Herbal tea is rapidly gaining popularity today. There is a very good reason for that. The fact is that herbal teas provide healing through the comfort of a hot cup of good tasting tea. Healing, comfort and great taste in a cup....what could be better?

Big international food companies like Lipton Tea are climbing onto the herbal tea band wagon. Lipton has recently announced the launch of an herbal tea product line that includes the convenience of single serving teabags. The line includes chamomile, lemon, ginger, cinnamon, and others.

Chinese herbalists have been using herbal tea as a vehicle for delivering healing herbs to patients for several thousand years. Some of the brews that they mixed were strong and vile tasting concoctions that their patients refused to swallow so they quickly learned to include herbs like peppermint and cinnamon along with honey to make them more palatable.

All tea is said to have come about because of Shen Nung according to this legend:

Shen Nung was a Chinese emperor who lived more than 5000 years ago, so the story goes. He was a rather progressive man and very wise. He had a strong interest in science, too. He ordered that all water must be boiled before his subjects drank it which was, indeed, a very wise thing to do because sanitation would have been almost nonexistent 5000 years ago.

According to legend, one summer day Shen Nung and his court were visiting a distant region of his domain when they stopped to rest. Shen Nung ordered one of the servants to boil water for the entourage to drink. As the servant was boiling the water some leaves of a nearby plant fell into the boiling water and the water immediately turned a very dark reddish brown color.

Because Shen Nung was an accomplished scientist, he decided to taste the dark water. He found it not only tasted good but was very refreshing and thus, tea was born.