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January 6, 2015
Not Everyone Who Drinks Tea Is Healthy
We all have them, don’t we? Those friends who are constantly talking about their new healthy lifestyle and how they feel so much better all of a sudden. They try to convince you to take up the same stupid fad diet they’re on, because we won’t believe just how good we’ll feel once we’ve done it. Everything that was ever wrong with them is due to the food that we are still eating and we’re idiots for not following in their footsteps.
A tin of healthy Longjing green tea from China
There’s one problem: these friends are invariably huge. That’s right, they’re fat slobs. Or they’re ultra skinny. Point is, they’re unhealthy. They follow some fad diet and five months ago they were following some other fad diet. A few months from now it will be something new. They think they are living a healthy lifestyle, but they are not. They’re cutting out foods that our body needs because some idiot somewhere told them these foods are unhealthy. They’re replacing them with who knows what.
All the while, they continue to eat all kinds of junk food and drink the unhealthiest possible drinks. You know what I’m talking about. They’re sipping on sodas and putting sugar in fruit juices and smoothies and so on. And of course, there is tea. We’ve all heard that tea is a major part of a healthy lifestyle. The type of tea differs from online health blog guru to online health blog guru. Some will tell you green tea is the healthiest, others will tell you, you should absolutely be drinking white tea. I’ve seen ones pushing oolong tea a lot recently. Then there are the ones pushing pu’er tea for whatever reason.
The reality is, all teas are healthy. It doesn’t matter which variety of tea you drink, it is good for your health. The problem with this fat slob of a friend of yours who is pushing his latest fad diet and telling you how great he feels and how he started drinking tea, is that he is not really drinking tea. He’s probably buying some bottled sugar water with a slight tea flavor. Or maybe he is actually brewing the tea himself at home with a tea bag full of cheap, crappy leaves. Actually, leaves is the wrong word. You can’t really call the left-over dust and stems found inside most teabags tea leaves.
Anyway, your fat friend is using these teabags, putting them in hot water for a minute or two, then pouring in 3 tablespoons of sugar. Maybe they’re adding milk, maybe not. It doesn’t really matter, since the sugar ruins at all. And when you spend the rest of the day drinking 15 Cokes, a few cups of tea-flavored sugar water are not going to make you skinny. These people will always remain fat and you really shouldn’t listen to them when it comes to health advice. But, you already knew that, didn’t you?
If you want to be healthier, the best thing you can do is stick to unprocessed foods. Of course, some natural foods are less healthy than others. Red meat for example is not the healthiest thing around. Definitely eat some, though. It taste great and it’s actually good for you. But as they say, everything in moderation. Take it from me, I can tell you that even eating too many vegetables can be bad for you. If you eat gigantic portions of only vegetables, you will end up with diarrhea. You diet needs to be balanced.
So, eat unprocessed foods and drink natural drinks. I spend most of my day drinking water and tea. I’ll switch it around and have a green tea one day, an oolong tea the next day, and a lovely black tea the third day. I’ll have some white tea, too. I won’t have flavored tea, because it’s really pointless and usually there are additives in it as well. Tea and water. That’s all you really need and if that’s all you drink, you are drinking very healthy. Just don’t put any sugar in any of that.
If you are looking for a healthy green tea, try Dragon Well tea from China.
Posted in health | By Ladislav
January 15, 2014
Drinking Green Tea or White Tea and Weight Loss
Drinking tea can lead to weight loss. You’ve heard this before, I’m sure. In fact, if you search for those very words, you will get back thousands of results with articles about the weight loss benefits of tea, green tea and white tea especially. Many of those articles are trying to sell you something and that is why they are so excited about explaining how tea can help you lose weight. Sadly, the truth is that drinking tea does not directly lead to weight loss.
That is not to say that tea is not healthy and that it does not help you lose weight. It just doesn’t do so directly. What this means is that starting to drink tea one day will not result in the pounds melting off the next. In fact, if the only change you make in your life is drinking tea and everything else stays the same, you will not lose a single pound.
How can people say that drinking green tea or white tea leads to weight loss then?
Well, first of all, when people begin drinking tea, they drink less of something else. We only need so much liquid per day, so every cup of tea replaces a cup of some other liquid and usually that other liquid is much less healthy than tea.
The type of people who are trying to lose weight generally drink a lot of unhealthy drinks, like sodas and other drinks with a ton of sugar. Coffee counts among them, if tons of sugar or other sweeteners are added.
When they start drinking tea, they will drink fewer of these unhealthy drinks and that will help them lose weight. The weight loss does not result directly from the tea intake, but from what was given up for that tea.
Beyond that, drinking tea functions as a type of signal. By this I mean it is a signal to yourself, to your mind, that you will now begin to live healthier. It is an easy first step on the road to a healthier lifestyle. In order to actually lose weight, you will need to change your diet and it would not hurt to exercise as well. The steps are fairly hard, but just adding tea to your daily routine is relatively simple. Because of this, many people begin with the tea and then take on incrementally more difficult tasks that can result in weight loss. In this way, a daily tea habit is a great beginning to a healthier lifestyle.
For this article I have mentioned green tea and white tea, but any other tea made from the actual tea plant is just as healthy. Herbal teas do not enter into the equation here. They come from different plants and as such have very different properties from real tea. Some of them are very healthy and some of them don’t do much at all. They are beyond the scope of this article and you’ll have to look elsewhere to find out about herbal teas.
As far as actual teas go, we have the two I have already mentioned plus oolong tea, black tea, yellow tea and pu erh tea. You will find a ton of articles on each of these, many of them claiming that whatever tea they are talking about is the healthiest and that you should buy their pills or supplements or whatever, but the truth is the health benefits of every one of these teas is about the same. The type of tea does not have as much effect on this as other factors, like the type of plant the tea leaves cam from or the location where the plant was grown or the manner in which it was processed.
