Green tea should be handled tenderly, just as you would fresh green leafy vegetables.

Spring water is the ideal choice for brewing tea, followed by filtered water. Distilled water should never be used; the brew it produces will be flat since the minerals removed from it are essential to bringing out tea’s flavor.

To prepare the best loose tea, we recommend using a small food scale. Use three grams of tea to five ounces of water if brewing tea in a small teapot; four grams of tea to eight ounces of water for other methods.

As the size and shape of tea pots and cups varies considerably, it’s a good idea to fill a measuring cup with 8 ounces of water and pour it into your tea pot or cup to determine how much water it really holds.

In making loose tea, remember that a teaspoon of small, dense leaves will weigh substantially more than a teaspoon of larger leaves, and the resulting tea will reflect this. A teaspoon of small dense leaves may be sufficient to produce a satisfying strong cup, while several teaspoons of larger leaves would be needed for a comparable brew.

Although heartily boiling water is used to brew black and oolong teas, green tea needs much lower temperatures (160-170 degrees F; 79-85 degrees C) and should be brewed for less time.

Let the water barely reach the boiling point to liberate its oxygen, then allow it to cool slightly before pouring over your tea. Until you are familiar with your tea kettle and the time it takes and sounds it makes when the correct temperature (170-185 degrees) has been reached, it’s a good idea to check using a simple, inexpensive candy thermometer, available at any grocery store.

Brewing for 30 seconds to one minute is usually ideal; however, Nilgiri and Darjeeling greens can take several minutes, and Chinese Dragonwell teas are often best after 6-7 minutes of infusion.

Although good quality tea leaves will sink to the bottom after they have infused, it’s a good idea to pour the tea over a small strainer if one is not built in to your teapot.

Green Tea Promotes Fat Loss

Green tea not only promotes fat loss, but specifically, the loss of visceral fat-fat that accumulates in the tissues lining the abdominal cavity and surrounding the intestines (viscera) and internal organs. Unlike fat deposits on the hips and thighs (which result in the so-called “pear” body shape), visceral fat (which produces the “apple” body shape) is highly associated with increased risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

Green tea contains three major components that promote fat loss: catechins, caffeine and theanine. Studies suggest that green tea compounds promote fat loss by inhibiting both gastric and pancreatic lipase, the enzymes that digest triglycerides, and fatty acid synthetase, the enzyme responsible for synthesizing fatty acids into the form in which they can be stored in the body’s adipose (fat) cells.

In a study published in the January 2004 issue of In Vivo in which mice were fed diets containing 2% green tea powder for 16 weeks, visceral fat decreased by 76.8% in those receiving green tea compared to the control group. Green tea also decreased blood levels of triglycerides (the chemical form in which most fats exist in the body).

Population studies suggest that green tea consumption may help prevent type 2 diabetes. A number of animal studies are beginning to explain why. New studies suggest that green tea may improve glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in individuals with diabetes. In one study, after receiving green tea for 12 weeks, diabetic rats had lower fasting blood levels of glucose, insulin, triglycerides and free fatty acids compared to controls, and the ability of their adiopcytes (fat cells) to respond to insulin and absorb blood sugar greatly increased.

In another study by the same research group, diabetic rats were separated into three groups and followed for 12 weeks. One group was given with standard rat chow and water (the control group), the second group received a high fructose diet and water (fructose group), and the third group got the same high fructose diet and green tea (green tea group). By the end of the study, the fructose group had high blood sugar, high insulin levels, and high blood pressure, while the animals receiving green tea along with a high fructose diet showed improvement in all three.

A study published in the August 2004 issue of BMC Pharmacology, in which oral glucose tolerance tests were given to healthy humans after they consumed green tea, showed that it increased the body’s ability to utilize blood sugar.

Another interesting animal study compared the effects of a Western diet, a vegetarian diet and a Japanese diet, each with or without green tea. Blood sugar concentrations were highest in the animals on the Western diet followed by the Vegetarian diet with the Japanese diet producing the lowest blood sugars. When supplemented with green tea, blood sugar levels dropped in rats on all three diets, with those on the Japanese diet having not only the lowest blood sugars but also rating the best on other risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Rats on the Japanese diet that also were given green tea had the lowest triglycerides and cholesterol as well as the highest ratio of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids to potentially inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. The researchers concluded that Japanese eating habits combined with drinking green tea might help prevent type 2 diabetes.

