Insect tea


Insect tea refers to teas made from leaves bitten by, and the droppings of, insects fed on specific plants. Most insect teas originate from the Southeast Asian region. They are often used in local traditional medicine, but have not been well-studied in the scientific literature.

The insects and their hosts

Various insect teas are produced by small traditional communities particularly in the Southeast Asian hill regions, including southern China and Thailand. Not all insect sources and host plants have been studied or documented.
Some examples include:
Many chemicals in plants have evolved to protect them from insects. Insects in turn have evolved biochemical mechanisms or symbiotic relationships with microbes that allow them to consume these plants. The faecal matter often concentrates certain chemicals that produce distinctive flavours and tastes – and claimed effects on human health. Insect teas are widely used in traditional Asian medicine, particularly in China.
A few academic journals have published papers reporting pharmacological effects of some of these teas or of chemicals found in them, though little follow-up research has been done as of 2019 For example, a 2015 Chinese study showed that polyphenols extracted from huaxiang tea reduced the count of liver-cancer cells in vitro, by increasing their apoptosis rate. The same paper also broadly claimed that "Traditional Chinese medicine can prevent and cure cancer", a view not widely accepted by science