If you\u2019re looking for a mix of coffee drinkers and tea drinkers, Saipan is one of the world\u2019s more exotic examples. So here\u2019s the latest from the coffee-or-tea front: According to a Sept. 1 article in the U.K. Daily Mail, tea offers some health benefits that coffee doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n
The article featured a study that was based on looking at some health and tea- and coffee- consumption habits for 131,401 people. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s just one article, and one study, among many, so I\u2019m offering it as an item of current interest, not as the final word on anything. <\/p>\n
As for conventional wisdom, I think most people, even coffee drinkers, would say that green tea is a healthy choice, but I don\u2019t know where, or even if, science will ever draw the line on this. <\/p>\n
Me, I\u2019m usually lined up for coffee simply because I grew up with it and I like it. <\/p>\n
Paradoxically enough, having a taste for coffee sometimes drives me into the arms of tea because in much of the world you can\u2019t get a decent cup of coffee. Nothing is worse than bad coffee. It\u2019s positively demoralizing.<\/p>\n
One of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s more famous quotes is, \u201cIf this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.\u201d In my book, this rates second only to \u201cWhere\u2019s the bathroom?\u201d when learning phrases in a foreign language.<\/p>\n
The Pew Research Center posted some interesting coffee and tea data in 2013. <\/p>\n
Eye-balling that information, if I had to settle on a global line of demarcation for coffee vs. tea, Finland would be a good candidate. West of that longitude, coffee is the generally the brew of choice. This includes western Europe and the Americas, with Great Britain being a notable exception. East of that longitude, tea is usually the winner. This includes Russia and Asia, though I\u2019ll note that the Philippines is one exception. But I\u2019m not going to tally all the exceptions, I\u2019m just looking at the general layout, and in that regard it\u2019s a fairly clear split.<\/p>\n
As for Africa, the data is a bit sparse, but coffee and tea are both represented.<\/p>\n
Globally, according to Pew\u2019s information, in terms of cups consumed, tea surpasses coffee. However, in terms of pounds produced globally, coffee outweighs tea by almost a two-to-one margin. A cup of tea requires less weight of product than a cup of coffee does. <\/p>\n
If you added up all the coffee and tea consumed in the world, it came to about 29 billion pounds for the year 2011. <\/p>\n
Well, for today we\u2019ve drained this topic to the bottom of the cup, so I\u2019ll just stir around some stray items.<\/p>\n
On the tea front, one item is that in Chinese, black tea is called \u201cred\u201d tea. Well, China should know; it is by far the world\u2019s largest producer of tea.<\/p>\n
Black tea and green tea come from the same basic type of plant. The difference is a function of how the leaves are processed after harvesting. <\/p>\n
I have no idea how to properly prepare tea. All I know is that whatever I do it\u2019s invariably wrong, so I let my friends handle those chores. After all, I\u2019m the kind of guy who would serve single-malt Scotch in a \u201cSmash Up Derby 1983 Championship\u201d beer mug, so I\u2019m not nearly qualified to deal with the nuances of fine tea preparation.<\/p>\n
On the coffee front, however, they\u2019ve got stuff that not even I can screw up. An American company called Keurig has hit the jackpot with a line of high-tech, single-serving coffee makers. The coffee comes in a little cartridge about the size of a golf ball. The cartridge is loaded into the machine, a button is pushed and, instant-presto, you\u2019ve got a fresh cup of coffee. These machines are at the luxury end of the spectrum, costing from $75 to $150 and more, but they prevent the scourge of coffee stewing on the burner and getting funky. <\/p>\n
There are a lot of things that come and go in life, but coffee and tea are two constants. Saipan is doing its share to contribute to the billions of pounds of annual consumption. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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