Talk:Green tea

POV Snobbery?

Both in the caption of the photo and within this discussion, gunpowder tea has been referred to as being low-grade (particularly Twinings). Is this an objective measure, or simply a matter of subjective and arguable taste?

When to avoid green tea

Suggest this topic be limited only to actual RESEARCH done on the subject -- just as the green tea health benefits described seem to be limited to Western research. The only research I have seen related to avoiding green tea is during pregnancy, not the other conditions previously noted.

Japanese Characters

It is unneccesary to include the Chinese/Japanese characters for words in the English language version of this topic. Providing them adds nothing of value to the article. --will381796

I think conterary, there is no reason to remove and I am asking for a revert. If someone wants to search google.com using a googles translator the characters are important in finding the tea. Hence I am reverting because the article has been needlessly. Due to the range of names given to tea the chinese characters can be important in more ways than one. --Iateasquirrel 21:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I've reverted the article but preserved the changes that were not removal of Chinese characters. --Iateasquirrel 21:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

You should note, however, that most English-speaking users don't have the font installed on their computer (or read Chinese/Japanese), making the characters appear as nothing more than annoying question marks. Perhaps some kind of note to readers that if they want to see the characters, they must have the Japanese font installed on their computer? I still fail to see how having the Japanese characters can provide any useful information to an English speaker, considering that this is the English version of the article. English-language encyclopedias do not provide foreign language characters for names that exist in their language. --will381796 17:03 03 October 2005 (CST)

Modern operating systems do have East Asian fonts installed by default. Japanese and Chinese names rendered in roman letters alone are usually not understandable, you need the characters to be able to understand the meaning. Anyway, the Manual of Style for both Japanese and Chinese says to include the characters for Japanese/Chinese concepts.

I will, however, note that the characters are unnecessary here if they can be found in a more specific article. Jpatokal 11:16, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Jpatokal, I merely reverted the article because the removal of content was without any discussion; The space taken up in the article is generally (not technically) visually un-noticable and most computers have Asian fonts installed (I am using Mozilla on FreeBSD and it works without any extra configuration; it certainly works on IE) however such browsers as Links in graphical X11 mode fail to render the characters. Its really a matter of a balanced choice? What is more suitable to an article. --Iateasquirrel 22:38, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

In general, as a matter of English Wikipedia-wide policy, English language Wikipedia articles should not include Chinese characters, Japanese, etc. unless these can be shown to be relevant. For my part, I've removed Japanese characters from articles like Japanese language where they clearly weren't relevant and had just been added by someone wanting to show off his "kanji powers". In an article on green tea, Chinese characters and Japanese characters need extremely heavy justification which I don't see. Whether they can be displayed or not is totally irrelevant; most English speaking users can't read them anyway, and they often represent a kind of meddling, silly mentality of the same sort that goes around adding pointless, silly links to dates like [[1955]] even when the link goes nowhere relevant to the article; again note that this is contrary to the Wikipedia convention. In short I agree with the user who removed the Chinese and Japanese. --DannyWilde 23:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. Is it Wikipedia rules or merely a type of polite-ness that a discussion takes place before any types of edits? I was under the impression that if we see something that should be changed, we should change it as long as it is a good edit that does not harm the article. I shouldn't have to start a discussion regarding removal of the Japanese or Chinese characters as long as the reasons behind its removal are stated, which I did. There seems to be some agreement that the foreign characters have no place in an English-language article. In regards to your comment about the fonts, I use both Firefox and Internet Explorer and neither of these browsers have the characters on default, and I have the most up to date version of Windows XP. So obviously, unless you go into your settings have have the fonts installed, they will not be present. I will remove the foreign characters again. will381796 16:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Though I shall not argue since it is probably correct. Did you check that the character were listed on each of the tea pages before you deleted them? It is however very important that you dont give people the impression to go around and delete the Chinese characters from individual tea pages where there is heavy justification. The clear message should be that no more characters are removed in individual tea pages. --Iateasquirrel 17:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Also just to note that I just checked and its not yet correct to remove the characters on Oolong page (because they are not fully incorporated into articles, yet) and Black tea (because there is nothing major there anyway).

