| State finds a new cup of tea
BURLINGTON, Wash. (AP) -- Just behind the Sakuma Brothers Farms Market Stand, in a 5-acre field bordered by a strawberry patch, a decade-long project to bring locally grown tea to market has finally come to fruition.Earlier this summer, workers walked through the tightly packed rows of nondescript evergreen plants, named Camellia sinensis, and one-by-one they pinched off the plants leaves near the stem.Later, the leaves were heated, rolled and dried in the sun, with the resulting brittle flakes ready to be steeped in water and served as tea.Last month, after the Sakumas first sale of loose-leaf green and white teas, the family-owned farm became just the second commercial tea plantation in the continental United States, and the first on the West Coast.
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Going Skin Deep
Today's fountain of youth is filled with a strange brew of fairy-tale herbs and chemicals: Chaga mushrooms, osmolytes, coffeeberry extract, polyhydroxy acids, silver tip white tea, rhodiola. Americans shelled out $44.6 billion for anti-aging products and services in 2004 alone, according to a report by Business Communications. A 2004 online survey of 1, 343 Americans 25 and older, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that 72 percent of women and 13 percent of men had used or were then using an over-the-counter anti-aging product. Nineteen percent of women and 6 percent of men reported using prescription face creams, masks or gels. .
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