One of the mechanisms through which green tea improves insulin sensitivity has recently been identified in laboratory studies that show that epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG) does a good deal more to prevent type 2 diabetes than lower the production of free radicals. EGCG also works on the genetic level, causing a reduction in the number of messenger RNAs that direct liver cells to produce the enzymes involved in the creation of glucose (sugar).

Brew green tea with thinly sliced ginger and lemon, or sprigs of spearmint. Add one teaspoon of honey per cup, stir and serve hot or use half the amount of hot water (or twice the amount of tea), allow the tea to brew and cool, then pour over ice cubes.

Make a green tea chai by brewing green tea in hot vanilla soy milk and topping with a dash each of cinnamon, black pepper, ginger and allspice.

Brew 1-2 teaspoons loose leaf green tea in 8 ounces cool water for 20-30 minutes to develop flavor without bitterness and add to stir-fries, marinades, dressings, soups and sauces.

Sprinkle gyokuro tea over a salad, stew or rice dish.

Add ½ teaspoon gyokuro tea to an almost set omelet or scrambled eggs.

Add crushed gunpowder tea and rice vinegar to sesame oil for a delicious vinaigrette.

Mix gyokuro tea with sesame seeds and sea salt and use to dredge shrimp or fish filets before lightly pan-frying them.

Cook Japanese udon noodles in green tea for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat and leave noodles in tea until cool. Drain and toss lightly with soy sauce and sesame oil. Add thinly sliced tofu, scallions, mushrooms, and chopped cilantro, and serve.

Poach Asian or Bosc pears in green tea with fresh thinly sliced gingerroot. Drizzle with honey and top with a sprig of fresh mint.

Combine cooled green tea half and half with a fruit juice, such as peach, pineapple or papaya. Sweeten with a teaspoon of honey per cup. Blend and pour over ice.

A daily cup of green tea may help prevent or lessen the duration of the flu. In a lab study, published in the November 2005 issue of Antiviral Research, EGCG dramatically inhibited influenza virus replication in cell culture in all the subtypes of influenza virus tested. EGCG appears to suppress viral RNA synthesis by altering the properties of the viral membrane.

Green tea extract given to lab rats over a 10-week span increased the amount of time the animals could swim before becoming exhausted by as much as 24%.

Green tea’s catechins appear to stimulate the use of fatty acids by liver and muscle cells. In muscle cells, the ability to burn more fat translates into a reduction in the rate at which glycogen, the form in which carbohydrates are stored for ready access in muscle, is used up, thus allowing for longer exercise times. Green tea’s effect on muscle cells’ ability to take in and burn fatty acids, speeding up fat breakdown, is also thought to be the reason why it helps weight loss.

The idea for the experiment came from the fact that skeletal muscles utilize carbohydrates, lipids (fats) and amino acids (protein) as energy sources, but the ratio in which they are used varies with the intensity and type of the exercise, and the level of the individual’s fitness. During endurance exercise, the use of too much carbohydrate is undesirable because it triggers insulin secretion, which, in turn, both inhibits the burning of fatty acids and stimulates lactic acid production. (Lactic acid buildup is what causes that sore achy feeling in your muscles when you exercise.) Conversely, enhanced availability and utilization of free fatty acids reduces carbohydrate utilization, which in turn spares glycogen (the form in which carbohydrates are stored in muscle for quick use) and suppresses lactic acid production, resulting in an increase in endurance.”

Drinking a single cup of green tea before exercise, however, will not be effective. One single, higher “dose” of green tea did nothing to improve lab rats’ performance. The animals had to receive green tea daily, and endurance increased gradually over the 10 weeks of the study.

To match the beneficial effect on test animals’ endurance capacity seen in the experiments, the researchers estimate a 165-pound athlete would need to drink about 4 cups of green tea daily.

