What Are The Ingredients In Green Tea

In the past decade, green tea has become an increasingly popular choice of beverage for a number of reasons. Known to help people lose weight while also fighting off things such as cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, and bad cholesterol, green tea has become a part of people’s lives who are interested in being healthy. Interestingly, most people are completely unaware of the ingredients in green tea, which we wanted to cover in this article.

With more than 3,000 different types of tea, it is fascinating to find that green tea is among the top choice. Grown on the Camellia sinensis bush, the leaves actually produce three distinct tea types depending on how they are processed. For instance, unfermented leaves produce green tea, semi-fermented leaves produce oolong tea, and fully fermented leaves from this same plant produce black tea. For green tea, the leaves must be dried quickly, which is typically done in Chinese form by pan firing or steaming, which maintains the beautiful color, as well as high content of catechin.

February 9, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

The Best Flavored Tea Pluckings

If you’re new to flavored teas, no doubt you’re wondering how to choose flavored teas of the best quality. The variety of the tea, the country in which it’s grown, the way it’s processed, the time it’s harvested and the way it’s flavored all affect the way a flavored tea will taste. In many varieties of tea, the time of harvest is particularly important, and can be difficult to understand and determine.

Following is some information that can help you choose the best flavored teas based on their harvest time. Flavored teas come in white, green, black and oolong varieties, and all varieties have different harvesting requirements for the best flavor.

February 3, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

A Loose Leaf Tea Experience

In America, just about 90 percent of folks drink their tea brewed by tea bag. It is the same routine, pour hot water into a cup and dunk the bag for a few minutes until the water turns a dark red color, add sugar and enjoy.

My question is, what are these folks enjoying?

A few years back, I too was the victim of tea bag tea. I, being an American, remained ignorant of the true way tea was meant to be enjoyed. Not only would I have tea just when I was sick, but along with the 90 percent of Americans I would brew it using fannings.

January 29, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

How Are Flavored Teas Different From Other Teas

Some of the world’s most popular and most widely consumed teas are flavored teas. Adding flavors to tea is centuries old and is a wonderful way to add a new dimension to a favorite variety of tea. With the many combinations of tea varieties and flavorings, nearly any taste is possible. Flavored teas have become as much a part of the world’s tea drinking traditions as the teas that are used to create them.

Flavored teas are different from herb teas, also known as tisanes. Herb teas, or tisanes are not actually teas at all. True teas all come from the camellia sinensis plant. Flavored teas simply have additional flavorings, such as fruits, flowers, herbs or spices added to them for additional flavor. Herbal teas are actually a brew made from the herbs themselves.

January 23, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

Cool Ice Tea

Hot summer weather makes us thirsty. However, one must be selective in what he or she drinks to quench that thirst. Water is definitely the best body coolant that quenches thirst. But, what next to water? People often prefer having cola drinks. However, although it may appear that cola drinks or cold drinks as they are popularly known might appear to cool your body, they harm your body in more ways than benefiting you.

They are concentrated carbonated water with high amount of calories. One of the best-suited drinks during the summers is the iced tea. Iced tea is a type of cold tea. Tea is a very healthy drink. Not only it refreshes your tired mind and body and rejuvenates you, but also it has several beneficial properties that help you for a better health.

January 21, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

What Are Flavored Teas?

The tradition of flavoring tea goes back many centuries. Nearly as long as tea has been made it has been flavored. However, it is said that the idea for flavoring tea came about as a bit of an accident. Many years ago tea gardeners in China planted other trees to provide shade and moisture for their tea plants.

They soon discovered that the tea trees that were planted near certain trees, such as peach, plum magnolia and apricot trees produced teas that had absorbed the aroma and flavor of the fruit and flower tree’s blossoms. You’ll note that some teas are considered flavored, while others are considered scented. Flavored teas actually taste of the addition used, while scented teas have merely absorbed the addition’s fragrance.

January 19, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

What Is Oolong Tea?

One variety of tea that is very popular in Asia but just gaining recognition in the US is oolong tea. Sometimes referred to as Wulong tea, as well, oolong literally means black dragon. Wulong, however, refers to the originator of the tea Wu Liang. According to Chinese legend, Wu Liang was busy collecting and processing tea leaves when he spotted a river deer. He stopped to kill and prepare the deer and it interrupted his tea processing for the day, and he forgot to dry out the leaves.

He remembered the tea a day later. By this time it had begun to change color, and Wu Liang was afraid it had gone bad, but decided to finish drying it anyway. After completing the drying process, he made himself a cup and found that he had created a very flavorful and aromatic tea - and oolong was born.

January 12, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment 

A Season To Drink Teas

There is a right season to each activity in life, and this is the master rule of Nature that no living creature can escape. Teas are no different and in many ways, we can learn from this simple reflection of this natural principle of the universe. In the Tea Culture, some traditions have developed as far as the many relations to the numerous crops’ quality, health benefits, taste, and the actual properties from the different Teas. All these elements can produce a different effect in our lives that can be quite revealing depending on which teas one drink at one specific time.

For example, Black teas or Red teas, are considered “ warm” teas , Green is considered “ cool” , and this is following one old classification in Chinese medicine about hot foods and cold foods properties.

January 12, 2009 | Filed Under Food and Drink | Leave a Comment