How to Make Delicious Iced Tea Using Gourmet Teas
According to the U.S. Tea Association, 85% of tea consumed in the US is iced. Unfortunately, the bulk of the iced tea consumed is made of low quality tea, such as the iced “tea” you find in fast food establishments. Their tea is often made of tea-flavored syrup. Many people also use low quality tea bags to make iced tea. However, you can make delicious, healthy, and original iced tea using whole leaf gourmet teas.
Iced tea is cold and refreshing on a hot summer day but it can also be a delicious, thirst-quenching way to enjoy your gourmet teas throughout the year. After all, it can get old drinking your gourmet teas hot all the time. Why not change it up on occasion by drinking your gourmet teas on ice? Not only is preparing iced gourmet tea fun, it is also a lot more flavorful and healthy for you.
Green Tea for Good Health?
Good health, fitness and weight loss? Green tea could be the answer you are looking for. For thousands of years it has been known to promote good health in nearly every possible way. Research has found time and again that it can lower cholesterol, reduce heart disease, fight cancer, boost immunity and give you great skin!
How is this possible you might ask? Well, research has shown that green tea burns more calories and is a powerful anti-oxidant. That it not only inhibits the growth of cancer cells, it kills cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.
More importantly green tea is known to calm the mind. What could such a mind achieve? Anything! Think about it. We could set our minds on what we want to do and achieve it. Even if the day is hectic, one doesn’t feel it. You have the energy to finish all the office work, ordinary chores and go to the gym or for a long walk. A combination of the right food, right exercise and the right mind-set can achieve wonders. Any thing that one does is with the right focus and the results speak for themselves. The Zen monks call it mindfulness.
Green Tea Benefits – A guide to the health benefits of Green Tea
Green tea has enjoyed considerable attention in western countries lately due to its claimed health properties. This attention doesn’t come as a surprise to people living in Asian countries like China and Japan who have been enjoying the benefits of green tea for more than 4000 years.
However many companies have recognised the interest in green tea health benefits and created a range of green tea related supplements. Sometimes these companies make unproven claims about the health benefits of their products.
How is green tea better than other types of tea?
There are 3 main types of tea:
* Black Tea – made by exposing the tea leaves to air, heat, crushing and light
* Green Tea – Leaves are steamed or heated quickly to stop them oxidizing
* Oolong Tea – This is in-between, is not processed for as long as black tea but more than green tea
Because Green Tea hasn’t oxidized as much as other teas and it’s subjected to less fermentation and processing it usually contains higher levels of antioxidants and other health giving properties. However there are different grades of green tea and the levels of antioxidants present in the finished product depend on how, where and when it was picked.
Japanese Organic Green Tea
Is Japanese organic green tea the best tea in the world? That might be a stretch but all in all it’s a great tea that will help your health. There are a couple Japanese organic green tea’s such as Tombo Tea – Sencha and Tombo Tea Genmai. One of the factors when considering organic green teas of any sort is finding out of they certified and actually organic and not just labeled organic.
Green tea has many benefits and just plain makes you feel good physically and mentally. I have been a fan of this type of tea all my life, it could be a coincidence but I never been to the doctor in my life, I guess a dentist won’t count. My eyes are fine which could be genetics and I have no heart problems. I’m not saying that this kind of tea is the cure all but it certainly does help.
The Secret Behind Gevalia Green Tea
The Gevalia Green Teas are known to be the “emeralds of the Orient” because of its uniquely smooth and delicate flavor. No other tea could equal the quality, which is complemented by its natural refreshing characteristics aside from being delicious in its own way.
Furthermore, these teas are not just for soothing the taste; they are also good source of antioxidants. These are the properties that the body needs to process and eliminate toxins. In fact, green tea is prized so high in the West because medical studies have proved that their high level can have a positive impact on the human body. And Gevalia is very careful not to destroy these properties with its green tea products.
Therefore, not like black teas, the leaves which are used to produce green tea are not allowed to oxidize. This preserves the pale green color, the distinctive flavor and the natural antioxidant properties. Gevalia always makes sure that the processing of this tea is all natural and no other substances are added. This delicate procedure preserves freshness and does not alter unique properties.
