Green Tea, Weight Loss & Enviga

By releasing the new Green Tea based product Enviga, my opinion is that Coca Cola and Nestle are liable to do more harm than good in the cause of promoting Green Tea.

They appear to be telling us all that by drinking a couple of cans a day (at $1.30 -$1.50 a time) we will benefit from Green Teas’ weight loss properties and the outcome will be slimmer, healthier person on the other side.

The makers claim their drink has negative calories and this counterbalances the other calories you put in your body with your natural food intake.

Well, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest is reported to have filed a false advertising suit against the two companies saying their claims are wrong.

Am I personally surprised? NO!

None of these companies realise that Green Tea is not now, and never has been, a quick fix for any of lifes’ ailments.

Drinking Green Tea is a way of life. Its properties are indisputable. Its regeneration powers have been proven over thousands of years and if you drink regularly and over a consistently long period then many things which ail you will at least be helped or maybe prevented all together.

Already newspapers, in the hunt for headlines, are coming out against Green Tea. I recently read on headline which said “Want to lose weight? Green Tea won’t do it”

This headline was meant as a specific strike against the product “Enviga” but all people will remember in a couple of months is the bad publicity and they will associate it with all Green Tea products.

The hijacking of Green Tea by major corporations as a quick fix was predictable considering the amount of good publicity Green Tea has had in the last few years, but my sincere hope is that in the chase for their profits they do not soil the good name of Green Tea, so that many future potential users do not come on board and start drinking this wonderful brew.

It will be down to current users of Green Tea to keep using and promoting the benefits of Green Tea by word of mouth and keep the forward momentum of the use of Green Tea going strong.

Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of The Complete Guide to Green Tea which can be found @ http://http://www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com/ and also edits a Blog about Green Tea which can be found at http://www.greenteastories.blogspot.com/

Green Tea Extract to Help in the Fight against Lung Cancer?

Scientists have reported that Green Tea extract could soon inspire the creation of new drugs to help in the fight against lung cancer.

Researchers included Qing-Yi Lu, PhD, of the Centre for Human Nutrition at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), have tested Green Tea extract on human lung cancer cells in test tubes, not humans, but the results have been encouraging.

The sample of human lung cancer cells was exposed to a decaffeinated Green Tea extract, by marinating it for 3 days in the extract.

The Green Tea extract remodelled a certain protein in the cancer cells, and as a result the cancer cells became more likely to stick together and less likely to move, the study shows.

Antioxidants in green tea may have tweaked the cancer cell protein, but it's not clear whether one antioxidant deserves all the credit or whether several antioxidants worked together, the researchers note.

The study doesn't prove that drinking green tea curbs lung cancer in people. However, it may be possible to make new lung cancer drugs based on green tea extract, Lu's team suggests. Such drugs would target the lung cancer protein remodelled by the green tea extract in the lab tests.

Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of the definitive guide to all green teas and their health benefits. www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com

Green Tea: Recent Research. Good or Bad News?

The internet wires have run hot for the last few weeks with information about the recent study by Shinichi Kuriyama of the Tohoko University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan, where over a 10 year period 40,000 people in Japan were studied to monitor their daily Green Tea intake. The report has shown some very positive results.
Green Tea is the main tea beverage consumed across Japan, and the 40,000 participants lived in the north of the country, were aged 40 to 79 years and at the start of the research showed no signs or had history of heart disease, stroke or cancer.
Around a quarter of the 40,000 subjects averaged less than one cup a day, while a similar number reported drinking more than five cups, or half a litre, daily.
The researchers began the study in 1994 and tracked the health of the participants for more than a decade. The important thing to remember is that all the participants had been regular Green Tea drinkers for a long period prior to the study.
The number of participants who died from cardiovascular diseases during the period was small - less than 1% of those in each category of Green Tea consumption.
Those who consumed more than five cups of green tea daily had a 26% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who consumed less than one cup of Green Tea a day, the researchers found.
The study speculates it is the anti oxidants in Green Tea, called polyphenols which reduce the action of free radicals, the things which damage cells.
Where previous studies have suggested that Green Tea may protect against certain cancers, this study has found no such evidence.
Where cardiovascular disease was concerned the effect of drinking Green Tea was stronger among women than men in the study, probably because men were more likely to be cigarette smokers.
In the studies conclusion it said the apparent protective effect from Green Tea was not likely to be as a result of tea drinkers somehow being more health conscious, since almost all Japanese consume green tea as one of their favorite beverages regardless of their other health habits.
My feeling is that the report shows Green Tea in the positive light that many have held it in for years now. At last we have a long term survey of a large cross section of population which draws some very positive results regarding Green Tea and cardiovascular disease. I am not surprised at the lack of support over the effects of Green Tea on cancer; I personally feel the length of the survey is perhaps not long enough. After all modern science can give you a pill to almost immediately reduce blood pressure and alleviate the probability of stoke and heart attack, but has no instant cure for cancer.
Natures’ remedies are probably just the same. Good natural drinks like Green Tea will help lower tension and blood pressure almost straight away but where cancers grow usually over a long period of time, nature will take a long time to help prevent the disease.
The survey has turned out to be very positive as far as it goes, but I look forward to the longer version which shows further long term benefits of drinking Green Tea.


Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of the definitive guide to all green teas and their health benefits. www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com

Weight Loss & Green Tea

I have lately read much on the subject of Green Tea and its aid to losing weight. Most researchers give credence to the fact that drinking Green Tea increases the metabolic rate and there fore can be a help in a weight loss programme. However, most experts disagree over the amount of help that Green Tea gives. The experts findings range from “insignificant” to “major breakthrough” status.