I am highly critical of what DannyWilde is saying in that they are pointless and I hope that he agrees that Chinese characters are very useful on in-depth tea pages as they often allow a user not knowing Chinese to search using a translator (such as Google Translate) for tea pages in Chinese and with the more obscure varities this is often very relevant. --Iateasquirrel 17:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Chinese characters might be useful here for the names of the teas, for regions of China or Japan, specifically Japanese or Chinese varieties of tea, etc. But the top of the page should not say "green tea 緑茶" any more than the page on milk should say "milk 牛乳". In all cases, use common sense to decide what is necessary for a general English speaking audience, with the premise that we are writing an encyclopedia article. --DannyWilde 00:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

For an individual tea page, I still don't think that the characters should be included. The english pronunciation of the chinese/japanese word...sure. But once again, what does having the symbol in the english language version add? Nothing. But I won't take action on the more specific pages. will381796 01:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You still fail to understand that they must be included, for the purposes of identification and web searching. Your word action is very appropriate; you certainly wont take action. I fail to see what this is doing, you should be adding content to the tea pages. No offense required but scholarly argument over a topic you clearly dont understand is as pointless as it sounds. As neither of you, again no offense meant, has written/contributed to an article on a specific tea you may not know how hard it is to find credible information and how characters help.

Please dont apply your personal opinions onto topics you dont understand. --Iateasquirrel 14:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no requirement in Wikipedia that entries must be made so that they can be searched for using Japanese or Chinese on the WWW. English Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia in English. --DannyWilde 15:38, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I fail to argue with a pure and impossibly irrelevant comment that the Wikipedia requires etc. Articles are supposed to explain the topic and you clearly have very little idea of what topic it is. Since quality tea comes from China (or Japan is some cases) it is important to be able to identify rarer teas using some common set language.

Basically you should only make removals from articles when you know exactly what you are writing about and have some clear idea of what you are doing. Hence we have come to the conclusion that on all releveant pages where the Chinese characters for the name of the tea are availible they will be listed in the Tea Infobox as required. There is no Infobox for Japanese tea though you could easily extend the existing one. We shall end it there.

This discussion can further be continued here [1] on the talk page. --Iateasquirrel 16:07, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I agree that in this case Chinese/Japanese characters are extremely important. If you want to be able to pronounce the names (for example, say you're in China looking for a certain kind of tea), look them up online, etc. I think we should list the characters for each type of tea in addition to the main article heading. --rwclark 21:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Lost Matcha

Its mentioned in the article, why mention it here? It would make the page too long? My view. --Iateasquirrel 22:24, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

There has been vandalism again by 161.51.91.43 (contribs) adding links to the anywhere, everywhere and just annoying to any page he can find. This is pure vandalism because it is spammin of external links and reference on a big scale. I am not going to revert this page because I have done so many times on the other vandalised pages, some had links to admin sections of the site and others to products that they dont have pictures for and dont list, its seems like very targeted vandalism. The user also uses this IP. Please help?! --Iateasquirrel 20:43, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that in the name of being fair the current link list should be pruned too. Some of the sites seem very commercially oriented. On the other hand, for example Greentealovers.com seems to go much beyond the similar Wikipedia article, though I don't know if the site has correct information. Aapo Laitinen 16:19, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Some sites that sell tea do have good articles on tea I sometimes cite when I write something, but you have to be sure of their sources; this Golden Teahouse linking was just on a grand scale, basically adding it to every tea related page, even some chemistry and geography pages. There is a difference. --Iateasquirrel 18:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Chinese green teas

There was some text in the chinese green teas section which was not displaying due to it being enclosed in markup brackets. I have pulled it out of there and deposited it here. First there was an encouragement to add more varieties:

<!-- add more! [[User:Jpatokal|Jpatokal]] 14:41, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC) -->

Then there was an entry on pearl tea which one person seems to have added and then someone else seems to have diasgreed with. Instead of following the normal editing practice this person appears to have 'disappeared' the text by enclosing it all in markup brackets:

<!-- * ''[[Pearl tea]]'' (not to be confused with [[pearl milk tea]]) consists of tea leaves rolled into balls. The term [[gunpowder tea]] is used in English for higher grades of pearl tea. link somewhe else? leaves rolled into balls != gunpowder; there are fine teas like TAI MU LONG ZHU which are pearl tea but no way gunpowder. gunpowder is arguably used even for low quality ZHU CHA -->

So now the text is visible here and removed from the article page where it was cluttering up the edit markup without actually displaying in the article. Oska 10:18, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

BTW this disappearing text by commenting it out in the markup is a really silly thing to do on wikipedia. While it is a standard practice with programming code it does not work on wikipedia where people read the rendered text and not the raw markup code. Wikipedia aims to make edits as transparent as possible. Disagreement with text should be put on the talk page and not in embedded markup "comments". Oska 10:26, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Japanese green teas

I've heard about varieties called kokeicha (made from matcha?) and tamaryokucha (sencha with extra processing?), but found no mention of them in Wikipedia. Could these be mentioned on this page, or if they are too much of a specialty, somewhere else in Wikipedia? Aapo Laitinen 13:26, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Green tea soda?

