern: it is average-priced, but strikes me as below-average in quality. Even if they just wanted to stock tea bags, they could stock higher-quality tea bags. Maybe they could throw in an offering or two from Ten Ren Tea, which, in my opinion, offers one of the best quality-to-price ratios among simple tea bags. Even offering just Foojoy tea bags would be a step up in quality (and a step down in price) from what they currently sell. And there are so many great companies out there selling simple tea bags that are better than what Trader Joe's offers, and lower in price. Why not throw some single-region teas in the mix?

If I were running Trader Joe's:

If I were running Trader Joe's, I'd make the following changes:

• Sell finum basket infusers in the tea section, and sell some boxes of loose-leaf tea. I'd search long and hard to find a product offering superior quality at a low price, like the three teas I featured in my post cheap tea: loose-leaf teas offering outstanding value.
• I'd put a big, and cute sign next to the loose-leaf tea for about 6 months after stocking it, saying something to the effect of: "Loose-leaf tea saves money, protects the environment, and is superior in flavor." These are three things that Trader Joe's customers seem to care about, and I think it would probably make the loose-leaf tea sell quickly, even among people who had not ever tried loose-leaf tea before.
• I'd put an equal amount of pages on their website about tea as about coffee. I'd highlight the individual products they offer, and draw attention to the fact that the company was now selling loose-leaf tea, and explain the benefits of loose-leaf tea in terms of price, quality, and sustainability.
• I'd find a new supplier for their private-label brand of tea bags. From what I've tried of them, I don't think their current tea bags compare well to what else is out there, even among low-end tea bags.
• I'd add single-region tea bags, like Darjeeling, Assam, and I'd probably offer some of the most popular Japanese styles of green tea, like hojicha and genmaicha, and maybe some Chinese teas as well, like oolongs and green tea. I know these things exist because I've had decent tea in tea bags for a fair price from brands like Ten Ren Tea, Foojoy, Harney and Sons, and Jacksons of Piccadilly.

In short, all Trader Joe's needs to do is to start thinking more about what tea they offer. The offerings now seem to reflect a lack of consideration or focus on this product, like tea is merely an afterthought.

Trader Joe's as a Whole:

While I'm writing on the topic of Trader Joe's, I want to comment on the chain as a whole. I shop here semi-regularly (every couple of months) and there is a lot I like about the store. But there's also a lot that I dislike.

Strengths:

In my opinion, the biggest strength of Trader Joe's is that it has consistently fair prices on products that are consistently above average quality. I think the best products to buy at Trader Joe's are packaged products that you can buy in relatively large quantities. I buy such things at this store as raw nuts, dried fruit, kalamata olives in glass jars, canned smoked herring, and massive bars of 70% dark chocolate. I also buy a fair amount of cheese and chicken sausage at the store.

I also want to mention some strengths of this store, other than the quality of the products: the employees are very courteous, which, according to my friends who have worked at this store, follows naturally from the fact that Trader Joe's treats their employees very well and the store is a pleasant place to work. I also like the no-nonsense pricing -- there are no sales or complex deals, only consistently fair prices. Another benefit of shopping here is that the store keeps enough staff on hand so that lines stay short, even when the store is busy.

Weaknesses:

Trader Joe's produce section is close to what I would consider an epic fail. Nearly all the produce is shipped in from very far away; the chain lags behind even the most "ghetto" supermarkets in terms of its lack of locally-grown or even semi-locally-grown produce. Much of the produce is packaged, and a very large portion of it originates outside the country. Once in a rare while I've picked up a good batch of something or other here, but my experiences, by and large, with the produce have been pretty bad.

Trader Joe's also fails when it comes to the sustainability of their fish offerings (with the exception of the canned fish I mentioned above). There is no fresh fish in the store, only canned fish and frozen, packaged fish, which can be fine, except for the problem that much of what the company sells is among the worst choices available from the perspective of sustainability and health. I use Seafood Watch and EDF's Seafood Selector to guide my choices of what fish to buy, and a large portion of what Trader Joe's stocks is on the "Avoid" or "Eco-Worst" list of these organizations, not to mention that many are also marked as being high in mercury and/or PCB's.

