Health Benefits and Caffeine In Tea
By Robert Ridge
It appears that tea is finally getting the recognition that it deserves. Yes, apart from tasting good, it really does you good!
Tea is now regularly featured for its health benefits on TV shows, articles from fitness & health magazines, Consumer Reports, Denver papers and even on Internet pop ups. The major tea bag companies are also promoting the health benefits. Although we sometimes don’t want to learn from the past, the Chinese, who discovered tea, have been extolling the health benefits of teas for around 5,000 years. From my review of the various articles, both black and green are very good, with green being better for some specific health benefits.
The Special Tea Institute of the Tea Council of America, of which English Tealeaves is a member, in a recent press release stated the following: New research suggests tea may protect against heart disease and cancer caused by smoking. I trained as an engineer, not a doctor, so I am not going to try and condense all the data and backup information. The release however was based on two studies published in the October issue of Journal of Nutrition and linked to drinking 30 to 32 oz of tea a day. The Third International Symposium on Tea and Human Health was held in Washington this year and they discussed the latest research focusing on the important contributions tea makes to our health. One of their statements at the conference was, “Thanks to an abundance of flavonoid antioxidants, tea is being closely examined for its potential contributions to heart health and its apparent protective effects against chronic diseases.” The USDA’s research center in Maryland reported that in a test where 16 men and women were firstly given a mimicked tea (water flavored like tea) for a period of 3 weeks and then real tea for the same time, with their food intake being controlled, their total average cholesterol was lowered by 6%. The Arizona Cancer Center tested 140 smokers to measure the impact of adding tea to their normal diet. They drank green or black tea or water, and the green tea drinkers had a 25% decrease for 8-OhDG that is found in urine and is linked to the damage of DNA in the cells.
Stronger bones could also be the benefit of drinking tea, coming from two recent studies in Great Britain and China. The study in GB showed that 1200 tea drinking women over the age of 65 had higher bone density measurements than non-tea drinkers, which could prevent osteoporosis. It can also improve mouth bacteria and bad breath, according to a research program from Pace University in New York. It showed that tea extracts can destroy the organism that causes disease, and that green tea boosts the effectiveness of toothpaste and mouthwash. A tea article in Consumer Report summed up with the following — it’s not clear whether it’s the tea itself or other factors that result in the lower disease risks of frequent tea drinkers. Nonetheless, since drinking tea is safe, convenient and inexpensive, there’s little downside and possible health benefits for those who enjoy the beverage. So why not add tea to your drinking habits, it may make you healthier.
Many people are confused about caffeine levels and believe that tea is higher than coffee. There can always be exceptions, but according to USDA & Tea Council publications, the average milligrams in a serving (normally only 5 fluid oz) for coffee is 80 and for tea 40. Some of the charts show coffee at over 100 milligrams. A safe guideline is that tea has half that of coffee and that some teas are lower than the 40. There is no caffeine free tea (excluding herbals and tisanes that have no tea and hence no caffeine) and to be labeled decaffeinated, the tea must have 97% of the caffeine removed by the CO2, Ethyl Acetate or water process. One method that works for some teas and helps most people is a simple self-decaffeinating process. The tea leaves are placed in the teapot or other device, and boiling or below boiling water (depends on black or green) is poured on the leaves and steeped for approx 30 seconds. The liquor is then carefully discarded, leaving the leaves in the teapot, and then you start the normal brewing process for 3 or 5 minutes. This could reduce the caffeine by 80%. I don’t have any caffeine concerns but tried this with a friend who suffers from a hand tremble when drinking caffeinated tea. It worked for him.
We have some customers who come in the Café, dragged by their wives or friends, who are not tea drinkers, and they know we serve European coffee. I always like to ask them (tease them) why they donÁt like tea and get some interesting responses. Our next offering will be on different flavor profiles of tea and what certain people will like, including ardent strong coffee drinkers.
