Newbie Questions:Cups,ounces, steepings and extracts

[beforewisdom]

Hi;

I'm a green tea newbie.

I've been reading that in order to get the health benefits of drinking green tea that drink 4 cups a day is necessary.

By "cup" do the scientists mean any vessel that is called a tea cup or do the mean a cup as in 1/4 of quart ( forth of a liter for the Europeans )?

I've heard that the Chinese pour hot water over the same green tea leaves up to 3 times for multiple servings. This sounds more reasonable from the standpoint of avoiding getting jacked on caffiene. Do the health experts mean 4 cups of tea prepared this way or 4 cups prepare where each cup has a fresh set of tea leaves?

I've read that reusing tea leaves lowers the caffiene. Does it also lower the anti oxidants? I know that steeping the tea longer than 2 minutes and/or at higher temperatures makes green tea bitter, but does doing those things get more of the healthy good stuff for you?

Thank you very much for indulging a newbie with basic questions.

[entropyembrace]

It´s hard to really answer your questions as there´s not any clearly defined standards on how tea should be prepared in order to scientifically measure the health benefits. The levels of various beneficial compounds in a cup of tea varies a lot based on how the tea is brewed, how it was processed, how it was grown and how fresh it is.

So if there´s a study saying to drink 4 cups of green tea you´d have to read the paper itself and they should define clearly in the paper what a cup is, how they brewed the tea and what kind of green tea they used. It varies too much from study to study to give an answer as to what they did in the specific study you´re referring to without reading it.

One thing becomes immediately clear when looking at any studies that compare anti-oxidant content of teas of different grades...the fresher, higher quality teas have more anti-oxidants. Compare anti-oxidant levels of supermarket green tea bags to fresh, first flush loose leaf green teas and the difference is a whole order of magnitude.

So if this 4 cups study used teabags...just drinking a single cup of fresh sencha would give you more than double the anti-oxidant content of their 4 cups from teabags...

I think based on what I have read that the best way to benefit tea is to drink the highest quality tea you can, prepare it in the way that tastes the best and enjoy

I really believe that healthy should taste good...if you´re oversteeping your tea so it tastes bad to try and get more out of it you are not going to want to drink as much tea or keep drinking tea consistently.

Drink the tea that tastes the best to you, and get the freshest tea you can and pretty soon you´ll be happily drinking much more than this study´s 4 cups without even thinking about it.

[rdl]

i don't know much about the health benefits of tea in the sense of your question, but Entropye's reply is very reasonable. my feeling is if you are concerned about health it is better to take things out of your diet that are not healthy, rather than add green tea to undo the negative effects of these bad things.
regarding the caffeine in tea i have read the it is very soluble in hot water and if you want to decaffeinate a pot of (black) tea you can steep it for 20-30 seconds and pour that off, and re-steep and drink. many green teas can be steeped several times so the caffeine in the 2nd or 3rd steeps should be negligible.
green tea, both sencha and matcha, come in a powder. comsuming the entire leaf assures you of getting all the good benefits from a leaf of tea. if you enjoy the taste you may like this style of preparation.

[entropyembrace]

regarding the caffeine in tea i have read the it is very soluble in hot water and if you want to decaffeinate a pot of (black) tea you can steep it for 20-30 seconds and pour that off, and re-steep and drink. many green teas can be steeped several times so the caffeine in the 2nd or 3rd steeps should be negligible.

I´ve posted studies about this before...it´s a myth...it actually takes about 15 minutes to remove 95% of the caffiene...

You´d be better off making that 30 second infusion and drinking it if you want to limit caffeine intake because in 30 seconds very little caffeine dissolves into the infusion.

I cant find my older post on the topic...but here´s a Cha Dao article that discusses the same myth with scientific studies as sources

http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caff ... ality.html

[debunix]

i don't know much about the health benefits of tea in the sense of your question, but Entropye's reply is very reasonable. my feeling is if you are concerned about health it is better to take things out of your diet that are not healthy, rather than add green tea to undo the negative effects of these bad things.

Yes.

Drink the tea that tastes the best to you, and get the freshest tea you can and pretty soon you´ll be happily drinking much more than this study´s 4 cups without even thinking about it.

Yes.

This is what I do. I am a physician, so a little bit of health expert, or expert on some kinds of ill health, and I drink tea because I like it, and consider any health benefits it might have as a bonus, rather than a primary reason to drink tea.

[Cyphre]

Do you like green tea to begin with or are you just doing it for health benefits?

[rdl]

regarding the caffeine in tea i have read the it is very soluble in hot water and if you want to decaffeinate a pot of (black) tea you can steep it for 20-30 seconds and pour that off, and re-steep and drink. many green teas can be steeped several times so the caffeine in the 2nd or 3rd steeps should be negligible.

I´ve posted studies about this before...it´s a myth...it actually takes about 15 minutes to remove 95% of the caffiene...

