Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bam here with another classic episode from the archives.
Speaker 1: Every season brings a new food trend and a new
Speaker 1: food demon, some dish or drink or ingredient that suddenly
Speaker 1: everyone swears will cause some specific and terrible damage. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is about how, for a while, during the Victorian era,
Speaker 1: that demon was green tea. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel
Speaker 1: bomb here. Chances are you've heard about some of the
Speaker 1: potential health benefits of green tea and it's extracts like antioxidants.
Speaker 1: Green tea comes from the leaves of the Camellia synesis
Speaker 1: plant that have not undergone the same fermentation and oxidation
Speaker 1: process used to make black tea. Green tea has a
Speaker 1: higher concentration of antioxidants known as polyphenols than other types
Speaker 1: of tea. But the pale brew hasn't always been so hailed.
Speaker 1: Back in the Victorian era, it was said to cause hallucinations.
Speaker 1: Rumors warned that sippers might see ghosts. In the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: the Landcet Medical Journal published a study noting the negative
Speaker 1: effects of green tea, including stomach problems and fluttering of
Speaker 1: the heart, citing a woman profiled in Scottish Medical Journal
Speaker 1: who became hysterical after drinking green tea on an empty stomach.
Speaker 1: Instant only physicians calmed down by administering opium. To further
Speaker 1: cement green Tea's reputation. Author Sheridan LeFanu, an Irish mystery
Speaker 1: writer whose eighteen seventy two collection of tales featured the
Speaker 1: aptly named Green Tea, latched onto this idea and used
Speaker 1: it in the short story that captured the public's imagination.
Speaker 1: Lefano's Green Tea takes place in the early eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and recounts the plight of one Mr Jennings, a clergyman
Speaker 1: who sees the evil spirit of a monkey and turns
Speaker 1: to his doctor for help. His doctor rejects the idea
Speaker 1: that something supernatural is happening, and after discovering that Jennings
Speaker 1: drinks green tea before bed, the doctor claims the green
Speaker 1: tea is to blame. The doctor contends that the green
Speaker 1: tea has built up in Jenning's body and is affecting
Speaker 1: his central nervous system, causing him to hallucinate. While the
Speaker 1: story scientific explanation that green tea builds up in the
Speaker 1: body is false. It didn't seem completely implausible. After all,
Speaker 1: Drinking too much of some substances, like beer or other alcohol,
Speaker 1: can cause both temporary and permanent issues with reality perception,
Speaker 1: and there's another crucial kernel of truth. In the seventies,
Speaker 1: green tea was an imported and expensive delicacy, so to
Speaker 1: increase its quantity and its shelf life, purveyors added a
Speaker 1: variety of other things to the tea leaves, ranging from
Speaker 1: iron filings to plants like hazelwood or hawthorne. They also
Speaker 1: supplemented green tea's color by adding dye in the form
Speaker 1: of natural additives like sheep dung and chemical colorance like
Speaker 1: Prussian blue. In fact, green tea's identity and flavor had
Speaker 1: become so muddled and diluted that when tea merchants attempted
Speaker 1: to sell pure green tea free from fillers, people didn't
Speaker 1: believe it was actually green tea and refused to buy it.
Speaker 1: Strange additives aside, regular amounts of green tea do not
Speaker 1: cause hallucinations unless you drink at an ordinate amount of
Speaker 1: it or anything else that contains caffeine one two. Nine
Speaker 1: studies from Latrobe University tested people drinking various doses of
Speaker 1: caffeine and measured how much it would take to actually hallucinate.
Speaker 1: Participants who drank nine cups of green tea or three
Speaker 1: cups of coffee were three times more likely to hear
Speaker 1: voices and see objects that were not there. So while
Speaker 1: it's technically possible to hallucinate by ingesting massive amounts of
Speaker 1: caffeine via green tea, it would require a great deal
Speaker 1: of the beverage and it wouldn't build up in one
Speaker 1: system to have a cumulative effect either. So evil monkeys aside,
Speaker 1: Green tea is good for you in moderation. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article why the Victorians thought green
Speaker 1: tea caused hallucination its own how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: written by Laurie L. Dove. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Clain. For more podcasts from
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