The Green Tea conspiracy?

reply to post by urbal

Well that is where confusion comes in, because that article wants to (rather unsuccessfully by my interpretation) balance paranoid anti-vitamin vs. accepting pro-health-industry claims information.
Just proving something is not instantly poisonous leaves all kinds of doors of interpretation wide open.
It certainly doesn't prove it's good for you either.

Hey thank you for a great topic, this is actually a real conspiracy theory thread and it definitely has a legitimate argument.

Now I'm not an expert on green tea or anything but I go to Japan every year and my grandparents make me real green tea and that is good stuff. Now I've never had green tea in America, but from what I know about this green tea thing I would say it is a traditional Oriental drink that was brought over to the Western World to be mass produced and marketed for profit, targeting the Western population's biggest concerns which included weight loss, stress relief, yada yada yada, complete bs.

Green Tea comes from a culture where people have healthy diets and are generally skinny and live long... so people took this information and said Green Tea is what makes Oriental skinny and live long, and somehow convinced the dumb and ignorant people of the Western World that Green Tea would help to make them more Asian, while in the mean time Western Green Tea producers were loading their Green Tea with addictive substances so they could make more money.

Now as I said, I am no expert on Green Tea, but the Western World is also known for taking things from other cultures and completely trashing it in the name of profit, and that's where my stance comes from.

reply to post by Wang Tang

Thanks so much for that, wow!
Well just look what the Western cartels did with coca and native tobacco.
I think the green color and consistancy is subconsciously very targeted to refer to a similar loosely sold illegal substance. Or why is "green tea" the black tea" of our time?
Similar with many soy products - many in the East wouldn't touch them.
Not only that, it's also a case of overkill, most government breads have unfermented hormone-rich soy in them, and people are taking it it in as a bulking agent in most meals.
I had quite a shock at how many hidden Green Tea supplements I was taking. This is not how the plant was originally used!
Sometimes they are hidden in long labels, but sometimes they claim to be better than the tea. So this is also a contradiction.
Yeah, I'm sure people who take it suddenly "feel better" for a while.
Despite this, I will still enjoy my cuppas of Green. But its bog-standard Asian reject-tea with a nice flavor; color and packaging.

(Or take the case of Kava Kava - it was always known that the Pacific islanders kept the real Kava for themselves, and Westerners got an inferior product as a "health-supplement"!)


[edit on 12-1-2010 by halfoldman]

reply to post by halfoldman


Here's some song lyrics you might appreciate, I think the Green Tea conspiracy is part of an even bigger conspiracy:

"And rest easy outside of a system that resents you for not doing what they expect you to do
Psychologically wear you down and then they make the suggestion that you get on a prescription to deal with your depression
Anxious lazy temperamental obese
That’s what money makers like to call a disease
And they’ll be looking for or creating new problems with profitable solutions
To solve them but you won’t get any better you’ll just come back for more
Until your medicine drawer is filled with unreliable cures
And that’s the way of the beast
And I can’t do nothing about it
I could shout it in a room that’s crowded but I doubt it’d make a difference
So ignorance will be my disguise cause 21st century America likes its witchcraft civilized
21st century America likes its witchcraft civilized"

-John Reuben

reply to post by Wang Tang


There's actually mounds of scientific data supporting the health benefits of tea and specifically green tea and its nutrient content.

I do completely agree with you that many mass market companies in the West do take advantage of the benefits of green tea to fool the consumer. It's important that anyone who wants to consume any kind of nutrients from natural products do some heavy research on where their teas and nutritional supplements come from.

High quality green tea should always be organic, as brewing tea leaves sprayed with pesticide is going to bring the nutrients and the toxins into your body. As I said earlier, consumers should also research where their tea leaves are being harvested. Green tea grows best and purist at a certain altitude in a certain type of geographical environment.

The conspiracy here is not whether or not green tea is good for you, but whether or not the green tea you're buying is from a quality source.

Pretty much anything that gets promoted / supported like green tea or soy or others is not going to be anything like what is claimed. It's a pretty simple way to measure the junk.