Not too keen on the taste of this one (Tetley Green Tea with Lemon)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Tetley Green Tea with Lemon
Date:	11/11/07 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Apparently it dors you good

Disadvantages: I don't like the taste

A short while ago I tried a different eating regime to try and combat my lack of energy and one of the things which I avoided was tea (together with all other stimulants – coffee, alcohol etc.)

Mostly I drank camomile tea with the occasional other flavour just for a change. In our house mom lives on the ground floor and Dave and I live on the top two floors so we each have our own kitchen – bear with me this is relevant, honestly! Mom keeps camomile tea bags in her kitchen for when I have a cuppa downstairs and as she had run out she decided to treat me to something different which is where the Tetley Green Tea with Lemon comes in.

I wasn’t really looking forward to trying it as I had already tried green tea from another manufacturer and wasn’t too keen, but it was kind of her to think of me and so I gave it a go with a smile!

PRODUCT

The name of the product itself is one of the range of Tetley Special Teas and is called green Tea with Lemon. The tea comes in round teabags which themselves are packaged in a tube shaped box containing 25 tea bags costing around the £1.75 mark. The ingredients are just green tea (92%), flavouring and lemon peel (1%).The tea is advertised as ‘Combining the delicate, fresh taste of green tea with the zesty freshness of lemons’ and advised is to be drunk as a perfect pick-me-up. According to the website at www.tetley.co.uk/specialteas green tea is very popular in Japan and China, where they believe it to have a range of health benefits. Apparently Zen monks originally used green tea during long meditations to stay alert but calm. Both the green tea and the lemon also contain natural antioxidants.

PACKAGING

These tea bags come in a cardboard tube with a metal base and green plastic lid. The tube itself is in pleasing shades of lemon and light green with the Tetley logo on the front together with a picture of lemon slices against a green circle. The writing on the sides of the tube gives details of the ingredients, the supposed benefits of drinking the tea and details of how to contact Tetley with any comments or complaints. When you flip off the plastic top there is an aluminum foil seal inside to keep the tea bags fresh and tamper free until you are ready to start using them.

TO MAKE

You just pop a teabag in a mug or a cup fill it with hot water, allow it to stand for a minute or two, until it is the strength you like, then remove the teabag. Be aware at this stage that, because this tea does not have cold milk added to it, it will be hot at this point! I usually add a bit of cold water from the tap so that I can drink it straight away. You can add a spoonful of honey or sugar if you like your drinks to taste sweeter but I tend to avoid this as I am a diabetic struggling to control blood sugar levels. By the way as I have already mentioned you do NOT add milk to this tea, so it is also great for people who have to follow a milk free diet.

COLOUR

Now why is it that a lot of these herbal teas look like urine samples? Yes, I know it’s enough to put you off before you start but it’s the best way that I can describe the colour! Thankfully the taste and smell don’t follow this similarity.

SMELL

Now I find both smells and tastes hard to describe in words but I’ll have go. This tea smells earthy with a distinct but not overpowering fragrance of lemon.

TASTE

The taste isn’t one of my favourites I have to confess. It is slightly bitter although the lemon element does temper the bitterness and I do find this one nicer than the Heath and Heather Green Tea with Lemongrass, which I found far too bitter. The more I tried this tea the better I liked it so I guess it is an acquired taste.

EFFECT

Well I have to confess I don’t really notice any great benefits from individual teas, but that could be because my lifestyle is highly stressed (I am full time carer to my mom who has dementia) and my general level of fitness is low as I just don’t have the time to do anything about it. This means that I don’t really notice if any of these teas actually make me feel better in any way, but my theory is that as I am cutting out the stimulant effect of ordinary tea and the fat content of the milk that would normally be in it – it must be healthier.

Of course another great thing for me at least is that it has no calories – can’t be bad eh?

SO WHERE DO YOU BUY IT THEN?

Mom got mine from our local Costcutter supermarket but this tea and others in this range are available in all major supermarkets.

IN CONCLUSION

This isn’t one of my favourite herbal teas but then again I wouldn’t avoid it like the plague! I do drink it occasionally when the fancy takes me and hope that the antioxidant effects are doing me good.

Summary: A green tea full of antioxidants but it tastes grotty.