Drinking Health - benefits and misconceptions

You've heard it time and time again.

Over the past few years, a flood of reports have come in, flaunting the nearly miraculous effects that can occur from drinking green tea. This has brought about an increased demand for the tea. In this lesson, we'll recount the variety and validity of these reports as well as the best ways to achieve these.

In Asia, tea has been revered for centuries as the virtual elixir of life. Only recently has this proclamation faced serious scientific inquiry. The many diverse benefits of green tea that have (so far) been confirmed by science include aid against cancer, better breath, lower cholesterol, weight loss and general immune strength. However, there are other (more obscure) studies that seem to have uncovered a flaw in these findings.

The problem with these health benefit studies is not the validity of the results, instead the omission of other teas. Most studies only cover a specific tea, not all teas. For example, when testing the effects of green tea on weight loss, the results are surprising. However, what is not mentioned in this conclusion is that black tea yields nearly identical results.

Studies confirming the fact that all teas' benefits are similar are now trickling in. In Europe, scientists have concluded that black tea's benefits are consistent with greens. Studies in Taiwan are concluding the same about Oolongs. Why have so many scientists missed this connection? It is due to the fact that research was originally done to confirm or disprove the Ancient Chinese claims that "green tea is good for you," rather than find tea's benefits as a whole.

A little common sense confirms this: all teas come from the same plant (and therefore have the same composition), all benefits are practically equal. Slight differences may occur in the varieties (due to the way that these teas are processed), but these are not considerable. So while white tea may provide a few more antioxidants than black tea, this amount is negligible in relation to the benefits. To build immune strength, both will help pretty much equally.

Rather, the key to receiving health benefits is simple: drink what you like. To obtain full benefits, doctors recommend drinking 3 - 4 cups of tea daily. That's a lot of tea- so finding one that fits your palate would be advantageous. This is why, although tea found in teabags (mostly "fannings" and "dust") does contain equal benefits, it is not recommended- you will not get nearly the same quality of flavor.

This is not true, however, for many of the commercial bottled teas. Tea drinks such as Arizona and Snapple are made from tea concentrate. This has shown to offer much less in the way of health benefits. On top of this, most of these bottled "teas" are loaded with sugar and preservatives, further widening the gap between them and good health.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, "why have I never heard this before?" Many of the less reputable tea companies are simply trying to get more money from the same old product. For example, by simply adding the title "Slimming" to a run-of-the-mill variety green tea, they double the price. While it is true that this green tea may help the body burn calories quicker, what they neglect to mention is that all teas help the body burn calories quicker.

With only a minor word adjustment, we can maintain tea's healthy mantra. While the full extent of tea's benefits has not been realized, all the information that is currently available points to this conclusion: "all tea is good for you."

review lesson