May 3, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Should green tea replace Rosie O’Donnell on ‘The View?’
by JENNIFER NAGEL

If you want to lose weight, drink green tea. If you want to prevent cancer, drink green tea. If you want stronger nails, less smelly armpits, softer skin, cuter children, better-behaved pets, a nicer car or polite neighbors, drink green tea. Apparently.

Everywhere I go — and I’m sure everywhere you go — the ads are screaming about green tea. I have no doubt that green tea has amazing healing and preventive medical properties … but I’m a little hesitant to believe it does every single thing marketing geniuses would have you believe.

And I can clearly see the temptation as a consumer. If I hear “green tea” often enough, it becomes a conditioned response when in the grocery store to pick up everything with green tea in it. Actually, I’m so gullible that if I hear anything enough times, I’ll buy the product. So I find myself weaving up and down the aisles picking up air freshener with green tea and nail polish with green tea and lemonade with green tea and vitamin supplements with green tea extracts and hand cream with … well, you get the picture.

A friend once told me the Japanese smoke like chimneys and yet have the lowest occurrence of lung cancer in the industrialized world. This friend smoked herself for 14 years before she quit, and now she drinks green tea six times a day because that’s the secret. The Japanese drink green tea, too. My friend had lots of other certifiable ideas including one about shipping men to a farm in Australia and letting women have the rest of the world. I could get behind that one. But this green tea thing … I just don’t know.

I saw an ad for a household cleanser with green tea in it. Someone needs to do a study and tell me, conclusively, exactly what it is that green tea does for my bathtub or my sink basin. If I could just get that little piece of information, I might jump whole-heartedly on the bandwagon. (Right now I’m just holding on with my feet dragging behind a little bit.)

And are any of these green tea-infused supplements FDA approved? Perhaps it sounds super-healthy to take a supplement with green tea in it; this way you wouldn’t have to worry that the diet supplement you’re taking is still dangerous because it speeds up your metabolism and gives you that one-cup-of-coffee-too-many zippy feeling all day long. Granted, green tea doesn’t have the same nasty, scary, lethal ring to it that some of those other weight loss chemicals do. Hoodia? What is that? I get about 10 spam emails a week telling me I need Hoodia. Okay, I haven’t been to the gym for a little while, but really, my email has no business telling me I’m fat. Hoodia reminds me of monks. That’s probably because monks wear hoods. And then sometimes I hear premium South African Hoodia — scarier still.

But really, it seems like slapping a sticker on the front of a bottle that says it has green tea extract inside must be the new snake oil cure-all. I’d take something with green tea in it. In fact, I do take something with green tea in it. It’s a vitamin. But admittedly, green tea is less scary than what you know is in all those over-the-counter magic weight loss pills that skinny doctors who used it themselves are selling all over cable TV now. Take one look at Anna Nicole Smith two years ago and tell me you don’t think there are dangers and side effects to taking that stuff.

There are hidden dangers in everything; even No More Tears shampoo stings a little bit. And I cut myself with a butter knife once. So maybe the real truth about green tea (I sound like the 11 o’clock news: “Hidden dangers in green tea. What every family must know, at 11.”) is that it’s just like any other tea, with no magical properties.

Sure, it’s healthier than guzzling a couple liters of soda, but it’s not going to make the blind see or the deaf hear. It won’t cure you of cancer, it won’t make your kids behave, it won’t make your husband pick his wet towel up off the floor, and it won’t make your house bigger or nicer. It’s great first thing in the morning with a little lemon and a little honey, but truth be told, so is orange pekoe.

I keep a close eye on CNN to watch for breaking green tea news. You never know what’s going to pop up. I’ve written several letters to the Senate advising them that, if they want to bring the troops home in a timely fashion, they should send green tea into a meeting with the president. I’m calling The View and telling them that green tea should replace Rosie O’Donnell. Hyperactive children? Cheating spouses? Broken-down cars? Unemployment? The budget deficit? Green tea all around. Green tea for everyone. Green tea can stop terrorism, global warming, birth defects and unsightly rashes. Green tea is the answer, the light, the way. Nothing can stop green tea now.

Although, I hear white tea is also gaining in popularity.

Last month Jen Nagel was named second-place winner in the 2006 “Best Column” contest sponsored by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association for newspapers under 25,000 circulation.