Your logic is flawed. Green tea is the tea leaf in unfermented form. Here is the appropriate logic given the processes involved in making black tea: Green tea is to black tea as grape juice is to wine. If you accept this to be true, and I leave it to you to make that decision, you may decide that you can drink green tea afterall. One more post on this subject: Here is what Brigham Young has said on two different occassions regarding tea and green tea: Remarks by President Brigham Young, The Word of Wisdom Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, April 7th, 1867. [Reported by David W. Evans.] As found in the Journal of Discourses, Vol 12. Now, there is no harm in a teapot, even if it contains tea, if it is let alone; and I say of a truth that where a person is diseased, say, for instance, with canker, there is no better medicine than green tea, and where it is thus used it should be drank sparingly. Instead of drinking thirteen or fourteen cups every morning, noon, and night, there should not be any used. You may think I am speaking extravagantly, but I remember a tea-drinking match once in which fourteen cups a-piece were drank, so you see it can be done. But top drink half a dozen or even three or four cups of strong tea is hurtful. It injures and impairs the system, benumbs the faculties of the stomach, and affects the blood, and is deleterious in its nature. If a person is weary, worn out, cast down, fainting, or dying, a brandy sling, a little wine, or a cup of tea is good to revive them. Do not throw these things away, and say they must never be used; they are good to be used with judgment, prudence, and discretion. Ask our Bishops if they drink tea every day, and in most cases they will tell you they do if they can get it. They take it when they do not need it and when it injures them. I want to say to the Elders in Israel, this is not our privilege. We have a great many privileges, but to indulge in liquor or other things to our own injury is not one of them. We have the right to live, labor, build our houses, make our farms, raise our cattle and horses, buy our carriages, marry our wives, raise and school our children, and then we have the right to set before them an example worthy of imitation, but we have not the right to throw sin in their path or to lead them to destruction. Discourses of Brigham Young Chapter XVI The Word of Wisdom—This Word of Wisdom prohibits the use of hot drinks and tobacco. I have heard it argued that tea and coffee are not mentioned therein; that is very true; but what were the people in the habit of taking as hot drinks when that revelation was given? Tea and coffee. We were not in the habit of drinking water very hot, but tea and coffee—the beverages in common use. And the Lord said hot drinks are not good for the body nor the belly, liquor is not good for the body nor the belly, but for the washing of the body, etc. Tobacco is not good, save for sick cattle, and for bruises and sores, its cleansing properties being then very useful. 13:277. Granted, this is Brigham Young speaking in the 19th century. We are living in the 21st century. But if you are looking for quotes from presidents, these are the two that exist out there on the subject. I am not suggesting that the answer is yay or nay with respect to the consumption of green tea. I personally think it is between you and the Lord.
