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Twinings Green Tea & Lemon
by star3683
I am not a tea drinker at all, my mum tried and tried to get me to like it when I lived at home but there was no convincing me. But I have recently been on a diet and was finding it very hard, I was eating far less but still hardly loosing any weight. This is when I read that Green Tea is thought to help speed up your metabolism and help ... with weight loss, so thought I would give it a try. As I don't like the taste of normal tea and had heard that Green Tea is quite strong tasting I thought I'd opt for one with a flavouring so I purchased a few in the Twinings range with one being the Green Tea with Lemon.
I purchased a box of the Twinings Green Tea with Lemon from my local Tesco store where they were on a special offer of two boxes for £2.00. Each box contains 20 tea bags so works out at just 5p per cup at the offer price.
Green tea comes from China and has become quite popular here in recent years. There has been research to suggest that Green Tea can help to reduce the risk of cancer, lower cholesterol, prevent tooth decay and help with weight loss. Obviously there is no definite proof of these but for me I thought it was worth a try to help with my weight loss goal so I have been trying to drink around 5 cups a day for the last three weeks. So far the weeks that I have been drinking the green tea and sticking to 1200 calories per day as I was in the weeks before I have had an increased weight loss. On the weeks before I began to drink the Green Tea I was loosing 1lb per week but have lost 2lb per week since drinking the Green Tea. I know I cannot put my extra weight loss completely down to the tea but I am certainly going to stick to it especially if the health benefits are also meant to be as good as they say.
The Twinings Green Tea with lemon comes in bags and looks just the same as a ordinary tea bag. To make the tea you simply add a bag to a cup/mug and fill with boiling water and leave for 1-2 minutes. It states on the box not to leave the tea bag in for more than 2 minutes as it can mean loosing the delicate flavour. When the water is added you can smell the Lemon straight away and it smells fresh and inviting. You need to remember not to add milk to this tea as milk does not go with Green Tea you simply drink it as it is.
The taste of this tea is quite delicate and fresh, you can taste the Lemon flavour and it think this takes away the harshness of the green tea. Although I do not like ordinary tea I have got used to drinking this and find it to be quite pleasant. I do drink the tea just as it is but you could add some extra lemon juice or a little honey to make it a little more flavoursome or sweet but I find the more I have drank the more accustomed to it I am becoming. This tea does contain caffeine and I do find that since drinking it I have felt more alert but obviously don't go drinking too much of this before bed as it may keep you awake.
Overall I am getting used to drinking this tea as part of my daily drinks and am really starting to like it. Even after I have reached my goal weight I am going to continue to drink this tea as the health benefits may just be speculation but to me its worth a try.
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PG Tips Teabags
by milmol7
PG were pioneers of the "pyramid" teabag and 20-odd years on their pyramid design is still going strong, although the science of it all hardly proved to be industry-changing. The whole of the back of the box is given over to a really nice large and clear illustration of the pyramid ® bag doing it's thing - and explaining how it ... "gives the tea more room to move, freeing the delicious taste of the tea leaves and giving you the perfect cuppa every time", so they are obviously still passionate about their innovation.
We've used these at work for as long as I can remember and it certainly gives a nice cup of tea, but equally, there isn't anything spectacular about it - I can't say that the freeing of the tea in those bags really "does it" for me.
My preferred cup of tea is quite weak though, so maybe the technology is wasted on me. The concept of the tea moving freely around probably relates to their stated suggestion of allowing the tea to brew for 1-2 minutes, whereas 20-25 seconds at the most is all I leave the bag in for. Nevertheless I have no complaints about the quality of the teabags (we never have any burst ones in there either before they reach the cup or in it), although there's always lots of 'dust' when we reach the end, I don't suppose that can be avoided.
The box we have is a large 240 teabag size, and is cardboard, sealed in cellophane to keep everything ultra-fresh. Once inside the cellophane, there is a flip top lid and underneath the lid you need to remove a perforated section of the box underneath to get to the teabags. The flip top lid has been accurately designed so that it does close over the top of the box, although obviously for freshness some sort of caddy would be better - it's not exactly a tight fit.
