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'First published on the health site contributed by Madhav Sarda, Managing Director, Golden Tips Tea'

Blue Tea helps boost immunity, acts as paracetamol, and has anti-aging effects. Read on to know more about the health benefits of butterfly pea flowers.

Over the years we all have come across various types of teas like Black, Green, Masala, and White teas, but have you ever heard of Blue Tea? Seems a bit weird for tea to have that name, right? Made by infusing Butterfly Pea flowers, Blue tea (Aparajita or Neelkanth) is named after its beautiful azure blue hue. When infused in hot water with lemon in it, this flower gives the famous blue color to the beverage. This tea has a distinct floral aroma that gives it an earthy and woody flavor, similar to green tea in some ways.

This super beverage is also a caffeine-free herbal concoction packed with antioxidants and is also rich in Anthocyanins, which are compounds responsible for its unique blue color. For this reason, manufacturers also use Butterfly Pea flower in cosmetics and as a natural dye for foods, drinks, and textiles.

The flowers are also commonly brewed into an herbal tea, often alongside ingredients like lemongrass, honey, and lemon. When the acidity of the Pea flower tea changes, the color changes as well. This quality makes the butterfly pea flower a popular ingredient among mixologists for specialty cocktails. Recently, the flower made its way into the cocktail world, where it's used to make Blue Gin.

According to the Journal of Pharmacological Reports, the Butterfly Pea flower is a common ingredient in rice-based recipes, such as Nasi Kerabu in Malaysia and rice cakes in Singapore.

Turquoise Trail Infusion Blue Tea

Ingredients: Pea Butterfly, Lemongrass, Moringa, Peppermint and Rose Petals

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Blue Myriad Infusion Blue Tea

Ingredients: Pea Butterfly, Lemongrass, Moringa, Hibiscus and Rose Petals

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Role of digital and social media in popularizing Blue Tea

Blue tea has been available in the market for long but now thanks to social media, food bloggers, and travel bloggers, these teas are very popular and are widely available for consumption at retail stores, supermarkets, and online marketplaces. They are regularly used by tea aficionados across the globe for their various health benefits too.

According to Verified Market Research, the herbal tea market was valued at $3289.67 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $4877.80 million by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 4.89 percent from 2021 to 2028. India is second only to China in terms of acceptance of teas that have been blended with spices, fruit bits, flower petals, herbs, and a whole array of botanicals.

7 Health Benefits of Butterfly Pea Flower Blue Tea

Some of the health benefits of Blue Tea are as follow:

1. Acts as a Paracetamol

Blue tea is believed to aid in bringing down a fever by dilating the blood vessels right beneath the skin. This would enable the air to cool the blood more easily.

2. Stress Buster

A high dosage of blue pea flowers has had beneficial anxiolytic effects in humans and has helped the body deal with stress.

3. Immunity booster and anti-inflammatory

The blue flowers are rich in flavonoids, which are powerful antioxidants with anti-inflammatory properties. They also help boost immunity.

4. Asthma healer

Blue tea can help give relief from cough, cold, and asthma, as it acts as an expectorant. In other words, helps clear the mucus from the airways, lungs, and trachea.

5. Boosts memory

Blue tea has garnered a lot of interest across the world and this can be attributed to the memory-boosting properties it has. Studies have shown that the Blue Pea flowers assist memory and brain function as they help increase Acetylcholine (a Neurotransmitter).

6. Reduces risk of cell damage

The rich color of blue tea indicates the high quantity of antioxidants in it. Antioxidants reduce the risk of cell damage, they are also known to slow down the effects of aging on skin and hair.

7. Anti-diabetic

Butterfly pea flowers help inhibit glucose uptake from food and thus, help treat type II diabetes. The benefits of having blue tea are not just internal in nature, they have a number of external benefits too, like for the skin and overall beauty.

Some of them are enumerated below:

• The tea is well-known for its anti-aging benefits, due to its high antioxidant content. This makes the skin shinier and younger from within.
• Blue pea flower is excellent for the hair too, as it contains Anthocyanin - a compound known to increase blood circulation in the head and therefore maintain a healthy scalp.
• The flavonoids present in blue tea may also stimulate collagen production, helping develop and maintain skin elasticity.

At Golden Tips stores, both physical and online, blue tea has emerged as one of our bestsellers. It has overtaken our previous hot-sellers and this trend is here to stay. We have introduced other flower blends too in our product portfolio like Chamomile, Hibiscus, Rose, Jasmine, Lavender but have given them an 'Indian Spin'.