June 19, 2011

Is There Any Antioxidant In Tea?

People may think that antioxidants in tea is not real. But in fact some researches done by experts have proved that green, black, and oolong tea contains antioxidants and one of the important elements that make tea becomes healthy drinks is the amount of antioxidants in it. The specific type of antioxidants in tea called phenols.

Amount of Antioxidants in Tea
With over 3 billion tea cultivated and manufactured each year,  tea has become one of the largest consumed beverage in the world. And consuming such high level of tea means it is essential to understand possible health aspects of tea. Good news is that tea contains various beneficial compounds like theaflavins (black tea), epicatechins, catechins (green tea), etc. which are antioxidant polyphenols found in tea leaves.

To calculate the amount of antioxidants in tea, let's take one tea bag of each and steep in 200 ml distilled deionized water at 100ยบ C for about 2 minutes. We can find that the antioxidant capacity per serving of black tea comes to 239 mg vitamin C equivalents and for green tea, 436 mg vitamin C equivalents. Hence, green tea has more health benefits than an equal volume of black tea, while talking about antioxidants in tea.

Benefits of Antioxidants in Tea
The benefits of antioxidants in tea are :
  • Drinking tea can reduce the risk of certain caners, heart disease and stroke, protection against Alzheimer's disease and help weight loss.
  • Black and green tea can block DNA damage related with tobacco and other toxic chemicals.
  • Green tea has highest flavonoid content (30% to 40% in dried green tea) known as catechins. Just 1 gm of green tea leaves contains 127 mg of catechins.
  • As white tea dries in natural sunlight, it becomes a good source of antioxidants.
  • 1 cup of green tea contains 200 mg of catechins, which is equivalent to 8 apples.
  • Green tea contains gallic acid (an antioxidant), carotenoids, tocopherols, minerals like manganese, zinc, chromium and other phytochemical compounds.
  • Drinking at least 3+ cups of green and/or black tea (together or separately) each day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and promote fertility.
Since there is antioxidant in tea, why not enjoy a nice cup of hot or iced tea. Be tea lovers !

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