Left Flank

It's another reason to drink black tea rather than coffee.

But now the team of scientists led by Professor Les Baillie from Welsh School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University and Doctor Theresa Gallagher, Biodefense Institute, part of the Medical Biotechnology Centre of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in Baltimore, has found that the widely-available English Breakfast tea has the potential to inhibit the activity of anthrax, as long as it is black tea.

Anthrax - a potentially fatal human disease - is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. A very serious and rapidly progressing form of the disease occurs when bacterial spores are inhaled making anthrax a potent threat when used as a biological warfare agent.

Published in the March issue of the Society for Applied Microbiology's journal Microbiologist, Professor Baillie said: «Our research sought to determine if English Breakfast tea was more effective than a commercially available American medium roast coffee at killing anthrax. We found that special components in tea such as polyphenols have the ability to inhibit the activity of anthrax quite considerably.»

The study provides further evidence of the wide range of beneficial physiological and pharmalogical effects of this common household item.

The research also shows that the addition of whole milk to a standard cup of tea completely inhibited its antibacterial activity against anthrax.

Add to this what Graeme Wood terms black tea's "subtler" defense against terror, why not toddle today?

My wife and I spent a lovely morning together, and then went to the Suyeong Marina for the Third Busan International Tea Festival.

I tried so many types of tea, from China, Japan, and Korea, including white tea, several kinds of green tea, and puerh tea. If you've never had white tea, it's very mild and actually yellow-hued. It's much more pleasant with fruit and also blended well with olfactory cues. I learned how to drink all of the teas in different ways. Years ago, I attended a Korean tea ceremony in Busan, and my wife and I learned about a tea ceremony in Osaka, Japan, but today I received some special attention. As you can see I was called upon to participate in a performance of a royal audience, and drink some more white tea.

I also snapped some good photos of a Korean ceremony for the queen and her ladies. Unfortunately, my batteries seized up and died near the end. My wife and I both participated in a Japanese tea ceremony, so no photos of that.

If anything the honey-coated figs, walnuts, rice cakes, and other confections were delicious. There were vendors, mostly local, selling tea (I bought some puerh tea), and a few teahouses that keep the traditions alive. From a devotee of the southern house wine, Lipton's iced tea, drinking tea has become a hobby of sorts, and now tea, from Assam to Darjeeling, has become my morning and afternoon habit. It's hard to get black tea in Busan, where green tea is the favorite, but I also have found tea shops selling puerh and oolong.

More later, but the caffeine is leaving my system, and I can feel I'm beginning to crash!