Origin of Green Tea
According to Chinese legend, the story of Green Tea began almost 5000 years ago in 2737 BC when Emperor Shen Nung, who was known at that time as the "Divine Healer", always boiled his water before he would drink it. He had noticed that his subjects who boiled their water before drinking it seemed to have longevity and better health. One afternoon, as he knelt before his boiling water, some leaves from a nearby tree blew into the pot. The Emperor noted a delightful aroma and, upon sipping the beverage, proclaimed it as "heaven sent". Green tea has been the beverage of choice among the Chinese elite intellects and bureaucrats who usually have the means to maintain an affluent dining habit. Historically, freshly plucked tea leaves were used directly for tea brewing or lightly heat-processed for preservation of the "health ingredients" if not consumed immediately. The word "tea" always means green tea in the "Middle Kingdom".
Processing Green Tea
The process for making green tea is the shortest. Withering is done first, but this step might be omitted. Rolling the leaves to break the membranes for oxidation is skipped, hence the oxidation process is also skipped. After withering, the leaves are pan fried or fired to prevent oxidation from occurring. The last step is to roll the leaves and dry them one last time for its final shape. The green tea leaves usually remain green.
Health Benefits of Green Tea
Green tea has long been used by the Chinese as medicine to treat headaches, body ache, poor digestion, and improve well-being and life expectancy.
Green tea leaves are potent in epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). Unlike other types of tea, green tea is processed differently. In green tea, the leaves are not allowed to oxidize but instead are steamed. This process allows the natural ingredients inculuding EGCG in the leaves to be preserved. Other types of tea were not nearly as successful as green tea in inhibiting the cancerous cells. Green tea was approximately ten times more potent than the other types. A study suggests that consumption of four to five cups of green tea may slow cancer. Previous studies have found a lower incidence of cancer in those who consume this amount of green tea but the exact compound that produced this cancer inhibition was unknown. All tea comes from the same botanical source.
Links are being made between the effects of drinking green tea and the "French Paradox." For years, researchers were puzzled by the fact that, despite consuming a diet rich in fat, the French have a lower incidence of heart disease than Americans. The answer was found to lie in red wine, which contains resveratrol, a polyphenol that limits the negative effects of smoking and a fatty diet. In a 1997 study, researchers from the University of Kansas determined that EGCG is twice as powerful as resveratrol, which may explain why the rate of heart disease among Japanese men is quite low, even though approximately seventy-five percent are smokers.
A University of South Florida Green Tea health study reported that Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG), the most abundant flavonoid in green tea, exhibited antimicrobial activity and had a protective effect against respiratory infection. Additional green tea health studies also confirm suggest that green tea may have strong antimicrobial activity and that green tea may provide possible benefits in fighting bacteria, viruses and food spoilage.
University of Kansas health researchers published a comprehensive review of green tea health studies reported since 1970 that examine the potential of green tea to provide a number of preventative actions in human health. The many reported possible therapeutic benefits of green tea consumption include reductions in risk for: dental carries, infection, inflammation, x-ray irradiation, some types of tumor development, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disorders.
New evidence is emerging that green tea can even help dieters. In November, 1999, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published the results of a study at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Researchers found that men who were given a combination of caffeine and green tea extract burned more calories than those given only caffeine or a placebo.