Everyone has to decide for themselves whether green tea is a miracle cure and can prevent diseases, because there isn’t any scientific evidence from field investigations to prove this claim. For a good part green tea is a kind of “attitude to life” and for many years it has also been a “temporary fashion” in the 1990s.
For decades scientists have noticed that tea drinkers are often much more healthier as people who regularly drink other beverages as for instance coffee. However, this may be due to the fact that these people lead a healthier life anyway and usually neither smoke nor drink. They have less caries, lower chances of the eye disease glaucoma and they suffer less from cardiovascular diseases certain types of cancer.
How to prepare green tea: Let the water boil and then cool down for about 10 to 15 minutes until it reaches a temperature of about 50° to 60° C (120° - 140° F), because the high temperature is harmful for the greater part of the substances that are beneficial to health. Steeping time is 1 – 2 minutes so that the tea will not become bitter.
The so called flavonoids, a subgroup of polyphenoles are among the most interesting substances. About one third of the dry matter of green tea consists of polyphenoles. They contain “catechine”, an important substance class within the flavonoids.
A quality of flavonoids is the so called antioxidative effect , which inhibits substances that are sensitive to oxidation to be destroyed by free radicals. Flavonoids retain the free radicals and protect those substances.
If you want to drink green tea you should make some inquiries before you decide on which brand to take, because many types are contaminated by pesticides. In Germany the “Zeitschrift Warentest” (monthly magazine of the leading German consumer safety group) published the already second report on this subject in the edition No. 7 of July 2006, which caused that one of the brands tested was withdrawn from the market.
Author: J. Land