Green Tea

[7 star Method]

I personally like all tea, from white tea to Pu-Erh. Have you tried Pouchong? It is between a Green Oolong and Green Tea, very good to say the least. Also, try "Dong Feng mei ren if you get the chance, it is considered a mistake, but literally a great - great tea.

LF

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

Chat Tsing:

what do you mean by a 'mistake'? like an genetic sport/variety from cross pollenation? or an accident from mixing leaves that turned out tasteful?

[FngSaiYuk]

Kinda cross posting this-http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35929

I don't remember exactly where, but I've run across the notion that 'sugaring up' green tea reduces it's benefits.

Does anyone have anything authorative on this?

[7 star Method]

what do you mean by a 'mistake'? like an genetic sport/variety from cross pollenation? or an accident from mixing leaves that turned out tasteful?

The mistake was in the fermentation and baking. It was a screw up, but once it was tasted many liked it. It was not accepted well within the Chinese community (still is referenced as "Bull ****" tea by many traditionalists) so it was being sold to Western merchants, which is how it received its name. The only catch is, If you aren't getting a good grade Don Feng Mei ren it is not worth drinking.

Tao-an

LF

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

Alright. i stand corrected.

the last box of bojenmi i just purchased tasted like charcoal and the tea was black and almost gross. so much for quality control.

the first case i baught was really nice....

[GeneChing]

I drink tea every day. Lately I've been into a premium green that I got in Zhengzhou last October and this one that was gifted to me from Master Chen Fei. The green is really nice, a subtler flavor then most greens, but very refereshing. The problem is it bitters quickly if overcooked or oversteeped. The gifted one is Tie Kuan Yin, which at first I wasn't that into, but it has grown on me and now I quite enjoy it - it has a nice nutty flavor that seems to go well with the morning newspaper, plus my kid delights in watching the leaves unfold.

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

i had a friend when i was growing up (don't tell KL, he'll never believe you!) who's mom used that kind of tea to read her fortune with. i remember the flavour quite distinctly, still.

kid-wonder is always the best magic though.

[RAF]

Yahoo! Health
Have questions about your health?
Find answers here.

[B]Green Tea May Curb Prostate Cancer in Men at Risk[/B]
Tue Apr 19, 4:13 PM ET

By Megan Rauscher

ANAHEIM, California (Reuters Health) - Compounds found in green tea may prevent the development of prostate cancer in men with a pre-cancerous condition called high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN), researchers have shown.

"The sad truth is that close to 30,000 men will die from prostate cancer in the United States every year and, at present, prevention is the best way to fight it, Dr. Saverio Bettuzzi from the University of Parma in Italy told Reuters Health.

High-grade PIN progresses to invasive prostate cancer within a year in about 30 percent of men and no treatment is given to these men with high-grade PIN until prostate cancer is diagnosed.

Green tea catechins (GTCs) may be the answer, Bettuzzi said at the gathering of the American Association for Cancer Research here.

The investigator performed a trial involving men with high-grade PIN, who were given an inactive placebo preparation or one containing 600 milligrams of GTCs daily, "equivalent to 12-15 cups of green tea infusion, that is about two times the average intake in Asian countries."

Bettuzzi reported that, after a year, only 1 man among 32 in the GTC group developed prostate cancer, a rate of only 3 percent. In contrast, 9 out of 30 men treated with placebo developed prostate cancer, for the expected rate of 30 percent.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that GTCs have potent in vivo chemoprevention activity for human prostate cancer," Bettuzzi noted.

"The interest in GTCs and other polyphenols -- antioxidants found in many plants -- derives from traditional Chinese medicine, but the Mediterranean diet is very rich in vegetables, thus providing high levels of polyphenols, and lower rates of prostate cancer are found in that region as well," he pointed out.

"There are other studies strongly suggesting that similar results could be obtained for prevention of other types of cancer. As a matter of fact, breast and colon cancer are possible targets. In the near future, we are supposed to start a collaborative trial involving both Italy and USA on this matter," Bettuzzi concluded.

[RAF]

Black Tea, Green Tea Good for Diabetes

In Rats, Black and Green Tea Lower Blood Sugar, Prevent Cataracts

By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD
on Wednesday, April 20, 2005

April 20, 2005 -- Both black teablack tea and green teagreen tea are good for diabetes, a rat study shows. They also prevent diabetic animals from developing cataracts.

