I like tea. I like to drink tea, look at tea, and talk about tea. I talk to a lot of people about tea. What types of tea they like, what flavors they prefer, when they drink tea, how they drink tea, why they drink tea. I enjoy learning about how people incorporate tea into their life.
Something I hear fairly often is "I only drink tea during the winter." Leading me to believe there is a large segment of the population who view hot tea as a cold weather beverage, and as an extension iced tea as a hot weather beverage. Cafe's and tea companies alike perpetuate this with seasonal menu's and an plethora of social media posts letting us know what seasonal beverages we should be drinking, "Iced Tea Season in Here," "Cold Weather = Tea Season," "Warm up with a hot cup of tea." (by the way, when is "coffee season?")
In other countries, including sub-tropical countries where tea is grown, tea is drank hot year round. Tradition and culture play a role in this, but there may be another reason hot is the preparation method of choice. Conventional wisdom states that drinking warm beverages in warm weather can have a cooling effect on our bodies.
Research conducted by the Scandinavian Physiological Society tested whether or not drinking hot fluids on hot days helps people to cool down. The study concluded that drinking a hot beverage can result in feeling cooler provided the additional sweat that’s produced when drinking the hot beverage can evaporate. So the conventional wisdom may not be true in every climate. Oh, well. As with most studies, more research is needed on the topic.
The United States' history with tea is... complicated, to say the least. But I'll save more thoughts on this for another time.
The point is, don't let your tea drinking habits be ruled by the weather. Tea season is year round! I drink hot tea year round becuase I like it. Not becuase it will keep me cool (though aren't tea drinkers already the coolest? 🙂 ).
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