My wife likes the herbal teas. Can be wonderful in some ways following the original "advice" sort of Mormonism that used to be Brigham Young's version. . . . although Brigham's Tea has never gained a popular following.
"tea" can be any leaf boiled in water and then hopefully strained, and can be a cold drink. It's what a chemist like me calls a water or steam extract, as opposed to an "elixir' which is usually, and hopefully, an ethanolic extract.
I sometimes advise a company that just dries green stuff and sells it to companies marketing it as a health drink. Nothing is heated to an extent that the herbal and nutrititonal components are changed or lost, except for some very small simple molecules that are gases a low temperatures. . . .
Few people, even scientists, actually understand photosynthesis or realize how many highly-reduced carbon compounds, meaning compounts that have a lot of carbon-carbon double bonds and molecular orbitals with the capacity to store and transfer energy from some wavelength of light or another to the central chlorophyll structure providing the capacity to reduce carbon dioxide in one or more of it's several steps towards becoming a molecule of sugar or something. . . . Every one of these compounds belongs to the general class known as anti-oxidants, and is therefore good for expecially the animals that can actually digest the leaves. . . . . which we can only partially do, and might get sick from it if we eat too much. . . .
The side effects of most concern for humans are liver toxicity and skin hypersensitivity to sunlight. . . ..
which should also reasonably be considered as possible effects from excess tea drinking when the stuff is made by boiling tea bags.