The findings appear in the May 4 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

"Black and green tea represent a potentially inexpensive, nontoxic, and, in fact, pleasurable [blood-sugar-lowering] agent," the researchers write. "Tea may be a simple, inexpensive means of preventing or retarding human diabetes and the ensuing complications."

In the study, the researchers gave green and black teas to diabetic rats for three months.

They found both kinds of tea inhibited diabetic cataracts.cataracts. The teas also had a blood-sugar-lowering effect.

To get the same dose of tea given to the rats, a 143-pound person would have to drink 4.5 8-ounce cups of tea every day.

The researchers recommend that tea -- black and green -- should be studied for an antidiabetes effect in humans.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCES: Vinson, J. and Zhang, J. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, May 4, 2005, published online March 31, 2005. News release, American Chemical Society.

[kejia nu ren]

Even though green tea has shown to have many diverse health benefits, I think it's always good to practice moderation - after all is too much of one thing ever good for you?

My father's family has a history of diabetes and cholesterol problems - and for the past couple of years my dad has been putting Japanese Sencha pure green tea leaves on top of toast and eating it whole for breakfast (I know...EW weird) but over the past year his cholesterol has gone down, he's lost a decent amount of weight and his overall health seems to have improved.

Using actual tea leaves for consumption is nothing new. I've heard that in the old days, tea leaves were used in many recipes in China (i.e. soup)...and as someone on this thread already mentioned, the Japanese Matcha is the powdered form of tea leaves that is consumed entirely.

If I'm not mistaken, the chemical composition of tea leaves contain only a small percentage of compounds that are water soluble. So although drinking water steeped in green tea has many benefits, the leaves themselves have many additional benefits that the average green tea drinker misses out on by throwing out the leaves. At least - this is what my dad tells me when I tell him eating tea leaves w/ toast is gross

[7 star Method]

Try this.

Take some Green Tea and place it in Gaiwan about 1/4 full. Fill with water just until the leaves are submerged. Enjoy and Drink. Do this once again.
Take some soy sauce and sprinkle the cooked leaves and eat them up - good stuff.

Tao-an

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

got bored this weekend 'cause no one wanted to discuss the baitball i dropped overboard last week and went into research on tea sources via the web.

when you guys say 'a good variety' of x tea, what exactly do you mean?

there's all kinds of tea available in china. some of it actually makes it to the states. retail products can be identified from source farms all the way throu the system of markets if you can read chinese. my problem: one of you said "a good dragon well"...the fukin **** is 106 bucks per 500grams! plus shipping. with minimum weights to ship. not only that, but there are nine grades of dragon well. would you fine hair-splitting gentlemen please enlighten this slightly bewildered novice and be more specific?

where exactly does Pu'er get compressed? is that a san franciscan imposition on tea culture? none of the pu'er is compressed in the chinese markets yet the same leaves are available in portland in a compressed nugget or mini cake form-?-

[RAF]

Early hope seen for green tea in fighting leukemia By Amy Norton
1 hour, 17 minutes ago

Green tea may help treat a form of adulthood leukemia, if the cases of four patients are any indication, according to a new report.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found that of four patients who started drinking green tea or taking green tea extracts, three showed clear improvements in their condition in the following months.

The patients all had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL, a form of leukemia that usually arises during or after middle-age and typically progresses slowly. Like all types of leukemia, CLL is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, in which abnormal white blood cells replace healthy blood cells.

What's particularly interesting about these four cases, according to Dr. Tait Shanafelt, is that the patients all started using green tea on their own last year, after hearing media reports about a lab study Shanafelt and his colleagues conducted.

That study showed that one compound found in green tea, known as EGCG, was able to kill cancer cells that were taken from CLL patients and put in a test tube with the tea compound.

After the findings were published, the doctors became aware of four CLL patients at their center who had started using green tea products and seemed to be doing better.

In interviewing the patients and reviewing their records, the doctors found that three showed signs of a regression in their cancer after they started to drink green tea or take green tea capsules. The fourth had an improvement in her white blood cell count, though her disease remained unchanged by standard criteria.

In one case, the patient had been showing progressive swelling in her lymph nodes - one of the characteristics of CLL - before she starting taking green tea capsules twice a day. Over the next year, her lymph nodes steadily decreased in size, according to findings published online by the journal Leukemia Research.