Celebrity personalities are known to drink Green Tea to help weight loss (Victoria Beckham supposedly being one of the most prominent) and now giant pharmaceutical companies such as Boots plc in the UK are putting Green Tea extract in to their latest dietary products. All these things are giving us the signal that consumption of Green Tea will help us easily shed those extra pounds!

But what if the goodness in Green Tea is not the biggest benefit the brew gives to weight watchers, but the most help actually comes from the actual act of drinking the tea?

Over the last few years I have personally suffered with my weight, mainly because I had a lousy diet and a fairly sedentary lifestyle. I have now taken to drinking Green Tea when under normal circumstances I would have eaten something which would probably have been bad for me. (French fries or a chocolate bar)

The result of this is that drinking the Green Tea genuinely gives a feeling of filling the stomach and the “hunger pains” go away at least for a little while.

The outcome of drinking Green Tea (at least half a dozen large cups a day) has been a reasonable weight loss, which if I only got into a regular exercise regime could, I feel, become a significant loss.

The bottom line in this is that on its own Green Tea has great benefits and includes ingredients which go some of the way towards helping the weight loss many of us crave, but it is not a cure-all on its own. It certainly, however, helps in more than one way, and I think we need all the help we can get.


Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of the definitive guide to all green teas and their health benefits. http://www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com/

Green Tea: What a Difference a Date Makes.

The object of consuming Green Tea is to derive the greatest health benefits that the brew has to offer. However did you know that Green Tea has a fairly short shelf life, and to get the greatest benefits it should be drunk as quickly after picking as is possible?

The actual shelf life of Green Tea is usually written on the packaging by the production company. Note that it has a shorter short shelf life when compared with other types of tea. The shelf life of Green Tea will generally be up to six months after harvesting, when exposed to open air.

Indeed there are certain varieties of Green Tea which will be deemed spoiled after four months from harvesting.

Keeping Green Tea fresh for consumption in the countries in which it is harvested, although needing care is fairly simple as there is usually no great time-delay in transportation. However with the popularity of Green Tea soaring worldwide it now travels perhaps many thousands of miles from the harvest site before it reaches the customer. So freshness becomes a problem

When transporting Green Tea on long journeys most companies, but not all, seal the tea in packages filled with a nitrogen gas, which replaces oxygen and prevents the Green Tea from oxidisation.

When sold in packages the Green Tea should be sealed in a bag from which the oxygen has been removed. The contents of the bag should then be used within two months so as to have the Green Tea at its freshest.

There is much difference between a Green Tea which has been properly packaged and a Green Tea which has been exposed to air for much of its life.

Sometimes you take a risk in the purchase of your favourite flavour of Green Tea, in that some degradation has happened prior to your purchase due to the exposure to oxygen. You should always read the packaging before purchase to make sure of the harvest date of the Green Tea: the better providers have no problem in giving this information.

Remember, by purchasing the freshest you will be getting a greater helping of the wonderful benefits Green Tea has to offer.

Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of the definitive guide to all green teas and their health benefits. www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com

Green Tea – The Explosion of Ideas

There is a recent report out which suggests that the consumption of Tea in the USA will hit a new level this year and that last year the tea industry turned over around $6.2 billion. This is a fourfold increase on statistics from 10 years ago and the amount of tea houses/shops also replicates this trend. They have grown from 200 in the early 1990’s to 2000 in 2005, with no sign of the trend slowing down.

The reasons are two fold, firstly that tea is seen as the more health conscious option when compared to coffee, and tea can be infused with other, more subtle flavours that coffee would not tolerate.

Tea in general, but Green Tea in particular, has been gaining a really positive press over the last few years, and although test results vary as to the degree of help that Green Tea gives to our general health, all reports agree it gives some help, and in the opinion of the general public, that’s a good enough reason to drink it.

A surprising statistic is that nearly 127 million Americans say that Tea is now their favourite drink, but 80% of tea drunk in the USA is actually taken over ice.

As Green Tea gets the biggest press about giving the body antioxidants etc, you will not be surprised to know that it is derivatives of Green Tea that are the biggest “movers and shakers” in the drinks market.

Unlike the flavour of coffee, whose strong flavour only lets it blend with other strongly flavoured foods, tea will blend with many other foods and therefore there is a wide range of products now available to tickle the tea drinkers’ pallet.

Tea can be blended with almost any fruit you can think of. Commonly found flavours in tea include peach, blueberry, blackberry, hibiscus, lemon grass, pineapple and apricot. The choices are, it seems, endless. In the search for new ways to ingest Green Tea one speciality company has even developed Green Tea Ice Cream

This explosion of ideas of what to do with and how to present tea are answering the consumer markets requirements for things which are more health conscious and make us feel better about ourselves.

Tea seems to be giving many things to the market that its competitor, coffee, never has. Coffee is presented as a stimulant that keeps you going all day in the never ending rush of life. Green tea and all the others are depicted as the health giving, slower living alternative, and this is what the public is currently leaning towards.

With the marketing men developing ever more ways for us on how we should drink the brew it seems we should prepare ourselves for the explosion of ideas to continue over the next few years.


Mike Linder

Mike Linder is the author of the definitive guide to all green teas and their health benefits. www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com

Ken's Green Tea Salon: The Silk Road

Ken's Green Tea Salon: The Silk Road

Hi Ken
My name is Mike Linder and I like your stories on your blog.
I am interested in learning more about green tea, although I have written a book on the subject. I am from England and we only get limited supplies of Green tea. Now that I know your blog exists I will look regularly to see more stories.
My blog is at http://greenteastories.blogspot.com
and my book is at www.benefitsdrinkinggreentea.com