Roskachestvo found mold and E.coli in tea bags
They also found pesticides in our favorite drink. Despite this, you can still drink it.
What is the most important thing about tea besides taste and aroma? Probably quality. I would really like the drink to at least not harm health, but better – add it.
But in stores, we often buy a “pig in a poke”, believing the word of advertising, sellers, acquaintances. And only a thorough examination can determine a quality product. This was carried out by experts of Roskachestvo, who sent 48 teas of popular brands to the laboratory and compared them by 178 indicators.
Immediately about the main thing: it turned out that tea in bags is really worse than leaf tea. But not because it is fake.
“In 13 cases, we took leaf and tea bags from the same manufacturer to compare if there was actually a difference,” the researchers said. – The quality is on average higher for loose teas. Only in three cases out of 13 leaf tea yielded the palm to packaged tea ”.
However, there are no serious violations – forgeries instead of tea, impurities, excess of the content of toxic and radioactive elements – no. The composition corresponds to GOST, that is, tea is tea. The prevailing opinion among buyers that sand, garbage, flavors, weeds are added to the bags has not been confirmed. Other, cheaper plants are also not mixed in packs. And the oil film that appears on the surface of the drink also does not mean anything bad – only that your water is too hard.
This is where the positive ends. Let’s move on to the comments.
Poison tea
Traces of pesticides were found in 40 tea samples.
Pesticides are what tea bushes are treated with on plantations. Their traces remain in the finished tea. Experts emphasize that we are talking about negligible doses that will not harm the body. But even those eight samples that turned out to be “pure”, the researchers cannot call organic.
“We have not carried out certification of production and do not guarantee that these teas do not contain other, rarer and not investigated pesticides in this test,” said Roskachestvo. “The study set included only 148 pesticides, and there are many more of them in the world.”
Moreover, if pesticides are not in some brand of leaf tea, it is not a fact that they will not be in packaged tea either. And vice versa. Such cases were also encountered in the study.
No pesticides:
in packaged Milford, Basilur, Lipton, Greenfield, Dilmah, Brooke Bond;
in sheet Akbar and Tradition.
Maximum – 8 pesticides – packaged Akbar, “Vigor” and “Maisky”. However, these products are not considered toxic, and there is no cumulative excess of the maximum permissible level.
Other teas contain traces of one to seven pesticides.
Mold and Escherichia coli
Escherichia coli bacteria were found in 11 samples, and an excess of mold was found in two more.
Mold forms when there is too much moisture in the tea. This situation, according to research results, has developed for two brands of tea bags – Dilmah and Krasnodarskiy. At the same time, it turned out that our standards are stricter than in Europe. Anything that does not meet our standards is well within the foreign framework.
What harm can be caused to a person by E. coli that has entered the body, I think, you can not tell. Vomiting, diarrhea and other delights of indigestion are not the most pleasant thing.
So, bacteria of the Escherichia coli group were found in 11 samples – 10 packaged and one sheet. Nevertheless, experts say: for a buyer who brews tea correctly, they are not dangerous.
“E. coli is destroyed when brewing tea with boiling water and even just hot water – over 60 degrees, – explains in Roskachestvo. – It can be harmful, for example, if you take a pinch of tea from the pack with your fingers, and not with a spoon. And then, without washing your hands, you touch other products. Or fill the tea leaves with cool water. “
There is mold:
in packaged Dilmah tea, molds were found there three times more than the maximum level allowed in Russia;
in packaged Krasnodarskiy tea – four times more.
E. coli is:
in tea bags Alokozay, Azerchay, Golden Chalice, Imperial, Riston, Gordon, Brooke Bond, Twinings, Richard, The same tea;
in the Tradition leaf tea.