By James N. Dillard, M.D.
(04/22/2010) If you love good coffee, but by 1 p.m. you’d like to switch to something else, I have a suggestion for you — go green. You would be joining thousands of years of tradition from the royalty, spiritual leaders, and upper classes across Asia.
Even if you don’t drink coffee but like a gentle pick-me-up at times, a fresh brewed cup of green tea may be just the thing. Most Americans don’t like green tea because the brands they have tried are, frankly, garbage. My friend Sebastian Beckwith is a world-class tea-trekker and the founder of the In Pursuit of Tea company. I caught him just as he was about to fly off to China to select his tea.
“Most of the green tea bags available in the United States are simply undrinkable — awful,” Sebastian told me. “The industry term is fannings, or dust. These are small particles that are swept up from the tea sorting room floor. That’s what mostly gets sent over here. It’s no wonder green tea is not very popular in America.”
That’s a shame, because high-quality tea has so many proven health benefits. It contains powerful antioxidants called polyphenols that can quell damaging disease-causing changes in your tissues. Hundreds of research studies have shown just how healthy tea drinking can be.
An 11-year prospective study of over 40,000 adults was published in the September 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association. Green tea drinkers had 26 percent fewer deaths due to cardiovascular disease, and 16 percent fewer deaths due to all causes. These are big, impressive numbers.
Total cholesterol is lowered and the healthy cholesterol (HDL) is raised by green tea. Several population-based clinical studies have shown that both green and black teas help protect against multiple forms of cancer. Green tea can help with weight loss, can boost the metabolism, and helps burn fat, according to multiple research papers. This may be due to a specific subgroup of the antioxidant polyphenols called catechins. The most powerful catechin in tea is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG).
Black tea and green tea both come from the same evergreen plant, Camellia sinesis, a relative of the familiar ornamental camellia flower. The leaves of the shrub have been used to make beverages for perhaps as long as 500,000 years, according to archeological records. The plant finds its origins in the Yunnan Province of China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and the northern Assam region in India, an area known as the mystical Golden Triangle.
Chinese legend has it that in 2737 B.C.E., Emperor Shen Nung discovered that tea was not only flavorful but produced vigor of body, contentment of mind, and determination of purpose. Tea followed Buddhism throughout Asia. The monks used green tea to help them stay awake through long days of meditation, and drinking tea became part of their religious rituals.
For many centuries tea production was scant. It was consumed only by royalty, religious orders, wealthy families, artists, and poets and writers. The finest early-picked teas, such as the prized Longjing “dragon well” tea, were prized gifts to be exchanged and treasured.
Tea was originally packed into cakes and then ground into a fine powder until the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368), when loose-leaf tea became commonplace. The East India Company of England was founded in 1600, bringing tea to the West.
In Japan, the making and drinking of tea became a semi-religious Zen Buddhist ritual — the tea ceremony — of calm and respect. Today, tea is the most commonly consumed drink in the world, second only to water.
The difference between the two types of tea comes from the degree of fermentation. The leaves will naturally wilt and oxidize rapidly after picking. The longer wilting is allowed to go on, the darker the tea will become. If you dry out the tea by gentle heating, it will stay green and stop oxidizing. The Chinese typically pan-fire their teas whereas the Japanese steam the fresh leaves to kill the oxidizing enzymes. Green tea is unwilted and unoxidized, and black tea is fully wilted and oxidized. Green tea has much higher levels of polyphenols, but black tea has twice the amount of caffeine. They both have about half the caffeine of most coffee.
Green tea is often sold here as green tea with lemon grass, green tea with passion fruit, or green tea with mint, etc. The reason is that the tea is so bad that tea companies mask the flavor with another stronger taste. Without the mint or lemon grass most commercial green tea tastes like sour cardboard and wet paper. Fresh green tea should be nutty and sweet.
Though green tea is one of the most powerful and healthy things that you can consume, you have to like it to stick with it. Use good-tasting water, ideally filtered, with a clean teapot and cup. The water should not be boiling, but only taken to 160 to 180 degrees, just as the little bubbles are coming up.
If you are green to tea drinking, I would recommend that you make a small investment in the good stuff to get started. Always ask where the tea came from and when it was picked. Old tea is bad tea.
You can contact Mr. Beckwith’s company for a sampler, or try UptonTea.com, MightyLeaf.com, ItoEn.com, Maeda-en.com, or one of my everyday favorites, Yamamotoyama Special Occasion Green Tea, available through Amazon.com.
Going green does not have to mean getting a run-away Prius or a switchgrass-fired toaster. Contrary to Kermit’s feelings on the matter, it’s so easy being green. Just settle in with your healthy steaming cup, and your friends will be green with envy. For summer, a quality bulk green tea will make exceptional iced tea as well.