Coffee 2 Tea

Why Green Tea?
What makes green tea so special? It has a lot wellness benefits combined with a modest and delightful flavor give brought green tea almost instant fame over the last a couple of years. As a lot more is found out around about the cancer preventive attributes and other health views of the drink, green tea will continue to be amongst the world’s most sensible and healthiest beverages.

Green Tea represses Certain Cancer Risks
There have been research studies across the world that feature  clear evidence that green tea inhibits the growing of cancerous cells, in effect cutting your chance of certain types of cancer. Green tea has been proven to diminish the risk of esophageal cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer. There are claims that green tea can preclude other forms of cancer as well.

Certain chemical element* in green tea have been shown to trim levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or the bad cholesterin, improving the total cholesterol ratio.

Several scientists nowadays believe that the same natural components found in green tea are responsible for the reduced cases of heart disease amongst the French in spite of their smoking and diets rich in fats. The like is true of the Japanese. There is a very low case of heart disease in Japan despite 75 percent of Japanese males smoking on a regular basis.

The study, which began in 1994, followed 40,530 adults, ranging in age from 40 to 79, in northeastern Japan for up to 11 years. Within this region, 80% of the population drinks green tea with more than half consuming at least 3 cups a day.

Compared with participants who consumed less than 1 cup of green tea per day, those drinking 5 or more cups a day had a significantly lower risk of death from all causes and, specifically, risk of death from CVD, with women receiving even stronger protection than men:

Only weak or neutral relationships were seen between black tea or oolong tea and all-cause or CVD mortality.

While this study found no cancer-preventive benefit from drinking green tea, other large studies, including a meta-analysis of 13 studies published July 2006 in Carcinogenesis (Sun CL et al), suggest that green tea reduces risk of breast cancer. In this study, compared to women who did not drink green tea, those consuming the most green tea were 22% less likely to develop breast cancer.

Often in studies, the effects of a certain health-promoting behavior are likely to be confounded by the fact that those who try to follow a healthy lifestyle practice a variety of healthy habits. In this study, however, since green tea is the most commonly consumed beverage in Japan, it is unlikely that study participants were choosing to drink green tea primarily for their health, and thus also unlikely that the significant drop in risk of death due to all causes and CVD was due to other habits related to health consciousness.

For more health related articles like these visit  http://www.whfoods.com

As of November 2004, the PubMed database contained more than 1,000 studies on green tea, with more than 400 published in 2004! Following is a brief summary of some of the high points of this most current research.

Green tea drinkers appear to have lower risk for a wide range of diseases, from simple bacterial or viral infections to chronic degenerative conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, periodontal disease, and osteoporosis. The latest studies provide a deeper understanding of the ways in which green tea:

Protects against Death from All Causes, Especially Cardiovascular Disease

In August 2006, a European study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that tea is a healthier choice than almost any beverage, including pure water, because tea not only rehydrates as well as water, but provides a rich supply of polyhenols protective against heart disease.

Now, a Japanese study published in the September 2006 issue of JAMA, suggests that drinking green tea lowers risk of death due to all causes, including cardiovascular disease.

Shinichi Kuriyama, M.D., Ph.D., of the Tohoku University School of Public Policy, Sendai, Japan, and colleagues examined the association between green tea consumption and death due to all causes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer.

Too Your Health

Well its not exactly an easy question to answer due to the huge variety of teas out there and how exactly you want to measure health benefits.

If we say the health score of a tea is based on its levels of antioxidants (flavinoids, catechins) then we could draw up the following table…

[1] Jasmine tea’s base is green tea and its total antioxidant content is boosted by the presence of jasmine.

[2] Although Rooibos isn’t of the same species and not strictly a tea it is commonly referred to as a tea. Now although many have claimed it has a higher antioxidant content than tea this isn’t true although it does contain a variety of unique antioxidants.

[3] The general consensus is that iced tea is the most heavily processed and thus least antioxidant rich of the teas. However, Lipton do claim that their tea with lemon contains an unusually high amount of flavinoids. How much we believe this is up to you.

(Hakim IA, Hartz V, Harris RB, Balentine D, Weisgerber UM, Graver E, Whitacre R, Alberts D. Reproducibility and relative validity of a questionnaire to assess intake of black tea polyphenols in epidemiological studies. Cancer Epidem Bio & Prev 2001; 10:667-78).

Antioxidant Activity of Black Tea vs. Green Tea (Ki Won Lee and Hyong Joo Lee) Department of Food Science and Technology School of Agricultural Biotechnology Seoul National University Suwon 441–744, Korea