Green tea not only promotes fat loss, but specifically, the loss of visceral fat-fat that accumulates in the tissues lining the abdominal cavity and surrounding the intestines (viscera) and internal organs. Unlike fat deposits on the hips and thighs (which result in the so-called “pear” body shape), visceral fat (which produces the “apple” body shape) is highly associated with increased risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

Green tea contains three major components that promote fat loss: catechins, caffeine and theanine. Studies suggest that green tea compounds promote fat loss by inhibiting both gastric and pancreatic lipase, the enzymes that digest triglycerides, and fatty acid synthetase, the enzyme responsible for synthesizing fatty acids into the form in which they can be stored in the body’s adipose (fat) cells.

In a study published in the January 2004 issue of In Vivo in which mice were fed diets containing 2% green tea powder for 16 weeks, visceral fat decreased by 76.8% in those receiving green tea compared to the control group. Green tea also decreased blood levels of triglycerides (the chemical form in which most fats exist in the body).

A human study, published in the January 2005 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, confirms green tea’s ability to not only reduce body fat, but damage to LDL cholesterol as well. After 12 weeks of drinking just one bottle of green tea each day, 38 normal-to-overweight men in Tokyo had a significantly lower body weight, BMI, waist circumference, body fat mass and amount of subcutaneous fat compared to men given a bottle of oolong tea each day.

After a 2 week diet run-in period, the men were divided into two groups, one of which drank a bottle of green tea containing 690 mg of catechins, while the other group drank a bottle of oolong tea containing 22 mg catechins. Not only did the men drinking green tea lose weight and fat, but the amount of their LDL cholesterol damaged by free radicals also dropped significantly. Since atherosclerotic plaques develop when cholesterol circulating in the bloodstream is damaged or oxidized, green tea’s ability to prevent these oxidation reactions may explain some of its protective effects against cardiovascular diseases.

Green tea is particularly rich in health-promoting flavonoids (which account for 30% of the dry weight of a leaf), including catechins and their derivatives. The most abundant catechin in green tea is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which is thought to play a pivotal role in the green tea’s anticancer and antioxidant effects. Catechins should be considered right alongside of the better-known antioxidants like vitamins E and C as potent free radical scavengers and health-supportive for this reason.

Most of the research showing the health benefits of green tea is based on the amount of green tea typically consumed in Asian countries-about 3 cups per day (which would provide 240-320 mg of polyphenols). Just one cup of green tea supplies 20-35 mg of EGCG, which has the highest antioxidant activity of all the green tea catechins.

The health benefits of green tea have been extensively researched and, as the scientific community’s awareness of its potential benefits has increased, so have the number of new studies. As of November 2004, the PubMed database contained more than 1,000 studies on green tea, with more than 400 published in 2004! Following is a brief summary of some of the high points of this most current research.

Green tea drinkers appear to have lower risk for a wide range of diseases, from simple bacterial or viral infections to chronic degenerative conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke, periodontal disease, and osteoporosis.

All true teas-as distinct from herbal and flower infusions, which afficiandos call tisanes-are made from the leaves of a magnolia-related evergreen tree with the botanical name of Camellia sinensis. Although reaching a height of 30 feet in the wild, on tea plantations (called gardens or estates), the plant is kept as a shrub, constantly pruned to a height of about 3 feet to encourage new growth and for convenient picking.

Tea plants grow only in warm climates but can flourish at altitudes ranging from sea level to 7,000 feet. The best teas, however, are produced by plants grown at higher altitudes where the leaves mature more slowly and yield a richer flavor. Depending upon the altitude, a new tea plant may take from 2 ½ to 5 years to be ready for commercial picking, but once productive, it can provide tea leaves for close to a century.

Tea plants produce abundant foliage, a camellia-like flower, and a berry, but only the smallest and youngest leaves are picked for tea-the two leaves and bud at the top of each young shoot. The growth of new shoots, called a flush, can occur every week at lower altitudes but takes several weeks at higher ones. The new leaves are picked by hand by “tea pluckers,” the best of whom can harvest 40 pounds per day, enough to make 10 pounds of tea.

All tea plants belong to the same species-Camellia sinensis-, but local growing conditions (altitude, climate, soils, etc.) vary, resulting in a multitude of distinctive leaves. The way the leaves are processed, however, is even more important in developing the individual characteristics of the three predominant types of tea: green, black and oolong.

