In the October issue of Harvard's Health Watch, there will be an article about how tea can be really healthy and should be drunk 3 times a day.
Here's an excerpt:
The October issue provides a few tips to get the most out of tea-drinking:
- Drinking a cup of tea a few times a day to absorb antioxidants and other healthful plant compounds. In green-tea drinking cultures, the usual amount is three cups per day.
- Allow tea to steep for three to five minutes to bring out its catechins.
- The best way to get the catechins and other flavonoids in tea is to drink it freshly brewed. Decaffeinated, bottled ready-to-drink tea preparations, and instant teas have less of these compounds.
- Tea can impede the absorption of iron from fruits and vegetables. Adding lemon or milk or drinking tea between meals will counteract this problem.
With winter right around the corner and the cold nights upon us, let's take a moment of silence and take a deep breath of the cool crisp air...ahhh...
We know that something must be done to not only keep our outsides warm, but we must also keep our insides warm too. So go buy that parka from the Gap or wherever, put on your thermals, and treat yourself to a cup of hot tea!
To top it all off, if you want to be truly warm and toasty and as comfy as...just being really comfy, then you must really get yourself some happy feet house sneakersto keep your feet warm, and they're cute to boot! These are the unofficial official office slippers for us here. Buy one for yourself, for your friends and you're loved ones! (we are in no way affiliated with this company other than avid users of their products for over 5 years).
In the world of tea, there is so much that we know, and yet so much more we don't know. But slowly and surely there are more and more tests and news that solidify how healthy tea is and how it helps protect you against many diseases.
"Green tea is the cup that cheers, for aiding digestion, normalizing thyroid function, protects against leukemia after exposure to radiation."
The latest research finding suggests that green tea consumption forestalls development of prostate cancer and inhibits tumor growth.
Keep on drinking tea and who
knows, it'll probably be discovered that it can increase your wealth too!
In all seriousness though, we can't wait to spread the joys of tea with our special blends and recipes!
For the past few days there have been numerous stories about people in china talking about ads that say "one less cup of milk tea could mean state-of-the-art weaponry for Taiwan"
Now the milk tea retailers have thrown the gauntlet because their sales have dropped tremendously due to the posters coming out. They are up in arms saying things like why didn't you say give up 1 coca cola a day?
Many people suffer from heart disease and do not know it until they suffer a heart attack or some other heart related illness. But this can be prevented by eating right and eating smart. Eating smart means having foods that help lower cholesterol.
Here's an excerpt of how tea can help:
With nearly one in three people in the world dying from heart disease each year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) today launched the ‘Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke’, which graphically details this global epidemic.
"No matter what advances there are in high-technology medicine, the fundamental message is that any major reduction in deaths and disability from heart disease and stroke will come primarily from prevention, not just cure,” said Dr Judith Mackay, co-author of the Atlas.
Foods designed to tackle heart health are set to grow 7.6 per cent in the UK market, according to Datamonitor, to reach sales of £145 million in the UK alone by 2007. This is second only to gut health in terms of purpose categories.
Ingredients spearing this market cover a wide range. Tea, for example, the second most consumed beverage in the world is believed to lower cholesterol levels and protect against heart attacks.
A recently published Japanese study found that black tea may be healthy for the heart through its action on blood vessels. The small study suggested that the drink dilates the vessels allowing faster blood flow.
Drinking tea can help you as a preventative measure, but you should still take care of yourself through exercise and diet.
Keep your heart healthy by keeping your arteries unclogged.
Here's an article that explains how green tea extract can help.
Chicago - Green tea may hold the key to keeping hearts clog-free.
Powerful antioxidants make up a third of the weight of dried tea leaves. The main one of these good-for-you compounds is called EGCG (or, if you're good at tongue twisters, epigallocatechin-3-gallate).
New mouse studies show that EGCG can slow the build-up of artery-clogging plaque. Yes, you've heard something like this before. Animal studies often show that antioxidants keep arteries from clogging. Human trials, however, are often disappointing.
That may soon change. What's different about this study is that it indicates the timing of green-tea-extract treatment makes a world of difference. Cardiologist Kuang-Yuh Chyu, MD, PhD, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, and colleagues report the findings in the May 25 issue of Circulation.
"Most animal experiments evaluating the effects of antioxidants are started when the animals are young. Randomized clinical trials typically enroll adult patients with varying stages of plaques," Chyu says in a news release. "This discrepancy supports speculation that antioxidant treatment affects early but not later stages of plaque development."
