Cay Health Foods

We completely renewed and improved our premium whole leaf tea section.  We have expanded our selection to ten of the most popular green and black teas -  all with new lower prices.  Most are USDA certified organic and many are Fair Trade Certified.  Fair Trade certification identifies teas produced by gardens and cooperatives in tea production.  Fair Trade guarantees fair wages and decent working conditions and promotes the use of sustainable farming methods.

Remember, we sell all our herbs and tea by weight:  you can buy a half an ounce or a pound, whatever you like.  And we have all the necessary brewing accessories and instructions for making you a great cup of tea.  Here are your choices:

Black Teas

Black Teas are produced by withering, rolling and drying fresh tea leaves.  This process oxidizes the leaf and allows many unique aroma and flavor elements to form.  The robustness of black tea lends itself to the addition of sugar, honey, lemon, cream and milk.  While black teas have more caffeine than green or white teas, they still have considerably less than you would get in a cup of coffee.  Our black teas come directly from the key tea-growing regions of the world, including China, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Darjeeling (Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe)

USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified

I love the name of this smooth and elegant bright tea.  Brewed correctly the flavor is slightly dry with a light body.   Darjeeling is regarded as the champagne of black teas.  This complex, very flavorful and aromatic tea is ideal for an afternoon tea.

Irish Breakfast

USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified

This is a blend of black teas having a full, robust flavor with malty undertones.  Slightly bolder than English Breakfast tea and more well-rounded, this full-bodied breakfast tea is meant to be enjoyed with milk and sweetener.

Earl Grey

USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified

The best known of the scented teas, this slightly dry, medium bodied black tea has a hint of bergamot oil giving it wonderful orange flavors.  Named for the Earl who had it blended especially for him.

Green Teas

Green tea is uncured and possesses fresh, grassy, vegetal flavors due to the unique processing.  Green tea leaves are plucked, withered, rolled and dried before any curing or oxidation takes place.  Green teas have the least caffeine of all true teas.

Bancha

USDA Organic

A less costly alternative to the higher-grade Sencha, this tea is more astringent and has a more robust flavor characterized as grassy, slightly dry, with a medium body.

Dragonwell

USDA Organic

Dragonwell is a brothy green tea with a light medium body and slightly dry in flavor.  The vegetal flavor of Dragonwell has nuances of roasted chestnut which is especially refreshing when sipped throughout the day.

Gunpowder (Special Pin Head)

The leaves are rolled into little pellets that look like gunpowder.  The pellets unfurl and ‘bloom’ in the cup.  Gunpowder is rich in flavor, very brothy, green, slighty smokey with a light body.

Young Hyson

USDA Organic

This tea has been compared to a forest after a spring rain.  An aroma and flavor that is earthy and wild, yet delicate, this tea is very dry with a light body.  It’s delicious hot or iced.

Jasmine Tea

USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified

This is a green tea scented with organic jasmine flowers.  After curing, the dried green tea leaves are spread out with successive layers of fresh jasmine flowers.  The tea absorbs the exotic fragrance and yields nicely in the cup, making this tea a sensual pleasure to drink.  Classified as quite dry with a medium body and floral overtones.

Ooolong Tea

Oolong is only partially oxidized after the fresh leaves are plucked and withered.  Before the leaves are fully cured, a quick drying preserves the flavor and aroma elements of the green leaf and combines them with black tea characteristics that arise from the partial curing.  Oolong has slightly less caffeine than black tea, but slightly more than green teas.

Se Chung Special Oolong

USDA Organic

A woody astringency and the nuance of fresh peaches distinguish the remarkable aroma and flavor of this tea.  Brothy with a light body, Oolong is also referred to by its Chinese pinyin translation “Wu Long”.

White Tea

White tea is made from the very young, unfurled leaf tips of Camellia sinensis.  White tea is the least processed of all teas and is steamed immediately after picking to prevent any oxidation of the leaves.  The delicate young leaves and buds are covered with soft, silvery white hairs, hence the name white tea.  White teas are generally uncured in the style of green teas and are similarly low in caffeine.