Green tea is the least processed and thus provides the most antioxidant polyphenols, notably a catechin called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which is believed to be responsible for most of the health benefits linked to green tea. Green tea is made by briefly steaming the just harvested leaves, rendering them soft and pliable and preventing them from fermenting or changing color. After steaming, the leaves are rolled, then spread out and “fired” (dried with hot air or pan-fried in a wok) until they are crisp. The resulting greenish-yellow tea has a green, slightly astringent flavor close to the taste of the fresh leaf.

In black tea production, the leaves are first spread on withering racks and air-blown, which removes about one-third of their moisture and renders them soft and pliable. Next, they are rolled to break their cell walls, releasing the juices essential to fermentation. Once again, they are spread out and kept under high humidity to promote fermentation, which turns the leaves a dark coppery color and develops black tea’s authoritative flavor. Finally, the leaves are “fired,” producing a brownish black tea whose immersion in hot water gives a reddish-brown brew with a stronger flavor than green or oolong teas.

Oolong tea, which is made from leaves that are partially fermented before being fired, falls midway between green and black teas. Oolong is a greenish-brown tea whose flavor, color and aroma are richer than that of green tea, but more delicate than that of black.

Green tea has always been, and remains today, the most popular type of tea from China where most historians and botanists believe the tea plant originated throughout all of Asia. Why is this so? Perhaps because green tea not only captures the taste, aroma and color of spring, but delivers this delightful bouquet along with the highest concentration of beneficial phytonutrients and the least caffeine of all the teas.

Swimming endurance improvement comes from equivalent of four cups of tea a day over 10 weeks!
Now that even baseball players may need to seek new, more natural performance aids, will Japanese green tea sets become standard in dugouts and athletic training tables around the world?

A new study tested the effect of regularly taking green tea extract (GTE) and found that over 10 weeks, endurance exercise performance was boosted up to 24% with 0.5% GTE supplementation, and 8% with 0.2% by-weight addition to food.

Reporting in the online edition of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology researchers at the Biological Sciences Laboratories of Kao Corp., Tochigi, Japan, said the 8-24% increase in swimming time-to-exhaustion was “accompanied by lower respiratory quotients and higher rates of fat oxidation.”

The results “indicate that GTE is beneficial for improving endurance capacity and support the hypothesis that the stimulation of fatty acid utilization is a promising strategy for improving endurance capacity,” according to the study entitled, “Green tea extract improves endurance capacity and increases muscle lipid oxidation in mice.” Research was conducted by Takatoshi Murase, Satoshi Haramizu, Akira Shimotoyodome, Azumi Nagasawa and Ichiro Tokimitsu, working at Kao Corp., a Japanese maker of healthcare products, including green tea beverages.

Results came from the equivalent of about 4 cups of tea a day

Although it’s difficult to extrapolate from mice eating GTE as a food supplement to a major leaguer or Olympic swimmer sipping green tea, the study’s lead author, Takatoshi Murase said: “We estimate that an athlete weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds) would have to drink about four cups (0.8 liter) of green tea daily to match the effect in our experiments.”

“One of our important findings,” Murase pointed out, “was that a single high-dose of GTE or its active ingredients didn’t affect performance. So it’s the long-term ingestion of GTE that is beneficial.” (Murase based his calculations of mouse-to-human tea/GTE consumption equivalents on work his lab is doing on the anti-obesity effects of GTE on mice and humans.)

In an era when professional and amateur athletes are always looking for ways to improve performance, and most people want to improve their health and exercise capabilities, “the efficacy of dietary interventions is still controversial,” the authors acknowledge. They note that green tea and cacao contain a class of polyphenols called catechins, which consist mainly of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), epicatechin gallate and gallocatechin gallate. Catechins have been reported to have various physiological and pharmacological properties over the years.

The Kao lab “recently demonstrated that the long-term consumption of tea catechins was beneficial in counteracting the obesity-inducing effects of a high-fat diet, and that their effects may be attributed, at least in part, to the activation of hepatic lipid catabolism” in mice. “Overall,” the authors said, “observations so far suggest that thermogenesis and fat oxidation are stimulated by the intake of catechins.”

