The Alternative Health Gazette

It may be hard to imagine, but some people believe tea comes in a powder form and you simply mix it with water. They have never heard of actual tea bags or loose tea, or maybe they’ve simply never tried it. As far as they are concerned, “tea” is a powdered mix.

The reality of course, is that powdered tea is instant tea. This form of tea is similar to kook aid, where the flavor and maybe some dehydrated bits of the real stuff are put into a can so that people can make an instant beverage from it. This is an easy, convenient and fast way to make any kind of beverage of course, but like all heavily processed foods… it loses most of it’s beneficial properties when it goes through the processing stages.

Instant tea does still have a little bit of health benefits to it - assuming your instant tea is not just flavored water without any real tea in it - but these benefits are a mere fraction of the health benefits you get from drinking brewed tea.

Both bottled tea and instant tea have much less antioxidents in them actually, and bottled tea has the added problem of additional sugars, preservatives and additional chemicals being included in it.

Drinking brewed tea is the best way to get the full health benefits of both green and black tea, and since brewing tea by either tea bags or with loose tea is fairly quick and easy by default, it shouldn’t be a problem for most people to make the switch from instant. If you have always consumed either instant or bottled tea only though, you may find the taste drastically different when you start brewing it up naturally.

Some specialists say that excessive tea drinking can “chelate” iron absorption in the body though, so they recommend not giving too much to children and teenagers. In reality however, a healthy American diet should counter the small effect tea has on iron in the body, and you can even just add lemon juice to your tea to make sure it’s not a problem.

The jury appears to still be out on whether adding milk to your tea effects its health giving antioxidents and flavonoids though. Some research shows that milk blocks the effects of green tea while others say it doesn’t have any effect. The difference in opinions might be contributed to differences in teas tested, or differences in testing environments and criteria though.

Your best bet however, is to drink both green and black tea regularly. Be sure to brew it yourself from tea bags or loose tea though, and avoid the bottled and instant tea options whenever possible.

http://usaweekend.com/01_issues/011118/011118eatsmart.html

Note: Some statements in this article may not be approved by the FDA. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as professional medical advice.

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