Indian White Tea

USDA Organic, Fair Trade Certified

This special, hand-selected tea contains silvery-white unopened leaf tips.  This particular tea is very smooth with delicate floral notes.  Golden liquor in a light body, this is a truly pleasant and drinkable tea.

General Brewing Instructions

Black teas

1 tsp. of loose tea per cup.  Pour simmering water (185 degrees F) over the tea and steep 4 to 5 minutes.

Green teas

1 tsp. of loose tea per cup.  Pour simmering water (170 degrees F) over the tea and steep 3 to 4 minutes.

Come in and pick up your favorite today!

I found this fascinating for some reason. In April 1721 sailors traveling to Boston brought small pox. By the summer nearly half of Boston’s 11,000 people had contracted some form of the disease.

Reverend Cotton Mather remembered something a slave had told him about a treatment used in his country where the pus from wounds were “inoculated” into a healthy person. The healthy person got sick, but recovered quickly. Mather related this to Dr. Zabdiel Boylston who tried the procedure on his 6 year old son, then later on his slave and his slave’s son. The the other doctors in Boston decried the procedure.  Only one in 40 of those inoculated died from smallpox compared to one in six who naturally caught the disease.

It was a bold move and one that met with much criticism, but it worked. As the science of vaccination became more sophisticated many more lives were saved from a number of different diseases.

I received this email from a customer.  Below is my response.

Red bull / rock star drinks—  is there anything you carry like that? Or something to make up??… That is healthy??

There are drinks that are healthier, but healthy?  Let try to explain.  Red Bull type drinks contain large amounts of caffeine as you know.  Some as high as 120mg.  Caffeine will speed up the heart and raise blood pressure as well as act as a thermogenic.  The half life of caffeine is 12 hours so that means if you have 120mg in a drink at three in the afternoon, there is still60mg in your system at three in the morning.  Consequently, you will need MORE caffeine to get through your next day.  Most people who use the drinks also drink coffee causing some people to proclaim caffeine the most abused substance in our society.

I do drink coffee, so I’m not totally down on caffeine.  The other problem with the drinks are the ingredients that keep them creamy (which is fat, I think), the sugar content (or artificial sweetener content), and then the chemicals used to keep everything in suspension.

The natural alternatives are drinks made from Yerba Mate.  Mate does contain caffeine and they usually add sugar for taste (caffeine is a bitter compound), but they are usually low in fat.  I don’t currently carry these types of product mainly because traffic through my store doesn’t currently create a demand for them.  Cones, Trader Joe’s, and Lassen’s, I believe, all carry these types.  My recommendation would be to look at the ingredients list.  The fewer ingredients the better the product and you should be able to pronounce all the ingredients ;>)

One last thing:  If you’re looking for an afternoon pick-me-up we have Korean Ginseng.  Packaged in individual foil packets this product contains granules that dissolve like instant coffee (instead of a tea bag).  It does not contain caffeine but can act as a mild energy booster.  It’s great to use in the afternoon because it won’t be hanging around in your system 12 hours later.  I used it extensively when I had Valley Fever back in 1991.  The drawback is that you do have to make it with hot water (not as convenient) but the positive is it does not contain any preservatives, stabilizers, or emulsifiers.  And, you can sweeten it any way you like (like with Stevia).

We’ve added the NutLand Nut Crunch Snack. We were originally attracted to them because they are produced right here in Bakersfield. Then we noticed they are Gluten-Free, GMO Free, 100% Vegan, Trans Fat Free, and low in sodium. But the real kicker was how tasty these snacks are! There are several varieties:

• Almond Crunch
• Berries & Cherries
• Cashew Crunch
• Pecan Crunch
• Pistachio Crunch
• Trail Mix Crunch

We’re sampling them out. Stop by and try some.