Chyu's team studied mice fed a high-cholesterol diet and then given a plaque-inducing injury to their main heart artery. After the plaque-induced injury, some of the animals started getting injections of the green tea extract EGCG.
It worked. On day 21, the animals had 55% less plaque than those animals not given green tea extracts. By day 42, they had 73% less plaque. But the treatment had no effect when given to animals with fully mature plaque.
"It appears that antioxidant therapy would have therapeutic benefits only if initiated during a critical window very early in the formation of plaque," Chyu says.
Want to have something different? Try creating some tea ice! That's right. Not iced tea, but tea ice. What is that you ask?
Tea ice is bascially ice cubes made from tea. You can put this into your favorite drink such as lemonade, strawberry juice or other juices and let the tea ice infuse your drink as it keeps it cold.
We found this to work really well for making some afternoon drinks, because the drinks don't get diluted which usually happens when mixing drinks with regular ice.
Now this isn't something new, but I have found that when people are told about it, they have the look of, WOW, like they just discovered the secret of life.
So make yourself a nice cup of tea ice and your favorite drink!
Each category has its own benefits. Green teas are much higher in antioxidants than black teas, for example, because of the way in which each is processed. Antioxidants are helpful if one gets too much sun exposure or undergoes chemotherapy or radiation, Maizes says.
It's interesting that many people are slowly switching to tea as their preferred drink in restaurants as well when it used to be things like Coke.
If you are pregnant and are an avid tea drinker, it's really hard to give it up. But don't worry, there are some herbal teas that you can drink during your pregnancy. Here are some ingredients that you can use to make your own herbal tea blends.
Herbs that are known to be safe for the pregnant body include strawberry leaf, lemon grass leaf, nettle leaf, alfalfa, fennel seed, rosehips, and lemon verbena. My favorite pregnant concoction is an infusion made from one part peppermint, one part chamomile, and two parts red raspberry leaf. If your doctor advises against raspberry, you can replace it with strawberry leaf or nettle. The chamomile is so sweet that even my sweet-tooth friends don’t need sugar - great for my friend with gestational diabetes. And peppermint is known to sooth the stomach if you're having problems with nausea. The third ingredient provides a nice "base" for the other flavors.
These are just somethings that can soothe your taste buds during your pregnancy. You should still check out the ingredients on the teas you buy from the market.
Caffeine drinkers look out! Tea has more caffeine than coffee! But this is only when comparing caffeine content of the two in dry form. When prepared coffee has almost double the caffeine.
Still, many people who start their day with either of the two most common sources of caffeine - coffee and tea - could probably not tell you with certainty which contains more. The confusion is not surprising. Pound for pound, experts say, tea has more caffeine than coffee. But while a pound of tea leaves often yields several hundred cups of tea, the same quantity of ground beans usually makes fewer than 100 cups of coffee, making it a more potent pick-me-up.
So don't worry everybody, especially those of you watching your caffeine intake.
Sri Lanka which is well known for their black teas has been quietly increasing their green tea lines because of the profitability of them with the current health craze hitting the world that says green teas is better than black tea.
A kilogram of green tea earns 469.45 rupees (about R65) on the export market, more than double the 188.04 rupees for a kilogram of black tea.
Over the past few years Sri Lanka's production of green tea has improved and with the green tea crunch hitting China it is a perfect time for a new player in green tea to supplement the worlds appetite for it.
Studies have shown that drinking green tea can be healthy, but a new study shows that it can also halve the death rate in women that already have ovarian cancer. You can read all about it in this article from the West Australian. Curtin University researchers had previously shown that green tea can help prevent ovarian cancer and now they've shown that it can help women with ovarian cancer live longer.
We have previously shown that drinking green tea prevents ovarian cancer but this new research shows it can also increase survival in women with the cancer.
...
"Regular consumption slows down the growth of human cancer cells because the tea's potent antioxidants cause the cell cycle to stop. I recommend drinking at least one cup of green tea each day without adding milk or sugar.
This is great news for the millions that are afflicted from this type of cancer.
We always knew that tea can help reduce cholesterol. Now there is a company called TeaFlavin that has done a test with their green tea capsules.