Another patient showed an improvement in her white blood cell count after she started drinking eight cups of green tea per day.

These cases alone cannot prove that green tea or its extracts conferred the benefits, Shanafelt told Reuters Health.

An answer to that question, he said, awaits the outcome of an ongoing clinical trial he is leading. The study, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, is testing the effects of a purified EGCG extract in treating CLL.

For now, Shanafelt said, there are many unknowns. For example, the researchers don't know how many CLL patients might have tried green tea products and failed to improve. Nor is it clear what doses patients should take, or whether high doses over a long period could have side effects.

A number of previous studies have suggested that green tea and extracts of the beverage have cancer-fighting abilities, possibly due to the tea's concentration of certain antioxidants - compounds that help ward off cell damage that can lead to cancer, heart disease and other ills.

EGCG is thought to be the most potent of these tea antioxidants. The Mayo study from last year suggested that EGCG might induce leukemia cells to self-destruct by interfering with the communication signals they need to survive. But the exact mechanism by which green tea may fight cancer remains unclear.

SOURCE: Leukemia Research, online December 1, 2005.

[GeneChing]

I forgot about this thread. I've been posting on the general tea thread here. As a green tea aficionado, I'll start posting here again.

Matcha tea is the latest ‘superfood’ — here’s why you should beware of knockoff versions
Ruchika Agarwal 8h



If you've heard the buzz about the "superfood" health benefits of matcha, a type of powdered green tea, you might want to read on.

China is known to produce knockoffs for almost every kind of popular product imaginable, and they do it so well that sometimes even the employees at the knockoff stores believe it's the real deal.

So it's no surprise that when Japanese matcha tea grew in popularity, China began to export its own version as Chinese "matcha" green tea powder. However, the Chinese version, while cheaper and more accessible, is not the perfect substitute for Japanese matcha.

What makes Japanese matcha tea popular — as well as its knockoff versions — are its alleged health benefits. Like traditional green tea, matcha contains a compound called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). But its levels are typically much higher in match than in traditional tea. A 2003 study, for example, found that matcha had three times more EGCG than most traditional green teas.

A series of preliminary Mayo Clinic studies showed promise for the potential use of EGCG in reducing the number of cancer cells in patients with a specific type of cancer: chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Research on green tea in people with other forms of cancer has been too limited to say for sure how beneficial it is. Other studies have suggested EGCG may play a role in maintaining heart and metabolic health, and still others — though limited and typically in cells, not people — suggest its anti-inflammatory properties could be beneficial for people with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

How is matcha made?

"Matcha" translates into "powdered tea" and is exactly that — steamed and air-dried green tea leaves that are stone-ground into super-fine powder. Traditionally, tea is made by steeping tea leaves in hot or boiling water for a few minutes and then discarding them. With matcha tea, however, the fine powder is stirred into hot, not boiling, water until it froths. Then the entire beverage — ground leaves and all — is consumed.



While tea-powdering is believed to have originated in China with a Buddhist monk in around 1191 CE, the farming techniques for matcha were refined and perfected over several centuries in Japan. Preparing Japanese matcha is an intricate process which has been part of Japanese culture for nearly 800 years. In Japan, tea leaves are grown in the shade to preserve its green color, and dried quickly to prevent them from long exposure with oxygen, which can dull the earthy flavor.


chinalife Tea House/Youtube

Chinese "matcha" only approximates these farming techniques: Chinese tea leaves are not generally grown in the shade, and are "pan-fried" to stop oxidation. As a result, Chinese "matcha" does not froth as much and its texture is more sandy.

Additionally, the soil in Japan, specifically Ise and Uji, and South West China are have different characteristics, which are also believed have an impact on the tea.

Chinese teas have also come under fire for their potential toxicity. In 2013, the environmental organization Greenpeace randomly tested 18 Chinese green tea samples, and found that 12 of them contained banned pesticides. Japanese matcha tea, on the other hand, abide by more stringent standards on use of pesticides.

As a result of these differences, Japanese matcha tea can be pricier than the Chinese versions. An ounce of Japanese matcha can range from $26-$32, whereas Chinese "matcha" tea can cost as little as $7/ounce.

The process of growing and harvesting the tea is what makes Japanese matcha. So it may be worth the extra cash, to reap the full benefits of matcha's flavor, history, and quality.

Worthy of note, I seldom drink matcha. I enjoy it, but prefer Chinese loose leaf.