Issue date: 2/10/05 Section: The Verge

Media Credit: Stephen Haas Josh Overcash brews organic chai tea at Marianne´s Euro Deli.

On a blistering cold morning in Montana while working construction, most would think a nice cup of coffee is what's needed to get your day started. But that's not the case for Josh Overcash, now a Charleston resident. He would bring herbal, organic chai tea to his construction crew to warm them up and get them moving in the morning.

Chai wakes up your body's internal organs, so that your organs can stimulate your brain to wake up naturally. And you can work hard through out the day, Overcash said.

Overcash now works at Marianne's Euro Deli brewing and sealing organic chai into jars to keep the bacteria out of the chai once a week for Marianne to sell. Starting Friday at open mic night at Marianne's Euro Deli, the owner Marianne Farrar will be serving organic chai for $2.75.

Farrar decided to start having organic chai because, "It would fall in the realm of our existing fare because we have a large variety of vegetarian food," Farrar said.

Also her European background influences her efforts to bring healthy foods and drinks to Charleston. In Europe, people tend to be more health conscious than people in the United States. But in bigger cities Americans are healthier than most in the United States, Farrar said.

In the last five years chai has become more popular and its popularity is increasing everyday, said Autumn White, the marketing coordinator for Choice Tea.

Herbal organic chai tea is very medical because it helps fight foreign viruses that enter the body, Overcash said.

Unlike Big Train Chai Tea, a packaged powder chai, organic chai has no additives. Packaged chai tea has identical ingredients as organic tea, but also has chemicals in it such as non-dairy creams, hydrogenated coconut oil, corn syrup solids, pipottasium, phosphate, sodium silicoaluminate and mono and dyglycerides, according to the ingredient listing of the packaged powdered chai, Big Train Chai Tea .

"Anything hydrogenated is not good for you because they clog up your arteries," said Gordon Tucker, an associate professor in the biology department.

Anything organic including organic chai doesn't have pesticides or any type of chemicals sprayed on it during the growth process and is regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture, White said.

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