Yes, I know Thanksgiving is all about giving thanks and being with family and I’m all for it.  Sometimes I think we get caught in the crunch of everything going on and we place too much stress on ourselves.  We have an abundance of abundance, so stop and smell the roses purely for the benefit of your own nose.  Sound silly?  Probably, but in the rush to get from here to there, to cook this and that, to see him and her, there’s not a lot of time for appreciation.  That’s what I’m talking about.  And, it starts by taking care of…you.  Find a quiet place and have a cup of tea, glass of wine, or whatever and enjoy your own company for a bit.  You’ll find yourself so much more thankful when you go back for that second helping of pumpkin pie.

The November 18th issue of the Journal of American Medical Assn. (JAMA) published a new study raising concern over high folic acid supplementation and increased cancer risk.   The news media love this type of headline.  Sales of the B vitamins are the most popular letter vitamins in the United States.

The JAMA study was based on two randomized, double-blind clinical trails during which almost 7,000 patients with ischemic heart disease were given vitamin B12, B6, or a placebo between 1998 and 2005.  The trials took place in Norway, a country that does not fortify its products with folic acid.  Basing the trials in Norway was significant because it allowed researchers to better gauge the impacts of folic acid supplementation.  In the study, folic acid and B12 supplementation was associated with a 21% increased risk for cancer, a 38% increased risk of dying from the disease, and an 18% increase in deaths for all causes.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition took a closer look at the study and noted the majority of the participants were former smokers, and many of the cancer deaths in the study were related to lung cancer.  “The real headline of the study should be that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer – the study found a total of 94 percent of the subjects who developed lung cancer were either current or former smokers”, Andrew Shao, PhD, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for CRN, said in a statement.

The CRN also pointed out that in the United States folic acid fortification has been mandatory since 1998 and general cancer rates have declined since that time .  They also noted the Norway study’s results are “inconsistent with the larger body of data and this effect has not been observed previously.”

Bottom line:  Folic acid supplementation as part of your routine daily multiple of B complex vitamins should still be considered safe and beneficial.  Folic acid is a supplement that has been used to prevent neural tube defects in babies when taken as a part of a pre-natal program and beneficial in helping to reduce homocysteine levels in the general population.

But, the JAMA article makes a better headline.

We watched the documentary Food, Inc. over the weekend.  It is a depressing look at our food supply.  Many parts of it were difficult to watch although I think it is important for everyone to know what’s in the food we eat and how it is raised.  One of the more dramatic parts of the movie was when they showed the chicken growing farms.  A normal chicken grows to maturity in 80 – 90 days.  The chicken farmers they showed said their chickens reached that stage in 45 days.  The downside is they grow so fast their bones can keep up with their weight growth and some of them couldn’t walk.

There was one farmer who was demonstrating how he could farm using sustainable measures.  His cows grazed on grass.  Chickens turned over the cows’ manure and pigs composted the winter droppings.  It was inspiring in the sense that he was actually doing it, but sad to note that there aren’t many like him out there.

Took some dried juniper berries home last night.  It was my turn to cook and we were having chicken, mashed potatoes, and brussel sprouts.   I cooked the chicken and brussel sprouts in the same pan and they turned out quite tasty.  Just added a little butter and seasoned them with Spike.  I put the juniper berries in to see if they would soften and add flavor to the chicken.  Even though they cooked for some 15 minutes the berries didn’t soften up much, but they did add an interesting flavor.  I’ll be experimenting with them more in my cooking.

The new cholesterol lowering supplement, Moduchol, has been out long enough now that it appears to be getting very good results.  We had two repeat customers this week.  I’ve always used that as a valuable benchmark.  A number of people will try things once, but coming back, putting your hard earned dollars down again is a much more valuable indication of a product’s efficacy.  I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and when I had my blood drown for a donation at Houchin Blood Bank the results came in at 173 which is about 20 points lower than it had been some months ago.

We’re open until 5:300 today.  If we don’t see you, have a great weekend…