Getting the most out of green tea
Tea drinking had its origins in China more than 4000 years ago. Green tea itself has been drunk as a beverage and used in traditional medicine throughout Asia. It has been used to help a number of ailments, including controlling bleeding, healing wounds, regulating blood sugar and even assisting digestion.
Green tea contains polyphenols which are considered to improve health, especially catechins.
Now most green tea drinkers will tell you that that the best-tasting green tea is brewed for under one minute with hot water that hasn’t reached the boiling point yet.
photo credit: Rachel Strohm
It is also steeped for a short period of time. Boiling water and longer steeping times tend to give the tea a more bitter taste.
However his may not give you the best results for your health.
Researchers have discovered that using boiling water and longer steeping times actually increases the amount of polyphenols in the tea.
These studies suggest that the following guidelines can boost the polyphenol level in your green tea:
The tea leaves themselves - small loose leaf green tea is the best choice, because its infuses quicker. Tightly curled or large leaf tea require longer infusion times.
Teabags are not as effective - loose leaves are preferable to teabags. If you use tea bags they continuously dunked in the teapot to aid the extraction of the polyphenols
Temperature – boiling water may unfortunately increase the bitter flavour but it does aid the extraction of polyphenols
Steeping Time – tea should be steeped for more than two and less than five minutes. The polyphenol content of tea increases with steeping time.
Now this research raises a dilemma for green tea drinkers.
Should I extract the most from my green tea and live with the not so sweet flavour or should I just enjoy my tea and not consider the benefits of green tea?
I think the best answer is to see if you can acquire a taste for the loose leaf green tea that is brewed for longer and thus extract as many health benefits as possible from the drink. If the taste is too difficult I would suggest sweetening it with some natural honey. Nevertheless if you drink green tea weight loss can happen.
So why not treat yourself right now with a hot cup of green tea, a slice or two of mango and a relaxing detox foot spa?
Hi John, you visited my blog. I love and believe strongly in the benefits of green tea, not just for weight loss but also I believe it is the reason that when my children became sick with H1N1 followed by every other viral thing under the sun that I caught nothing. Two cups of gt per day and two zinc lozenges and nothing!
Now I sneak green tea into their smoothies
Breeze
Smart mom!