I Am Grossed Out

I Drink Bugs

Posted on by jddidthings

I got bugs on my window
Trying to get in
And now the question is:
Do I eat them?

tea1.jpg

I finally have a reason to throw out that giant bag of tea.

Like so many of you out there, I fell victim to the siren call of slimming teas. Not those dangerous slimming teas that contain laxatives and diuretics. Anything can be labeled slimming if it makes you eliminate everything in your body. Don’t buy these. There are safe slimming teas, and their claims are hard to resist. Don’t buy these either.

Oolong (also marketed as Wulong to make it sound more authentic and exotic) tea is a semi-fermented tea that comes in many varieties—even scented and unscented, much like tampons. People drink oolong tea for its complex notes and rich flavor. To me, it tastes like Lipton’s. But that’s not surprising, considering I have the palate of a 4-year-old.

Lately, however, we’re hearing all this stuff about how you can lose weight simply by drinking tea—especially oolong tea. In fact, it turns out oolong tea will pretty much solve all your problems. Wu-Long for Life and Wu long Tea by QFL list dozens of benefits in addition to weight loss, including:

  • Increased energy
  • Decreased appetite
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Improved immunity
  • Clear skin

And my favorite

  • “Look and feel perhaps years younger”

I like that they add the qualifier “perhaps.” You may only feel days younger. At least they’re not trying to lead us on or anything.

So, OK. I bought some of this tea. What the hell. For one thing, tea is good for you. It’s loaded with anti-oxidants, has less caffeine than coffee, and some of it actually tastes good.

Did the weight melt away? No. The tea didn’t affect me one bit, and there were stretches when I drank 4 huge mugs every day. Experts do say that, depending on the individual, tea will speed up your metabolism and in some cases can result in a weight loss of roughly 8 pounds a year. Wow. Big freaking deal.

And as for the claim that oolong tea is somehow more magical than other tea, Tea Muse tells us that

all tea is made from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. Whether you get green, white, oolong, or black tea depends on how you process it. . . . The ‘wu long tea helps you lose weight’ is inaccurate—you’d be able to get the same benefits from drinking any tea.

But weight loss or no, I still have this giant Ziplock bag of loose-leaf tea that refuses to get any smaller. I’ve been drinking this stuff almost every day for what seems like 10 years, and I have the same amount I started with. But I stubbornly refuse to get rid of it.

Until this morning, when a tiny bug crawled out from amid the tea leaves.

After throwing up, I shook out the contents of the bag onto a paper towel and looked for more tiny bugs. There weren’t any, but that’s probably because I already drank them.

Now, it’s not the thought of swallowing a tiny bug that bothers me so much. It’s the thought of that tiny bug laying tiny eggs in my BRAIN and having a colony of baby tiny bugs marching around my gray matter that bothers me.

So, good-bye oolong tea! I don’t have to drink you or your bugs anymore.

I’d better not get any fatter.

If you want to avoid drinking bugs
  • Buy teabags
  • Drink coffee
  • Pick through every tiny leaf of tea before using (not advised)
Learn More About Oolong Tea: Mysterious Elixir of the East