Day 9 - Green Tea

I enjoy green tea and the many varieties it comes in. I know it's good that I drink green tea because everyone always tells me this but today I wondered what it is exactly which makes green tea so good for us. So off I went and did a whole lot of research and now I can tell you why you should also be drinking green tea!

An article written by a research team at Harvard University in 2004 says that the benefits of green tea come largely from the high amounts of flavonoids found in green tea. For those of you who aren't scientists, flavonoids are plant derived antioxidants. Antioxidants are another thing that I know is good for you but I wasn't entirely sure why, so I looked that up as well. Antioxidants are basically exactly what the name says - they inhibit the oxidation of other molecules. This might mean nothing to you so I'll break it down a little bit more. In a cell, when a molecule or compound is oxidised, it produces things called 'free radicals'. These free radicals then cause a chain reaction, this then can cause cell damage and death. Antioxidants have been researched for uses in cancer treatment, heart disease and many more things. So basically - antioxidants are definitely good for us! Additional benefits of green tea is the presence of catechins which have been know to reduce disease and risk of many cancers.

All this information was great but I wanted to know how it supposedly helped in weight loss so I found an article in the Obesity Research journal. In the study they placed 76 obese to moderately overweight people on either a placebo or a green tea mixture. They were placed on a 4 week diet and then 3 months of weight maintenance. The results showed that those who had high levels of caffeine in their green tea mixture showed good weight loss results. In moderate doses, caffeine has been proven to increase a persons metabolism and green tea does contain some amount of caffeine. This tells me that any drink which contains caffeine will assist in weight loss and it is not a property specific to green tea.

Overall my research has showed me that whilst green tea is really good in helping prevent disease and cancer whilst providing a necessary store of antioxidants, it's not necessary for weight loss and any type of caffeinated tea would do the same thing. I will continue to drink green tea regularly though!

Hope this blog didn't end up too science-y for you all!