• Tea has health benefits beyond the pleasure of a soothing and refreshing hot or iced beverage. The tannin is thought to have beneficial effects in fighting tooth decay. Tea leaves also have a relatively high fluoride content, much of which ends up in the liquid after steeping. Fluoride strengthens tooth enamel, and research has shown that tea-drinking nations have better teeth than non-tea-drinking peoples. With fluoridization of the drinking water in most urban centers of the United States, that benefit is no longer as valuable. Today we drink tea for pure pleasure.

• Interestingly enough tea leaves have high caffeine content, twice the amount of that in average coffee beans (in an amount needed to brew a cup of either tea or coffee). But the teasteeping process doesn’t extract the caffeine efficiently, so the final beverage contains only less than half the amount of caffeine that the same cup of coffee. Someone may yet come up with a process to brew espresso tea, that will hopefully give you an extra kick of caffeine.

• Different types of tea leaves have differing amounts of caffeine. The lowest are the Chinese and Japanese green teas. Indonesian, Indian and Ceylon black teas have twice the amount of caffeine that green teas have. A few herbal teas, like South American maté, have high caffeine content, too. A cup of maté contains about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

• Tea may be decaffeinated just like coffee and is readily available in this form in the U.S.