The box places a high prominence to the "Fully Rainforest Alliance Certified" labelling, with the Alliance's frog logo - this is in the form of a green flash on both the front and the side. The rest of the box is given over to the familiar and age-old red & green PG logo, and an illustration of fresh tea plant leaves, which do indeed look very fresh and good enough to drink!
PG dedicate one side of their box to elaborating on the Rainforest Alliance credentials, with which they "protect the environment, whilst ensuring decent working conditions for ...farmers and providing access to education and healthcare for them and their families". This is something more and more prominent in the tea and coffee sector, and nice to know.
The other side of the box tells us about the 100% natural nature of the tea bags, how they are picked (they pick the tips, dontchaknow!) and even step by step instructions how to make a cup of tea. What more could you need from your teabags?!
All in all, I enjoy PG Tips tea - it gives a lovely mug of tea and the bags are dependable and don't split, and if I'm honest I'm not expert enough to be looking for any more than that. I'm underwhelmed by their pyramid technology, but I can see the theory behind it... I imagine if you are a strong-tea person, then the extra freedom allowed to the leaves to let out their flavour may well make these tips your pick.
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Typhoo Teabags
by milmol7
I drink 3-4 mugs of tea per day, but I'm no connoisseur, and this week I picked Typhoo up purely because they were on a brilliant half price offer in Morrisons (£1.14 for 80) when I happened to have run out of tea bags. For the purposes of the review I'm comparing with what I more "usually" drink, which is Co-op at home, and PG ... tips at work.
The packaging is a cardboard box is a striking Red with "Typhoo" in white lettering, it's opened with a perforated strip which runs along the length of the top, very easy to tear back and it reveals the teabags in two separate sealed foil packs. This is a great feature, as the jar I use for my tea bags won't hold a full box of 80, so I've opened one of the foil packs, filled my jar, but the remaining pack will stay completely fresh until I need them. Not only that, but the foil pack is only about12x5x5 cm and takes up hardly any space in the cupboard, rather than needing to store the box in there to "top-up" from.
The teabags are individually "embossed" with the "OO" logo, some of them are not fully separated from each other, but that's hardly a big deal, they easily pull apart. They are round and fit perfectly to the size of the mugs I was using, which was strangely very satisfying!! The first thing I noticed when I made my first mug of Typhoo was that as soon as the water hit the teabag it immediately turned very dark ...this was going to be a strong cuppa. I have my tea quite weak, so I left the teabag in the mug for no more than 10-15 seconds, a quick stir, and although it would still have been weak for most people, that was perfect for me, and a shorter time than I would leave my "usuals". My partner has much more "normal" tea - and I left his in there about a minute (again, less than I would with other brands) and it made a great looking tea.
The box lists the typical nutrition values based on brewing for 3-4 minutes, which makes us look very very lightweight! 3-4 minutes with these I think you would easily be able to stand your spoon up in it! These tea bags are going to last a long time, because when we both had a mug this morning, one bag did us both our perfect brew!! (shamelessly tight!)
The taste was lovely but again I must say I'm no expert, it just tasted like pleasant tea - I can't say I distinguished anything special in there, but certainly not unpleasant either, and there was no 'dust' left at the bottom of the mugs.
The box gives lots of 'feelgood for your purchase' information if you're interested...
- the history of Typhoo tea (created in 1903 in Birmingham),
- Typhoo "Sports for All" project explaining how they support Disability sport
- Typhoo Quality Programme - Working to continually improve the conditions of people who grow, harvest and produce the tea (the tea does not have the Fairtrade logo however)
- Compostable and Recycling notes - the teabags are compostable and the cardboard packaging can be recycled.
The box states that a cup of Typhoo is 1kcal (doesn't include my big glug of milk and heaped sugar though!!), so there's no guilt trip here, but the nutritional values (all negligible) compare exactly to PG, so there's no swing-factor here either.
I did get an OO but mainly because of the bargain price, the tea itself was more of a pleasant, but more reserved MM!
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