Wonders of Tea

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

health black tea, green tea, health, iced tea, science, white tea

It’s a regular question here at WoT and elsewhere on the old interweb – How is tea decaffeinated?

Well here’s the answer and I think you’ll be quite suprised.

Tea can be decaffeinated in a number of ways although all require use of powerful solvents – even the so-called “natural” method.

1. Ethyl Acetate
Often claimed to be a natural decaffeination process as this solvent occurs naturally in the environment although I’m sure you can tell from the name that being natural doesn’t necessarily mean ‘nice’ and ‘friendly’.  So the tea leaves are washed in this solvent which dissolves the caffeine in the leaves and flushes it out.  When caffeine is seperated from its carrier – in this case tea – it forms a solid white bitter-tasting powder.

2. Methyline Chloride
The tea is first softened in heated water to loosen the bonds before being washed with this solvent which binds to the caffeine and draws it out of the leaves.  However, this initial water processing can cause the loss of many of the flavours and oils so the leaves are re-washed in this solvent to re-introduce those oils.

In Conclusion
I don’t care if you’re heart is on its last legs – you can’t possibly justify doing this to tea.  Washing it in anything besides water ready for a drink is tantamount to heresy.  So please, please, please go caffeinated – go natural!

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