Here's a quote from them
"While studies show that cholesterol-lowering Rx statin medications are extremely effective, there's also solid scientific evidence that Teaflavin®, the all natural, caffeine-free product now available to consumers as a 375 milligram daily capsule, not only lowers LDL-C by 16.4 percent but also raises HDL -- good cholesterol -- by 3-4 percent," says Jim Zhao, Ph.D., a molecular biologist and Chief Science Officer, Nashai Biotech, LLC. "The idea is to do everything natural first."
There will be a new tea plantation coming soon in the city of Meghalaya, which neighbors the state of Assam, which is popular for their Assam Estate Teas.
Meghalaya had decided to plant tea because of its yield compared to other crops. The tea stands out for its distinct flavor and aroma. Hopefully the tea will soon become available for us to try here in the states. But until then, we will have to wait.
Its great that there is another place that will be growing teas, further diversifying the drink.
Apparently there is some milk and tea addictions on the rise in kids in India. This was quite surprising news as they originally thought that pizza and colas would be on the rise.
They say that roughly 80% of kids from 2-5 are addicted to tea.
About 600 assam tea garden workers died of communicable diseases. This along with the news that India's $1.5-billion tea industry is facing the worst crisis in about a century with prices dropping in the weekly auctions. The industry is also facing a slump in export figures and domestic consumption.
These cool products are made by those at molo design. It's a really great design. Too bad we can't get it here in SoCal just yet. But these would be great not just for tea but for other beverages as well.
Many body builders have begun to take green tea extract to help them during their workout because it helps to lose fat by increasing the metabolic rate but also has some caffiene so they have the energy.
But why spend all that money on extract when you can have all of the benefits of green tea like the immunity fighting power and cancer fighting agents you get from loose leaf tea. You can get similar results by drinking a cup of green tea about an hour before you work out and drinking a cup afterwards. Some body builders will make some tea and put it into their water bottles but diluted. This is also cheaper than buying those vitamin fortified water!
There's some talk going around here at Paper Street Teas about a possible contest involving a mini iPod and something like $50 worth of teas and teaware. It sounds like it will be a monthly thing, but the details haven't been fully worked out yet.
We know that people making purchases will be eligible, but there is also talk about counting every 10 posts made at the Tea Villa Forums to count as 1 entry to the contest. This is again still being worked. Of course for the posts to count you would have to be a registered user.
We all know how hard it is to keep cereal and potato chips fresh. So after trying out chip-clips, and getting acrylic containers, we found this little product called a clip-n-seal. These definitely work much better than the chip clips and so much easier to maintain than the acrylic containers.
After many months of hard work and many late nights of testing and drinking countless number of cups of tea and assorted drinks, Paper Street Teas has finally been launched!
You can visit us at www.psteas.com. They still offer the same great service and same great tasting teas, only they've added quite a few! The Tea Lab is still there as well. The new things are the Paper Street Points (PSP, which you get for every purchase made, tea review created, as well as when a friend you referred has made a purchase. You can use the PSPs to buy yourself anything in our store, or you can even send them to a friend in the form of a gift certificate.
We have also made our site faster and easier to navigate.
Creating refreshing and healthy summer drinks can be quite chore, especially when wanting to create fruit smoothies. Before I would have to go and buy fruit and try and finsh all of it before it spoils. When I went to Costco I noticed that they have big bags of frozen fruits for about $8. This is really great when it comes to making smoothies.
A great way to make these would be to get a cup full of frozen fruit, fill with orange juice and some vanilla powder. You can add crushed ice but not really necessary as the fruit is already frozen. If you want to kick it up a notch, and seeing how we are a tea site, you can add some brewed tea to the mix. Substitute the oj with tea of your choice. Ideally it would be one with a subtle fruit flavoring. Nothing with a perfumy type flavor such as jasmine.
Republic of Tea also has some cooking oil that is made from tea. Now this is definitely an interesting concept. I haven't had a chance to try it but if anyone has let us know in the tea forums. It's interesting that they say to use this for salads, sautees, and marinades.
Definitely sounds yummy. Lookslike they also have tea honey and a slew of other tea based products. We will try and get our hands on some and do a review.
International tea meetup day is closing in on us. That day is Sept. 21. Only 19 more shopping days until we celebrate.
This day is brought to us by Meetup.com. They are organizing the tea event so that everyone can get together and meet new people and join in on the fun of drinking some wonderful tea!
You can go and log on and perhaps you will meet a new tea buddy.
It looks like they want this to be every 3rd tuesday of the month. Not too bad. You can also meet here everyday and just chit chat at our forums.