Posted in health | By Ladislav
January 14, 2014
Which Tea is the Healthiest?
You’ll hear a lot of different answers to this question and they’re mostly all right and all wrong. Others make it simple: the healthiest tea is matcha. This is a high quality powdered green tea from Japan. It is made by grinding the tea leaves from the highest-quality teas into a fine powder. Because of this the whole leaves are consumed, not just the brewed essence, which means the health benefits are multiplied by a factor of at least 10. For more on matcha green tea powder, go here.
A cup of Matcha green tea with a sweet called mochi
Apart from matcha, it gets a little bit complicated. Mostly you’ll hear that white tea is the next healthiest, but that isn’t really true. It often gets credit for having less caffeine and more nutrients, but none of those things really depend on the type of the tea. They depend on the tea plant itself and the area and manner in which it is grown. This means that a white tea from a less healthy plant is less healthy than a white tea from a healthier plant. Similarly the less healthy white tea is less healthy than a black tea from a healthier plant. Does that make sense? If not, check out this page on white tea.
Because of this, I wouldn’t worry too much about what type of tea you’re drinking. It’s hard to know what kind of plant it came from and where it came from and how it was grown. You’re best off just drinking whatever you prefer and whatever one tastes best to you, as the differences in the health benefits are not generally all that great anyway.
The one thing you might want to look out for are human pollutants. By that I mean chemicals, pesticides, etc. You want to be especially wary of these in teas from China and even more in teas from India. Regulation is somewhat lax in these countries and enforcement is virtually nonexistent due to ridiculous levels of corruption. It’s hard to know exactly what you’re getting when you buy an Indian or a Chinese tea. That said, you could say the same thing for any food we buy. Personally, I tend not to even worry about it, since there is nothing I can do. If I like the taste of the tea, I’ll drink it.
So what was my conclusion exactly? Well, I guess I didn’t really have one. Basically, if you’re drinking tea especially for the health benefits, you’ll want to go with matcha. The main problem with this green tea powder is that it is very difficult to brew. Luckily, you don’t have to brew it. As a powder it can easily be added to all kinds of foods and there are hundreds of recipes to be found online. After that, I’d go for whatever you like. Personally, I enjoy green teas like sencha from Japan or, if you prefer milder tea, a Dragon well from China. White teas are also incredibly delicious. Here I’d recommend the highest-quality white hair silver needle, or the second highest-quality white peony. Whatever you choose, make sure to follow the brewing instructions carefully, so that you get a cup you’ll actually enjoy. Here’s to your new healthy lifestyle.
For more on white tea, try the white tea guide from Wikipedia.
Posted in health | By Ladislav
January 14, 2014
How Tea Led to a Healthier Lifestyle
I’m sure by now you’ve heard that tea is considered healthy. Drinking this ancient drink from Asia supposedly has all kinds of health benefits, but the truth is, none of tea’s health benefits have ever really been proven. That said, tea does make you healthier and I am living proof. How so you ask?
Well, what makes tea so healthy is not what is in it, though I have no doubt it is filled with healthy components despite the fact that none of the health benefits have been proven, but in what it replaces. When you start drinking a lot of tea every day, it’s only natural that you start drinking less of whatever you were drinking before. And unless you were drinking water or lemon juice with no sugar added, there’s a good chance tea is healthier than your previous drink of choice.
In my case, I had a liter a day coke habit. That’s the disgustingly sweet drink, not the white powder. When I started drinking tea, I stopped drinking Coke. I just wasn’t thirsty enough to drink more. And the most amazing thing happened: I started to hate Coke. Where before, I could drink it by the can or bottle to quench my thirst, now it does nothing for me. Drinking Coke doesn’t make me less thirsty; quite the opposite. It actually makes me thirstier.
Just thinking about the sugary sweet liquid in my mouth makes my spit dry up and makes me crave water or tea or something that actually does quench your thirst. And this is a great thing. It means that my body and my taste buds have adjusted to not having so much sugar. As a result, sugar kind of revolts me. This has had much further reaching effects than just my drink choices. I no longer crave sweet foods either and in fact, I don’t even really enjoy them anymore.
If you’re thinking this could never happen to you, that’s exactly what I would’ve thought. You just need to start drinking tea and it’ll take a month or two, but eventually you’ll be in my position and you’ll want nothing but tea. If you don’t know where to get started, I’d check with some online shops. Here is a good tea website to help you buy online, with a page that reviews and compares some of the more popular tea retailers. That should be a good place for you to start. As for which teas to drink, I cover that in my post titled: Which Tea is the Healthiest?
I should also mention that I has an espresso habit too. And I loved regular coffee. I took it with a lot of sugar, so it was also quite unhealthy, but I focused on the soda in this post, because that is even worse. But quitting coffee for tea could also be quite a challenge, though it was fairly easy for me, since I was quitting soda at the same time as espresso and the soda habit was much harder to kick, making the coffee habit seem easier to drop by comparison.
So get yourself some delicious tea, preferably a loose leaf tea, and start drinking it every day. Trust me, despite how hard this seems at first, it will quickly get much easier. Soon, tea will be easily your favorite drink and you’ll find yourself wanting a cup anytime you get thirsty. Bottoms up!
For more on the health benefits of tea:
(1) 13 Reasons Tea is Good for You on Time.com
(2) Top 10 Health Benefits of Drinking Tea on ivillage
(3) Types of Teas and Their Health Benefits on WebMD
Posted in health | By Ladislav