Labels often mislead—study

Health & Fitness
OSLO — Herbal teas often contain unlisted extra ingredients such as weeds, ferns or bits of tree, according to a study by New York high school students that could help tighten labelling rules.

“A third of the herbal teas had things in them that are not on the label,” Mark Stoeckle, of the Rockefeller University who helped oversee the project, said. The students collected dozens of teas and herbal teas and found extra ingredients in some including ferns, grass, parsley, other weeds and even traces of an ornamental tree, Taiwanese cheesewood, they said.

“For me, the most surprising ingredient was the annual bluegrass,” said Catherine Gamble (18) of Trinity School. “It seems kind of outrageous to have it in a tea. I think nothing was outright poisonous…but things like camomile (found in some samples) have been known to cause allergic reactions to people. To have those in tea and unlabelled could be dangerous,” she said. —Reuters Life!