Jamba Juice to serve "heavenly" tea

The news from Jamba Juice is that its upcoming lineup of hot beverages includes "Heavenly Green Tea," made with matcha green tea, cane sugar, and vanilla.


I look forward to tasting one, although I will probably ask them to hold the cane sugar.


And with a bottle of vanilla extract, we could all make our own Heavenly Green Tea.



A farmhouse and its tea field. (Taken by yours truly in Kumamoto, Japan.)


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea market keeps on chooglin'

According to Global Industry Analysts, the global market for green tea will exceed 1.2 million tons by 2015.


GIA doesn't say how big the market is now — you have to buy the full report to find that out — but any way you slice it (or steam it or roll it), 1.2 million tons is a lot of tea.



I took this photo last summer at the estate of one of our growers in Kumamoto.


—Mellow Monk

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Damn the recession! Full steep ahead!

Despite the recession—or perhaps because of it—new tea shops continue to open.


This dovetails with another recent story—that people in the U.K. are drinking even more tea in these hard times.





—Mellow Monk

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Tea sales rise during recession

The word across the pond is that tea sales there are actually rising during tough economic times.


Seems people there—and everywhere else, too, I'm sure—are realizing that tea is not only healthy, but is also a lot easier on the wallet on a cup-by-cup basis than your typical fancy-shmancy frappumochalatteccino.



Healthy, relaxing ... and a beverage bargain, too.


—Mellow Monk

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Coffee in a can from a vending machine is big (and manly) in Japan

It's interesting, if you think about it, that Japan's beverage industry decided to market canned coffee as a manly drink.


For instance there's Suntory's Boss, whose label features an iconic man who looks suspiciously like Ernest Hemingway.


I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to market green tea as a manly drink. After all, we green tea drinkers include some pretty tough monks, for instance.



Just a few of the wide variety of canned coffee drinks sold out of Japan's ubiquitous vending machines.


—Mellow Monk

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Alright, which one of you wise guys put the eel in my drink?

In Japan broiled eel is considered a "summer stamina" food — something that gives you energy in the oppressive heat but without weighing you down.


So, for those folks unable to stop by their local unagi-ya, a beverage company created the next best thing: broiled eel-flavored soda, named "Eel Rising" (Unagi Nobori).


Even the name suggests power and energy. Don't you feel invigorated already?



This could be one of those times that you actually hope it's artificially flavored.


—Mellow Monk

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America's unhealthiest drinks

Numbered lists seem to be popular again—by "again" I mean, do you remember the Book of Lists?


For instance, Men's Health magazine has a list of the 20 unhealthiest drinks in America.


Hmm . . . if those are the unhealthiest drinks, then I wonder was the healthiest drink could be.



A cool, thirst-quenching version—perfect for summertime—of the world's healthiest drink.


—Mellow Monk

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Slow your roll with green tea

To mellow out, you can drink Drank, the "anti-energy drink" that "slows your roll" by inducing sleepiness with melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips.


Or you can drink green tea, whose theanine mellows without inducing sleepiness.


Addendum: And at least Drank isn't dangerous like the über-caffeinated energy drinks can be.



The "slow your roll" philosophy is a good one indeed. But it can be attained more naturally.


—Mellow Monk

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The song was wrong — green tea ginger ale is too sweet

Remember that series of Canada Dry Ginger Ale commercials from the '70s, in which celebrities like Isaac Hayes and Jack Elam sang the jingle "It's Not Too Sweet" to the tune of "Ain't She Sweet"?


Well, it seems that whoever at Canada Dry was in charge of concocting the company's Green Tea Ginger Ale never saw those commercials, because this review concludes that the drink is just too loaded with sugar:

Chug the whole [bottle], as I imagine many (most?) will do, and you've consumed the equivalent of 15 Domino sugar cubes. So now I have a few questions for Canada Dry. What were they THINKING?

As with so many other green tea-containing beverages out there, looks and labels can be deceiving. In other words, Grasshopper, if you want all the health benefits of green tea, then you should [drumroll, please] drink green tea.



Canada Dry, say it ain't so.


—Mellow Monk

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The great taste of that über-expensive tea may just be in your head—literally

A wine-tasting experiment by CalTech and Standford University's business school found that the pleasure centers in the brains of their subjects, which were electronically monitored, actually registered greater pleasure when drinking what they were told was a 90-dollar-a-bottle wine than when they drank the exact same wine that was presented to them as a different wine costing only 10 dollars per bottle.


Whereas we all know that exceedingly reasonably priced Mellow Monk teas taste good because they really do taste good, as customer feedback shows.


Some day I'll have to do a blind taste test against a much more expensive competitor. Any takers out there?



Purification water at the entrance of Kokuzo Shrine in Aso, Japan. The shrine is located at the inner edge of the volcanic caldera (valley) where Mellow Monk tea is grown. Yes, you are allowed to drink this water—that's what the ladles are for. In fact, the water at this particular shrine is astoundingly delicious. It's natural spring water right out of the surrounding mountains, and it is fantastic for brewing tea, too.


—Mellow Monk

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Sweetened drinks - a culprit in America's obesity epidemic

Americans are drinking themselves fat, say nutritionists. Soda pop and other sweetened drinks account for 10 percent of the calories in the American diet.


(But that doesn't mean that if you cut out sweetened drinks you get to eat more. . . . Well, maybe an extra cookie or two, but let's not push our luck, okay?)


And if you want to take off even more pounds, then why not switch from coffee to green tea?



Replace this with 100 percent calorie-free and 100 percent natural green tea—hot or cold.


—Mellow Monk

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Drinkable cosmetics

Here is the questionable beverage industry decision of the week: Coke's decision to partner with L'Oreal cosmetics to make a co-branded line of health-and-beauty drinks—or, to use their terminology, "nutraceutical" drinks.

What next, Pepto-Bismol sunblock?



The new Coke/L'Oreal health drinks.


—Mellow Monk

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Benzene in soft drinks

A while back an alarm was raised about the possibility of unsafe levels of benzene in "sodas" (the original reports were a little vague). Now it turns out it's not as bad as thought in terms of the number of at-risk products.

—Mellow Monk

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