Culinary Lavender: Can You Eat Lavender?

Yes, lavender is edible, but not every lavender belongs in your kitchen. Culinary English lavender is sweet and floral, while lavandin and Spanish lavender carry more camphor and can taste like soa...

How to Make Lavender Tea

To make lavender tea, steep one teaspoon of dried culinary lavender buds in a cup of just-boiled water for 5 to 7 minutes, with the cup covered. Any longer and it turns soapy. Here is the full meth...

Wellness Tea: What Functional Tea Is and How to Choose by Benefit

Functional tea is tea blended for a purpose. Every herb is chosen for an active compound with research behind it: apigenin in chamomile for sleep, menthol in peppermint for bloating, L-theanine in ...

Does Tea Expire? How Long Tea Really Lasts

Tea does not go bad like milk, but it does fade. In a study of stored green teas, the antioxidant catechins that tea is prized for measurably declined over just six months at room temperature. Here...

Can You Compost Tea Bags? What to Do With Used Tea Leaves

Your used tea leaves are compost gold, but your tea bag might not be. Many tea bags are sealed with plastic or made from nylon mesh that never breaks down, and even plant-based PLA bags need the he...

Is Your Tea Clean? Pesticides, Organic Tea and How to Choose the Safest Tea

Tea leaves go from the field to your cup without ever being washed, and an analysis of hundreds of studies found conventionally grown crops are four times more likely to carry pesticide residues th...

Does Tea Hydrate You? Is Tea a Diuretic?

Tea does not dehydrate you. In a randomized controlled trial in the British Journal of Nutrition, healthy adults drinking four to six cups of black tea a day stayed just as hydrated as when they dr...

Types of Tea, Explained: A Simple Guide to the Tea Family

Every true tea in the world, from delicate white tea to bold black tea, comes from a single plant, Camellia sinensis. The only difference is what happens to the leaf after it is picked, and that pr...

Tea vs Coffee: Caffeine, Calm and Which to Choose

A cup of coffee has about 95 mg of caffeine; a cup of black tea has roughly half that, plus L-theanine, an amino acid shown in clinical trials to turn caffeine into calm, sustained focus. In a Univ...

How to Use a Tea Infuser

The most common reason infuser tea tastes weak is a cramped infuser. Tea leaves can swell to several times their dry size, and research shows how freely water reaches the leaf changes how much flav...