Recently, many US soda alternatives (many of which are touted as organic) are based in green tea (such as Steaz sodas, Zota sodas, Cricket Cola) - does anybody know more about this? Why is this done? Who did it first? (Steaz claims to be the "original green tea soda," but as all of these soda producers are largely local endeavors, it may be hard to determine).

"True" tea?

Why is it a "true" tea? Since it's said in the first sentence, it got me wondering. I'm presuming because it's not a Herbal tea, that it's in fact made from the tea plant, so why not say something a bit more explicit in that direction? Shermozle 09:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

It's OK for you to edit that way if you like, you don't need to come to talk to discuss it. --DannyWilde 14:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes clearly adding information should not be discussed. Be bold is what it says, doesnt it? I am presuming this is the continuation of the Herbal Tea debate from Talk:Tea. --Iateasquirrel 17:49, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Link spam

Concerned that the references are being arranged in a haphazard fashion and some people clearly trying to promote their rather commercially orineted so called references. Are there any general rules that can be applied here? For the moment I've put them in age order as it seems to be reasonable here. --Iateasquirrel 22:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

黑茶 (hēi chá) vs. 红茶 (hóng chá)

The article said that Pu'erh tea is "黑茶 (hēi chá)", but I've never heard that term before. Perhaps the writer is thinking of what is in English called black tea, but in Chinese that's actually called 红茶 (hóng chá) - literally red tea. I removed the information about 黑茶 (hēi chá). If I'm wrong, feel free to put it back in. --LakeHMM 01:13, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Appropriate Citations

GraemeL and I have been having an issue regarding the removal of a citation.

Back in the earlier days of Wikipedia, Greentealovers provided background information on Green tea and in particular Japanese green tea for wikipedia. In fact, most of the Japanese Green tea information has come word for word from the greentealovers site (I did the formatting of this section as well). Greentealovers referenced the page on its site where the information came from in the reference section of the appropriate wikipedia pages. At some point a new policy regarding what citations were appropriate was introduced and the greentealovers.com citation was dropped, but all its copyrighted information remained on Wikipedia. Interstingly enougth this only happened in the green tea section. In other sections where it had contributed both the data and citations remained.

When I (greentealovers webmaster) revisited the green tea wikipedia page to readd the citation I was told that my site no longer qualified as a reference -- although my green tea data still existed on the Wikipedia green tea page without its validity ever having been questioned by the good readers of wikipedia. I have no problem with relevant information greentealovers provided to Wikipedia remaining on it - but I also want an appropriate citation accompanying it. In fact both the data and the citation existed on the wikipedia green tea page for months without any issue.

I have been told that because greentealovers is MY site and because it sells products as well as providing a significnat amount of information on green tea - that it is innapropriate any longer for it to have a reference on the green tea page. My counterargument is that on the same GREEN TEA page -- Whole Foods -- A huge retail marketer, is cited as a resource for providing information on the Health Benefits of Green tea - What I don't understand is how a major vendor's general information about tea (not even green tea) can be cited - while greentealovers cannot, even though it specializes in the providing information on the subject, in fact contributed information directly to the wikipedia green tea page and had both its data and citation on the green tea page unquestioned for months. On the Tea Ceremony page as well -- the Reference for Tea Muse -- also sells items along with the information it provides

GraemeL and I have decided to put the question to you readers of this discussion page and abide by your decision. Should Greentealovers be allowed a reference on the green tea page to cite the information it has provided on that page?

P.S. GraemeL and I have both agreed to maintain both the citation and the data on the page until you have weighed in with comments.

Webmaster Greentealovers

I don't think your site — however well intentioned it may be — qualifies under the guidleines as a reliable source. It would not be appropriate to link to it. The fact that there are (probably hundreds or thousands of) other inappropriate links on Wikipedia is not an excuse. If you would like to help remove some of those links, feel free. It would be appreciated. I've deleted dozens of them this week alone and I'm worn out. —Veyklevar 00:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think they are appropriate to tea. --Iateasquirrel 21:20, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Greentealovers is relatively new to the world of green tea and nearly all of the information provided by them has been obtained from other, longer established websites. No commercial sources of green tea should have citations to them, period.

