I like hot gourmet tea, especially in the cooler nights during the winter and as a great way to relax in the evening (drinking a bottle of wine every night is definitely not a good overall health plan). During those dry, incredibly hot Arizona days of summer, I often find iced tea more refreshing than a Diet Coke. I really wasn’t surprised that tea has been gaining in popularity for many years, but I was interested to find that tea lovers can tout their favorite drink with a long list of newly discovered health benefits.
Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, FACN, chief of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University, has cited tea as one of the top healthy foods for 2010, the new millennium and beyond. “The scientific evidence about tea is evolving and I think it’s compelling,” says Blumberg. According to Blumberg, the past decade has yielded substantial research showing that “there is a pretty consistent body of evidence suggesting there is a benefit to tea. Tea is a very rich source of a specific kind of antioxidant – flavonoids.”
Studies are still somewhat inconsistent. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition followed nearly 40,000 women for almost seven years, coming to a conclusion that drinking four cups of tea a day produced no reduction in their risk of heart disease. However, Blumberg points out that the bulk of research does indicate that regular tea drinkers (those that drink two or more cups a day) have less heart disease and stroke, lower cholesterol, and may recover from heart attacks more quickly. Early laboratory studies indicate that there may be a relationship between tea consumption and reduced risk of several types of cancer.
Antioxidants seems to have become the morning news and talk show buzz word lately, replacing global warming (oh, wait, that was already replaced by ‘climate change’). Antioxidants are substances that can reduce certain types of environmental damage, oxidative damage, in the body which helps maintain healthy cells and tissues. The latest research suggests that tea is full of these antioxidants. In particular, black tea and green tea has been shown to have positive health benefits. Interestingly, decaffeinating tea does not decrease its antioxidant levels at all.
There is a huge variety of choices of tea available, but this Green Tea Gift Box has a nice selection of six different and delicious flavors of antioxidant-packed green teas.
For gourmet tea lovers, there’s one more benefit that rarely gets mentioned in all this scientific stuff. Assuming you do not add milk, sugar or honey to tea, tea has no calories. That makes it much easier to continue eating that other newly discovered haven for antioxidants: Dark Chocolate.
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