Editorial Policy

What this site is, and what it is not

MatchaWhat is a reference site about matcha green tea. It exists to answer the questions people actually type into a search box — how much caffeine is in a bowl, why the powder clumps, whether the £40 whisk is worth it over the £12 one — with specific numbers instead of vague reassurance.

It is not a shop. We hold no stock and we run no affiliate storefront; the only thing we sell is our own downloadable guide. It is also not a medical resource: we write about a drink that contains caffeine, and where that touches health we say what the evidence shows and then tell you to ask a doctor.

Where our numbers come from

Caffeine, catechin and nutrition figures are not things you can establish in a home kitchen, so we do not pretend to. Those come from published sources — food composition databases, peer-reviewed analyses, and manufacturer specifications — and we link to them at the point of the claim so you can check our reading against the original.

Matcha is an agricultural product, so honest figures are ranges, not points. Caffeine content varies with cultivar, shading period, harvest and grind. When we quote a single number it is a typical value, and we state the range around it. Where we have estimated rather than sourced something, the page says so in those words.

Prices are checked at publication and re-checked on our review cycle. They move, and a guide quoting last year's price is worse than useless.

Health content

Some of what people ask about matcha is health-adjacent: caffeine in pregnancy, digestive effects, interactions with iron absorption. We answer those questions because readers are asking them and the alternative is that they get worse answers elsewhere.

On those pages we hold to a stricter standard. Every physiological claim is linked to a primary or institutional source. We describe what the evidence shows rather than what would make a better headline, we flag where evidence is thin or contested, and we never present a general-audience figure as personal medical advice. Anyone pregnant, breastfeeding, managing a heart or anxiety condition, or taking medication should talk to a clinician about their own caffeine ceiling — no website can set it for them.

We do not currently employ a credentialed medical reviewer. Rather than imply otherwise, we say it plainly here and keep health claims conservative and sourced.

How we use AI tools

We use AI tools the way we use a spell-checker and a search engine: for drafting assistance, structural editing, and finding sources worth reading. We do not publish generated text unreviewed. No page goes live without a human checking every figure against its source and editing the result line by line.

We think stating this is better than the alternative, which is pretending the tooling of 2026 does not exist. The commitment that matters is not 'no software touched this' — it is that a person is accountable for every factual claim on the page, and that person is us.

How we make money

Advertising, plus our own downloadable guide. The ads you see are served programmatically, we do not choose them individually, and no advertiser has ever seen a guide before publication or influenced a recommendation in one.

We do not accept paid placements, sponsored posts, gifted-product reviews, or payment for inclusion in a buying guide. If that changes, this page changes first and the disclosure appears on the affected articles.

When we name a brand, it is because it is genuinely relevant to the question — the reference brands in our grade guides are there because they are the ones people ask about, not because there is a commission behind the mention.

Corrections

We get things wrong. When we do, we would rather hear it from you than leave it up.

Email a correction and we will check it against the source. If you are right, we fix the page within a week and note the change and its date at the foot of the article. We do not quietly edit factual errors out of existence — a correction that leaves no trace is not a correction, it is a cover-up.

Typos and broken links we simply fix. Substantive factual changes get a visible note.

Review schedule

Published is not finished. Every guide carries a last-reviewed date, and we work through the site on a rolling cycle rather than letting pages calcify.

• Every 6 months

  Price-sensitive and health-adjacent pages: buying guides, brand pages, caffeine figures, and anything touching pregnancy or medication.

• Every 12 months

  Technique, recipe and reference pages, where the underlying facts move slowly but links rot and products get discontinued.

• Immediately

  Anything a reader shows us is wrong, and anything affected by a new authoritative source or a changed official guideline.