Has anyone here added cooked herbal tea to their diet after being 100% raw? Did this affect your health noticeably or not at all? Thanks for any info...

Is cooked herbal tea supposed to be toxic? It can't be that bad considering how small the portions are. It's only a small amount of dried leaves per cup.

I was at a raw restaurant (Alive! in San Francisco) last night and I had some mint tea. I normally don't drink tea, but I was sitting outside and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Were there any side effects? I don't know, as I was feeling the other effects of the spices in that foods. The food was delicious though.

I cut out drinking herbal teas for the longest time, then a few months ago I added them back in, as up here in Canada, its nice to have something warm to get you through the cold nights. I've had no reaction at all from drinking herbal teas--but I do stay away from the caffinated ones.

Calorie-wise they make a minimal contribution, there are probably less than 3 kcal in a cup of tea. So if you are drinking one cup of tea per day in a 2000 kcal diet you are still 99.85% raw and I honestly do not think this will make a difference in a 100-year human lifespan.

But some herbal teas contain drugs and if you want to be drug-free, you skip them.

I am trying really hard to follow as much of a raw diet as possible, but I have trouble with all the sugars - for some odd reason I have been CRAVING like MAD to drink red raspberry, alfalfa, and hibiscus tea, so I've been drinking it 3-4 times a day. Using Frontier brand herbs in a home-made tea bag. I have noticed this satisfies my food cravings, and I have been eating less and less cooked foods and sweets. I don't think the body digests a lot of the greens until we are more along in the detox/rebuilding phase of health... which I am definitely not at yet, so for me this tea has been GREAT. I am also trying to heal from an emergency c-section (due to placental abruption - one of the true reasons a woman NEEDS a c-section - totally a bummer because we were planning a homebirth). The red raspberry is a women's tonic and I feel a major difference. Where I used to feel SHARP stabbing pains around the incisions ... well, it's getting lots better! It's my opinion tea can be more absorbable than say, a salad.

-Angie

The mention of calories, can one not use sun dried stevia in place of sweeteners and avoid any non-raw calories from sweeteners?

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