For the last week(ish), I've consciously added more green tea to my diet, around 3 cups a day. Plus, unintentionally I haven't had any black tea. Interesting... at least for now, I guess green tea is able to suffice my hot beverage/caffeine quotient. But why, you might ask, did I elect to incorporate this earthy elixir into my routine?
Well, that's a good question.
I'm not really sure. Perhaps I wanted a change, or maybe just because it's healthier.
Or is it??
Most people assume green tea is the healthiest of the teas, but this made me wonder how that's possible since black, green, oolong, pu-erh and white teas all come from the same plant. So then, how can the variations in the processing of these different types of tea account for such drastically different levels of health benefits?
From my wanderings around the internet, it seems that the biggest reason, is simply that green tea is almost always the focus of tea studies. Other types of teas have scarcely been studied. Tea research is definitely still in its early stages.
Having said that, I was able to find one study on black tea conducted by the Netherlands National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. About.com gives a good synopsis. Apparently black tea can do as much as green tea! (Unless, of course, you take milk in your tea.) Both black and green teas were shown to have high levels of (albeit different) antioxidants.
I guess the best thing to do, as WebMD advises, is to just drink lots of tea - at least 6 to 10 cups a day!! I reckon my elementary 3-cups-a-day routine is in need of an upgrade.
p.s. - If you're curious about what exactly the tea benefits are, then check out Wikipedia's page on the topic.
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