immunity supplement

[ladieu]

Hi, I just made the immunity tea. I'm sure it works great, but it is a bit rough tasting. Tastes kind of like bark. I wonder if you have any suggestions to make it more palatable?

My wife suggested mixing it 50/50 with normal ice tea might take the edge off, or possibly lemonade, but i don't want the calories.

Let me know.

Nick

[herbdoc]

It is interesting that we have come to expect our medicines to taste good.  Remember Mary Poppins singing " a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".  Obviously back in those days the emphasis was on the medicine, not the taste.  Today things are different - muffins are cake in the shape of a muffin - can you remember when muffins were more like breads than cakes.

But to answer your question - some teas (herbs) definitely taste better than others.  I have found lemonade to be a good liquid to mix the teas with - also grape juice will hide nasty flavors pretty good.  For those things that are really rough I will generally take a shot of the herb and then chase it with juice or something.

While some teas are healthy as well as flavorful (yummy), others are strong medicine.  With the strong ones I admonish my patients to just get it down.

[ladieu]

It is interesting that we have come to expect our medicines to taste good

My expectations were for tea not medicine. I just need to adjust my expectations in the future

Would a tablet have the same medicinal effects as this tea?

[BrianSTL]

As a compounding pharmacist I have a bit of experience with masking lousy tasting medicine. If you can be a bit more specific I may be able to help you make it more palatable for you.

If it is a bitter taste, then try mixing it with flavors that have a natural bitter element inherent in them, such as coffee, grapefruit, chocolate,  or wild cherry. If it is a true 'bark' taste then perhaps mixing it with merlot may help, or it may simply ruin a good merlot......

Hope that this helps.

[ladieu]

I've been a good boy and haven't gotten sick this winter yet. Don't know if it is a result of the tea or not... but I'm sure that doesn't hurt.

I would say it tastes heavily of boiled bark. I'm kind of used to it. I have taken the advice of doing it like a shot, hold the nose and down the hatch.

-Nick