Our Changing Menu - Ingredient Database

(Under Ongoing Development)

Tea

India (Assam); China (Yunnan Province)

Tea is a $10 billion industry and the second most popular drink in the world. Typed according to how it’s processed – black, oolong, Masala, pu’erh, and green – tea is, like coffee, changing. Shifts in temperature, rainfall, and season length can affect not only yields but also the hundreds of unique chemicals in teas that determine their potential health benefits and flavors.[1] [2]

References:

[1] J. M. A. Duncan et al., “Observing Climate Impacts on Tea Yield in Assam, India,” Applied Geography 77 (December 2016), 64, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.10.004.

[2] Anna Nowogrodzki, “How Climate Change Might Affect Tea,” Nature 566 (February 6, 2019): S10–11, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00399-0.

Our foods and food ingredients: They're all changing.

Yields of major staple crops like wheat and rice are being hurt by increasing temperatures. Wine grape production is moving to cooler climes causing changes in the character of some of our favorites. The flavors and health benefits of teas, the size of potatoes, the sting of a hot pepper, where fish call home in the oceans, and a future decline in protein in vegetables—it’s all changing.

Our food database shows the ingredients affected by a changing climate.

To learn what farmers, scientists, and many others are doing to keep the menu stocked, see Stewardship of the Land and Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need. You have a role, too!

Using our database:

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Construction in progress...

This food ingredient database is in its early phase and we will strive to expand it on an ongoing basis so that everyone is aware of how climate change is affecting the foods we love and need.