Which Tea is Healthiest
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…
| Pos | Antioxidants | Tea |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 400-600mg | White Tea |
| 2 | 300-400mg | Jasmine Tea[1] |
| 3 | 300-450mg | Green Tea |
| 4 | 130-200mg | Black Tea |
| 5 | 60-80mg | Rooibos ‘Tea’[2] |
| 6 | ? (low) | Instant Tea |
| 7 | 20-110mg | Iced tea[3] |
[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 reffered 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
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