Then I will remove all the items I put up on Wikipedia related to Green tea that originated from my page. Webmaster - Greentealovers

Western Medical Establishment?

"Objectively speaking, skepticism of green tea's medical benefits would not be the first time an ancient medical remedy practiced successfully in Asia was initially called into question by the Western Medical Establishment. The FDA cannot be characterized as an infallable resource either [4]."

This seems rather poorly-written and clearly opinionated...

-> You have to admit though that the article has an aura of being anti- green tea overall. Some of the many studies showing its benefits need to be cited, and maybe something about how the backward days of the FDA summarily dimissing the benefits of foods like this as hocus pocus are well over now.

I wouldn't trust the FDA...In my opinion they are nothing but a "bouncer" for the many corrupt and misleading drug companies in the USA. Take Renne Russo (famous Hollywood director) for example, in the US he was told he was a goner when diagnosed with cancer and that nothing could be done for him apart from drugging himself up to the eyeballs and lying down and waiting to die. So he looked outside the US and instead got a 2nd opinion in Germany, and long story short, received some cutting edge treatment and is now healthier than ever. Of course the FDA would have been 100% behind Russo's US doctors and the drug companies waiting in the wings..

Green tea and cardiovascular disease prevention

See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10062-green-tea-makes-for-healthier-hearts.html for details.

Schizmatic 12:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Only recently more widespread in the West?

Japanese sources I've read suggest that tea originally exported from China were mainly green with some oolong, and black tea was not commonly exported until the 18th century. I don't have authoritative sources on hand for that, but is there an authoritative source that suggests black tea was commonly consumed in the West from the beginning (e.g. 16th century)? Zogmeister 05:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Lost caffeine

In the excitement of deleting a section [2] the only reference to caffeine being present in green tea was also obliterated.

No matter the opinion on instructions on Wikipedia, the act deletionism reduced useful contents. Please try to make some editing rather than mass indiscriminate wipeouts. --17:07, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Smoking

this will seem odd to most people but green tea can be smoked in [jonits] and does have some efficts because it containes [LSA] mild from of [LSD] and [THC] recently this has be discoved and has formed a kind of tea under ground but little is know about the health efficts as of now, should this article have something on that.

Contradiction

I flagged a contradiction on this:

"Traditionally, unlike darker teas, green teas are usually brewed using water that is at the boiling point (about 80°-90°C), as water that is too hot is believed to turn the tea bitter."

"At the boiling point" is 100 deg C, not 80-90 deg C, which is considerably below the boiling point at or near sea level. So this statement is confusing. I came here looking for tea info so I don't feel qualified to make a correction on this subject. -Timvasquez 04:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Eliminated contradiction ... good spot :) Abtract 09:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Liver Problems?

To keep a long story short, my great-aunt was told quite firmly by her doctor not to drink green tea because there was a patient at the hospital waiting for a liver transplant because of liver problems attributed to drinking green tea.

Are there any studies or evidence to suggest that green tea negatively affects your liver? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.89.253.231 (talk) 21:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

I don't know of a study that shows it causes damage, and I expect it wouldn't since it's been found that soaking livers in green tea extract before implanting them increases success rates. It's not unequivocal and it's a different situation, but if soaking a liver in green tea extract is OK, I'd hazard that drinking it would be fine.

Health Benefits changes

I just did some major edits to the health section and wanted to summarize my changes so they could be discussed, if necessary.

Judging by the wording of the article there's a deal of contention over the claimed health benefits of green tea and what, if any, scientific evidence supports them. It seems logical to subdivide the category into Unsubstantiated Claims and Scientific Evidence to allow controversial benefits to be listed, but seperate from those which have been studied. I also seperated history and added a section on the FDA. I cleaned up the references to point to more authoratative sources with the exception of the unsubstantiated section. I moved any supported claims to the SciEv section and moved unsupported claims and those supported by minimal evidence and/or poor references to the unsubstantiated claims section. If you think any of these have been substantiated and would like to provide academic citations for them, feel free to move them after you've added the citations. I combined some claims that cited the same article, restated and re-linked some to reference the journals, and added a bunch of links.

Good work but most of this should be on the main article Potential effects of tea on health with a simple summary here. Abtract 15:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)