In terms of the store itself, some other downsides of this chain are that the store interiors tend to be cramped and have traffic jams during busy times of day, and that many of the store's parking lots also tend to be cramped. I have also noticed that some of their stores in urban areas have a pedestrian-unfriendly design. For example, there is a Trader Joe's on market street in Philadelphia, but you can only enter from the rear of the building, where the parking lot is--friendly to drivers but unfriendly to walkers or people arriving from the trolley stop.

What do you think?

Do you shop at Trader Joe's? What do you think of their tea offerings? Do you think they could do better? How about the chain as a whole?

What Happened to Admari Tea? And Some Subtle Points On Language In Tea Marketing

I recently learned that Admari Tea has undergone a fairly radical transformation. Admari tea was a small tea company based in Midland Park, NJ. The company has moved to Miami, FL, but perhaps more importantly, it has shifted its focus dramatically, discontinuing its sales of all loose-leaf teas, and instead selling only tea bags.



Admari Tea's new website has two quotes that I want to highlight:

“A Buddhist monk once asked his master, ‘No matter what lies ahead, what is the Way?” The master quickly replied, “The Way is your daily life.’ This is the very essence of The Way of Tea. The principles of the Way of Tea are directed towards all of one’s existence, not just the part that takes place in the tearoom.” (Excerpt from Tea Life, Tea Mind by Soshitsu Sen XV)

And later on the page:

The way of tea is your daily life; your daily existence. The beautiful ritual of tea and respect for a simple ingredient, when done with reverence, can carry over, and bring meaning to every aspect of your life. At Admari Tea we recognize that in the modern world, the ritual must sometimes take a back seat to the hectic pace of life. So we are bringing the quality, the beauty and the reverence to you.

I totally understand that there is a large market for tea bags in this country, and globally, including a market for high-quality whole-leaf tea in pyramid sachets, and that companies are going to want to fill this business niche. However, there is something about the message being put forth by Admari tea that does not resonate well with me.

I want to go into depth about how I perceive this company's new message and marketing, because I think that the company's marketing has some negative elements to it that may alienate potential customers, and I think they can make a few simple modifications to the language in their new marketing that would help them to engage with potential customers in a more positive way. My remarks here may seem nitpicky, but I think they are important: sometimes tiny changes in wording can produce profound differences in how people react to language. I think the case below is one where a few very small changes could produce very large improvements in perception.

What are tea bags about?

Tea bags are about convenience. I have never heard any compelling argument in favor of tea bags, other than the convenience argument. Tea bags standardize the brewing process, save time, and allow people to brew tea with less equipment--all of these boil down to convenience. But tea bags require resources, which makes them inferior from a value and sustainability perspective. They also take away the control and flexibility of measuring out an exact amount of leaf, and they take away some of the possible benefits of using different brewing vessels or methods, such as mug brewing of loose-leaf tea. They are associated with a faster pace of life, which emphasizes quick and convenient consumption of food. On a spiritual level, they disconnect people from their tea and its origins; they move away from experiencing tea as a whole food and as slow food and move towards experiencing tea as an industrial product or consumer product.

It is certainly possible to experience tea more richly while using teabags, by being more mindful of the aromas, experiencing it as slow food, seeking out higher-quality tea, and putting care into brewing it, as I did in my post Multiple Infusions of a Tea Bag. But this type of experience is somewhat at odds with the experience of convenience and the fast pace of life.

A contradiction in marketing and message?

I think Admari tea is presenting a bit of a muddled message or apparent contradiction in their marketing. On the one hand, they're citing one of the quotes from the Sen Sōshitsu, referencing Buddhism, and talking about the "way of tea", the ritual of tea, respect for tea as an ingredient, and presenting a general approach of mindfulness about one's food. But on the other hand, they are caving into societal pressures. When they say: "...the ritual must sometimes take a back seat to the hectic pace of life." this seems like a cop-out to me.