Working hypothesis and study methods

“To confirm our hypothesis that catechins affect endurance exercise capacity (i.e. time to exhaustion) by increasing lipid utilization, in this study we examined the effect of catechin-rich GTE intake on the endurance capacity of Balb/c mice swimming in an adjustable-current water pool. We also analyzed changes in energy metabolism, especially lipid metabolism. We demonstrated that GTE intake improved endurance capacity and this was accompanied by an increase in lipid catabolism. Our results support the hypothesis that stimulation of lipid metabolism is a promising strategy for improving the capacity for endurance training.”

The ideas for the experiment come from the fact that “skeletal muscles utilize carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids as energy sources, but the ratio in which they are used varies with the intensity of exercise and the level of fitness” as well as the type of exercise involved. For instance “during endurance exercise, excess glucose is undesirable because it induces insulin secretion, which in turn simultaneously inhibits lipid metabolism and stimulates lactate production. Conversely, enhanced availability and utilization of free fatty acids are considered to reduce carbohydrate utilization, which in turn spare glycogen and suppresses lactate production and results in an increase in endurance.”

To test what effects GTE and its components would have on endurance exercise, the researchers ran two experiments. In the first, swimming endurance capacity was measured at eight weeks of age and the mice were divided into four groups of 10 each. All subjects had unlimited access to water for exercise. For 10 weeks, controls ate a standardized diet only, while experimental animals had this diet supplemented with 0.2% and 0.5% GTE by weight. During this period experimental mice were exercised in a pool twice a week, but non-exercise mice weren’t.

The second experiment was similar to the first but the experimental groups received a diet containing 0.1% to 0.5% EGCG for 10 weeks.

At the beginning of the experiment, the mice swam about 26 minutes until they were exhausted. After 10 weeks on the training regimen, the time-to-exhaustion for the exercise-control mice (no GTE or EGCG supplement) rose to about 33 minutes, showing the effects of unaided practice on endurance capacity. From the first week of the experiment, the mice on GTE showed greater improvement compared with the exercise-controls. By week eight, the improved performance of mice on 0.5% GTE was significantly better (39 minutes) than the exercise-controls (33 minutes) at a 0.05 level, while improvement in weeks 9 and 10 (40 minutes vs. 33 minutes) were significant at the 0.01 level.

GTE effects not matched by EGCG alone suggesting other additional influences

In the global search for enhanced athletic performance (and health and fitness), the Kao team said they “have shown that GTE improved endurance capacity and that the improvement was dose-dependent. A similar effect was observed in mice fed EGCG, a major constituent of GTE, suggesting that the effects of GTE were mediated at least in part by EGCG.

“However, because the effects of EGCG appear weak compared with those of GTE, we cannot rule out a possible contribution from other components of GTE. Although long-term intake of GTE enhanced endurance capacity, no marked effects were observed after a single dose of GTE, suggesting that some biochemical changes induced by habitual GTE intake, such as up-regulation of muscular beta-oxidation, contributed to the improvement in endurance capacity.”

The study found that plasma NEFA (non-esterified fatty acid) measured immediately after exercise slightly, but significantly, increased in mice fed tea catechins. Though they concede that the effect of plasma fatty acid level on endurance capacity is controversial, they say that increased supply of circulating fatty acids would “induce the uptake of fatty acids, and thereby stimulate lipid metabolism in muscle.”

Indeed, lab results showed that muscular beta-oxidation was higher in GTE-fed mice (compared with non-exercise and exercise-control mice), “suggesting that GTE enhanced the capacity of muscle to catabolize lipids and utilize fatty acids as an energy source.” Conversely, GTE lowered plasma lactate concentrations, which would be raised by glycogen breakdown and glycolytic flux, they note.

Taken together the experimental results “suggest that habitual exercise and the intake of GTE enhance fatty acid availability, catabolism and utilization in muscle, and this is accompanied by a reduction in carbohydrate use, which together result in prolonged swimming times to exhaustion.”

Controlling for caffeine

Kao researchers controlled for possible influences of caffeine and possible weight-fat changes that might affect buoyancy.

Aware that previous studies were criticized by the possible role of caffeine on fatty acids and exercise, the Kao researchers reduced the amount of caffeine in supplements. “In addition, we observed no changes in plasma NEFA level under resting conditions, suggesting that caffeine-stimulated lipolysis did not occur under these conditions. Thus our results overall suggest that the effects observed in this study are not attributable to caffeine. In particular, our findings that purified EGCG improved endurance capacity supports this conclusion.”