Green Tea Recipe
Green tea is the best atioxidant for health. Many diseases can be prevented by green tea soncumption such as cancer, heart disease, blood vessel disease and more. In other side, green tea has phytonutrition content contains of catechin and theaflavins. They are unable to regulate the blood cholesterol level by these ways: limit the absorption of cholesterol and increase the cholesterol excretion from the heart. Besides, green tea will prevent the growth of cancer cells. This is an example of green tea recipe.
Ingredients
200 gr of ice cubes
4 pockets of green tea.
800 ml of water for boiling a stalk of limegrass, split it into 2.
100 ml of honey
100 ml of strawberry juice or cocktail syrup
The lime or lemon and mint leaves for garnish
Some Gossip About Green Tea Caffeine Content
It seems like health advice is rammed down our throats whenever we open a newspaper or watch the TV. Even one of my favorite drinks, green tea is under the medical spotlight.
It was when I chanced upon a report all about the potential side effects of caffeine and it mentioned green tea caffeine content as being something to be aware of that I sat up and listened. The thing I’ve found out over time is that when you get ten experts together you often get ten different views or opinions.
Where does that leave the poor old consumer who remains none the wiser, still scratching his head frustrated, not knowing what to do. Having to sift through information from studies and research is time consuming and very often there is conflicting data. However, the most obvious way of avoiding caffeine in a drink like green tea or for that matter any other beverage, is to drink a decaffeinated variety.
Oolong Tea Vs Green Tea
Is Oolong tea really a fat-burning miracle? There are so many wild and unsupported claims about foods and herbs that are supposed to help you lose weight. So it’s rather refreshing to find that wu-long tea, which is being touted as the new weight loss miracle, actually has some scientific studies that back up the claims.
However, you may discover that you’ll pay less for this tea if you buy it using the traditional spelling of its name – Oolong tea and wu-long tea are the same thing, spelled differently.
The most famous study linking wu-long tea with weight loss was published in August of 2003. Researchers at the University of Tokushima School of Medicine and seven other schools found that this Chinese tea increased the burning of calories by 10%, while women drinking green tea had an metabolic increase of 4%. Both teas increased the burning of fat when drunk after a meal, but wu-long tea appeared to do a better job.
Green tea, Oolong tea (or wu-long), and black tea all come from the same plant. The differences in the finished product that we drink comes from the differences in how long the three types of tea are processed and fermented. Green tea has been processed the least, and black tea has been processed the most. Oolong tea falls in the middle.
History of Green Tea: in Popularity Since the Early Days!
People started consuming tea as early as 4000 years back in the country of China, though only few provinces of China knew the use of tea. Apart from China, India and Japan were the places where tea was grown and consumed with pleasure. The most startling fact about green tea is that it has got certain medicinal benefits, like wound healing and coughs prevention. These were age old remedies and are practiced with greater perfection in the modern era.
The people of China used green tea to the best of its use and they commercialized the production of green tea in China. A Zen priest had written a book on tea related medicinal benefits in the year 1191. The book contains valuable information about the origin and traditional uses of green tea. The Chinese people mastered the art of natural healing, with the use of herbal products and green tea was used extensively for purely medicinal purposes.
Little Known Health Benefits of Green Tea
The Chinese have known for quite a long time about the health benefits of green tea. They have used it to cure everything from headaches to depression for over 4,000 years. Modern scientific research has now provided undeniable evidence of the health benefits of drinking green tea.
In 1994 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published the results of an epidemiological study indicating that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in Chinese men and women by nearly 60 percent. It has also been discovered that a compound in green tea inhibits the growth of cancer cells. It can also help lower cholesterol and improve the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol. In fact, green tea has been found to contribute to the improvement of a number of other medical conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, infection and impaired immune function.
The science of tea
Green tea contains a very powerful antioxidant called catechin polyphenols, particularly one that is called “epigallocatechin gallate” (EGCG). EGCG is the most prevalent catechin of the several that are in green tea, and appears to inhibit, perhaps even destroy, cancer cells, all without harming and of the healthy surrounding tissue. Catechins in general have also been shown effective in lowering LDL cholesterol levels and inhibiting the abnormal formation of blood clots. This last property is extremely important, for in the Western world these aberrant clot formations are among the leading causes of both heart attack and stroke.
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