Mate: Argentina's Incredible Elixir

Argentines are passionate people and they are probably best known for their love of football. Most Argentines eat, sleep and breathe football. Club allegiances can be fierce and rivalries intense, but away from the pitch or the television Argentines are passionate about so much more. Living in the country opens you up to so many new experiences. One learns very quickly that here there is a love of horses and horse sports, a great fondness for beef and wine, but also a deep passion for a strange tea-like drink called "mate" (pronounced ma-tay).

Mate, or yerba mate by its full name, is a traditional drink that is drunk by almost all Argentines. It is as much a social event as it is a healthy and all natural therapeutic beverage. Mate is known to have many beneficial qualities and the combination of natural chemicals is not found in any other beverage. It can only be found in the mate plant and a couple of very close relatives.

Leading mate expert and guru David “Mate” Askaripour swears by the almost magical elixir. A regular drinker he first got hooked on the beverage on his first trip to Argentina. “There was just something really special about the first time I took part in a mate session,” he claims. “I was welcomed into a group of Argentines and when I first took mate with them things changed. It was almost like an initiation ritual, but in reality it was a sign or offering of friendship. Every country has their own customs and their own way of welcoming someone into a group. In Argentina, it’s with mate.”

From that point on David became almost obsessed with mate. He started to look into this local tradition and soon discovered that it had a lot more to offer than just social benefits. Mate, it turned out, possessed a lot of almost medicinal properties. Like green tea it is full of nutrients and antioxidants. In fact mate is widely believed to have many health benefits including improving digestion and cholesterol. It can also give you increased energy, but not the harsh increase and crash that coffee can have. So with all of these benefits one must wonder why it hasn't taken off in the rest of the world especially now that we are more health conscious. So what is holding this mate revolution back?

I can only speculate as to why the rest of the world hasn't caught on to this incredible and beneficial tradition. My first guess would be that the corporate world hasn't seen it as a profitable venture. They seem to think things like McDonalds burgers and genetically modified produce is a much better avenue. Yerba mate is just a natural plant grown in regions that don't use pesticides. It is a simply produced product that has deep roots in tradition and is everything that corporate America is not. That's just my humble opinion though. Mate has not received, to my knowledge, the FDA's blessing while Monsanto's genetically modified products have been pushed through without regulation. The FDA is big on allowing modified and processed foods that can turn a big profit.

Some people say that mate can have side effects, some of which seem absurd, but in my experience I have had none. There have only been benefits. When I look at a country like Uruguay, which by far drinks the most mate per capita, I see relaxed, friendly people and not the stressed out and unhealthy sort which is more common in North American cities. Of course when it comes down to it though, you be the judge. Check out David's Circle of Drink website and do some research on your own or come visit Argentina and take a Matography (mate and photography) workshop. Just find the info and sign up through Day Clicker Photo Tours.