And not only does this statement feel like a cop-out, it also feels like an intrusion or affront, like it is directly assaulting some core aspect of my beliefs or value system, and I imagine that many others may react similarly, even if they are not able to articulate it as thoroughly as I do here. Why?

A key issue is how they present "the hectic pace of life" as if it were a universal, immutable aspect of the world. Life is not inherently hectic or fast-paced. It can be fast-paced, or slow-paced, depending on who, where, and when you are talking about. A more honest way of wording this would be "...if your life is hectic or fast-paced..." or "...the hectic times in your life..." I also particularly object to the wording of their statement, using the word must. The hectic pace of our modern society is not inevitable, and, while some people are still caught up in it, it is not necessarily a good thing. And even when presented with hectic or fast-paced circumstances, people can respond in different ways, and often, the most productive and healthy way to react is to take a brief time for a meditative break, which, incidentally, one can sometimes do by taking the time to brew a cup of tea and drink it mindfully.

I think that statements that imply that the fast pace of life is somehow innate, universal, and unchangeable, actually cause harm by legitimizing the fast-pace of things even when it is harmful to people on a spiritual, physical, or emotional level, or harmful to society as a whole. And they cause harm by making people believe that life is always that way, and that one must cave into societal pressures to act and live that way, even when this way is destructive. A healthier viewpoint is one in which a person realizes that life will sometimes be fast-paced and other times slower, and that one can be empowered to influence the pace, speeding it up when it is too slow and slowing it down when it is too fast.

More, on the use of the term "reverence":

Another point which I object to occurs in the following sentence. After all the grandiose talk about the way of tea, their claim: "So we are bringing the quality, the beauty and the reverence to you" seems overstated, particularly in the use of the term reverence. Admari Tea is bringing a tea bag to the marketplace; it may have quality to back it up, and beauty, but reverence is something that you cannot package or sell as a product. Reverence is something that people must bring of their own accord to the way they experience tea. And I think that packaging a product in a tea bag actually places a barrier that makes it more difficult (although not impossible) to experience reverence for one's tea. To use this word, which typically is reserved for spiritual or religious topics, in the context of a consumer product, I think oversteps a boundary for me, and also elicits a negative reaction. Their use of the word reverence in this context seems to cheapen the word, and it strikes me as a bit irreverent.

Integrity in marketing:

I'm a big fan of honesty and integrity in marketing. Companies can and do market top-quality whole leaf tea in high-quality sachets. There is no guarantee that loose-leaf tea is better in quality than tea bags. Also, there is large existing market demand for tea bags, and I would not negatively judge a company just because they chose to sell tea bags (as I explain more in my recent post). But I do think that Admari Tea is trying to pull itself in two different directions here.

I think integrity in marketing is not just a question of simple factual matters, but also encompasses the spirit of the marketing. I object to some of their use of language in marketing, and as I am someone who tends not to be easily offended, I suspect that others may also react negatively as well, especially to their combination of referencing Buddhism and the Sen Sōshitsu, and using the word reverence, in the context of a move that most people would probably see as moving in the opposite direction, away from these concepts.

A recommendation for Admari Tea:

I think Admari Tea would benefit from softening their use of marketing in such a way that is more honest and avoids some of the apparent contradictions that I raised here, and I'd also suggest that they still offer some loose-leaf tea for sale, even if it is a slight inconvenience or results in a small financial loss. While it is understandable, given the constraints of market demand in our society, that some tea companies would choose to focus on tea bags, I think that it is important to always at least allow shoppers the option of the best possible choice, especially from the perspective of value and sustainability, which is loose-leaf tea. Both of these changes would make me think more favorable of them as a company. The indirect benefits to Admari Tea in terms of greater perception among serious tea drinkers and those with a more religious or spiritual inclination would more than offset any small financial loss associated with making these changes.

What do you think?

How do you react to the examples of Admari Tea's marketing that I gave here? How about other companies using similar language and rhetoric to market their products? Do you agree with my suggestions, or do you think you'd make different suggestions? Do you think that my suggestions would result in a tangible economic benefit to Admari Tea?