{"id":414,"date":"2016-05-24T10:48:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T09:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidwithington.com\/blog\/?p=414"},"modified":"2019-02-10T17:46:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T17:46:36","slug":"is-decaf-tea-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidwithington.com\/is-decaf-tea-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Decaf Tea Safe?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Don’t you know decaf tea causes cancer?”<\/p>\n He had my attention. I dropped the box of decaffeinated tea bags. I needed to know more.<\/p>\n “What do you mean?” I asked my colleague at the next desk.<\/p>\n “I thought decaffeinated tea and coffee was supposed to be good for you”<\/p>\n <\/a>“It is…” he replied.<\/p>\n “But it depends on the decaffeinating process”.<\/p>\n Now I really was confused. It was time to consult Google.<\/p>\n What I found out was astonishing.<\/p>\n There are three main ways to decaffeinate tea and coffee.<\/p>\n I discovered that drinking ordinary tea and coffee in moderation shouldn’t cause any problems.<\/p>\n But for heavy tea and coffee drinkers who like a change – and those who prefer decaf drinks for medical reasons such as Raynauds – \u00a0there’s a choice of 3 decaffeinating processes.<\/p>\n But many tea brands seem reluctant to tell us their process, especially if they use the chemical solvents.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It appears that the chemicals methylene chloride<\/em> and ethyl acetate<\/em> have been linked with cancer.<\/p>\n The Healthwyze<\/a> website reports: “Consuming benzine, methylene chloride, and ethyl acetate regularly will vastly increase a person’s chances of contracting a serious disease, such as cancer; for the rest of his life.”<\/p>\n Considered to be much safer is the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) method of filtering the caffeine.<\/p>\n How does that work?<\/p>\n Put simply: pressurised Carbon Dioxide is used as a solvent to remove the caffeine.<\/p>\n A third way, the Swiss Water filtering method, is a more complex process – and therefore more expensive. It’s often found in health shops and is well labelled.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I love green tea. So one Christmas, my wife bought me some speciality decaffeinated green tea bags from our local health store.<\/p>\n <\/a>They tasted great.<\/p>\n But because there was no indication on the box about the decaffeination filtering method, I tried to find out.<\/p>\n The company responded to my enquiry, saying that they use the “MC decaffeination process”.<\/p>\n MC obviously stands for methylene chloride<\/em>. \u00a0So in other words, they use the chemical method.<\/p>\n That surprised me. \u00a0I expected the tea bags to be CO2 filtered.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n But having said that, there are arguments as to whether the chemical methods are harmful or not. \u00a0Berkeley Wellness<\/a> presents a research-backed case that all the methods are as safe as each other.<\/p>\n\n
What’s The Problem With Decaf Tea?<\/h2>\n
My Decaf Green Tea Problem<\/h2>\n