You´d be better off making that 30 second infusion and drinking it if you want to limit caffeine intake because in 30 seconds very little caffeine dissolves into the infusion.

entropye,
thank you for the information. i should not have used the word "decaffeinate" as i guess that can mean 95% caffeine free. i have seen studies i believe to be correct that boiling water does help release caffeine from black tea. so the first short steep will then lessen, not decaffeinate, the tea in the following steep. but much less than the "tea myth" i read about.
from the cha dao post: "Extrapolation of their data gives the following caffeine-extraction percentages below 5 minutes (averaged over all tea types and formats)."
i am curious why the studies are not at real life brewing parameters?
green tea is different. the lower temp and short times, as the studies show, and you write, will yield little caffeine and less if a 2nd and 3rd steep are done at 30 seconds, however i shouldn't say it is negligible.
(i searched for your earlier posts on this topic but i didn't find them. i'd like to read more on this.)

[entropyembrace]

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=12300

here´s the older thread...it has less detail than the Cha Dao article

the reason why the studies don´t match real life brewing parameters are that real life brewing parameters vary a lot from person to person and that they need to use the same parameters for each infusion unless they are testing the effects of different brewing parameters.

Afterall some people brew their tea by packing a tiny pot full of leaves and others just dunk a teabag in their cup.

Because it´s so hard to properly control brewing parameters it´s really hard to make clear conclusions from any scientific studies about the effects of tea...but even the extreme case (CTC stirred in water kept near boiling temperature) much less than half the caffeine would be extracted after 30s....and I´m pretty sure most tea drinkers brew their tea in a way that would result in a slower extraction than that!

[beforewisdom]

One thing becomes immediately clear when looking at any studies that compare anti-oxidant content of teas of different grades...the fresher, higher quality teas have more anti-oxidants. Compare anti-oxidant levels of supermarket green tea bags to fresh, first flush loose leaf green teas and the difference is a whole order of magnitude.

Aside from freshness, and quality of soil ( organically grown, rich, etc ) what constitutes high quality?

There are a million places to buy tea on the web and a few in my city. How do I know how fresh the tea is? How do I know the other qualities for high quality?

If I buy bulk tea is keeping it in a zip lock bag enough to hold onto to a reasonable amount of freshness?

What is the optimum life expectancy for tea?

[beforewisdom]

This is what I do. I am a physician, so a little bit of health expert, or expert on some kinds of ill health, and I drink tea because I like it, and consider any health benefits it might have as a bonus, rather than a primary reason to drink tea.

I have that thought when I read articles in the news about how healthy tea is and the billions of people who drink it who have health problems. Drinking tea is not enough to override bad lifestyle habits.

I enjoy green tea and since I do I thought it might good to learn some details about how to secure the benefits from it since I'm going to the trouble to have it.

[beforewisdom]

Do you like green tea to begin with or are you just doing it for health benefits?

Door number one, but I think since I am drinking it if I can make small changes to get benefits from it, why not?

[beforewisdom]

I would like to thank everyone for all of the replies. I was not expecting to get this much and this high quality of information .

I've found the conversation about caffiene is interested.

Here and there I need a boost, but for the most part I like to keep my caffiene content low because at some point it will make me irritable and I will feel spent afterwards. I also don't think it is healthy to keep flooring the gas pedal on my adrenal glands.

It is interesting to read that by altering the way I prepare green tea I can jack the levels up or down.

[entropyembrace]

high quality meaning higher grades of tea...so fresh, first harvest, carefully processed and grown. More hand processing vs machine processing.

Freshness...it should have a strong natural aroma (not be scented with additives) and storage matters...best storage are refrigerated vacuum sealed bags, though to be practical at home use airtight tea canisters that do not let in light and keep them away from heat sources (refrigerating tea at home you can ruin it with condensation if you´re not careful) You should also know the harvest date.

When opened green tea usually doesn´t last very long...sencha and matcha only about 3 months, some Chinese green teas last more like 6 months. Beyond 6 months after opening your green tea will be stale.

For year round freshness of green tea the best bet is to order from a Japanese vendor they keep their tea in airtight refrigeration after harvest right up until just before shipping. This way they can keep 1st harvest tea fresh all year long. Chinese green tea is more likely to be fresh only in spring and summer because they don´t store their tea that way, though it does tend have a longer shelf life.

You can check the teavendor guide for Japanese green tea to get some ideas where to get the freshest green tea. Also because of the steaming process Japanese sencha has among the highest anti-oxidants of any tea.

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=11556

also most of those sites will sell airtight canisters to store their tea in once it arrives and you open the bags.

Maybe health benefits will be what gets you to really try good tea for the first time...once you try it I am sure enjoyment will become a factor too.

[Cyphre]

Do you like green tea to begin with or are you just doing it for health benefits?

Door number one, but I think since I am drinking it if I can make small changes to get benefits from it, why not?

I just wanted to make sure. I know people that drink tea just for health reason but they don't really like tea. This makes any suggestion pointless because in the end they just quit because it is too much work for them.

I have to agree with what everyone has said so far too. One trick I would use though for being able to consume as much tea as you could want, for benefits and all, is to get small amounts of every green, white, oolong, ect that you can(without breaking your bank). There is something about having such a selection at your finger tips that makes you want to try multiple per day. Which does lead to more tea drinking as a whole. When I first started drinking tea this is what I did. Not for health reason but just to find my favorite. I noticed that I would drink so much I was nearly exploding but I was loving every minute of it. It also helps narrow down what your tastes are when it comes to tea. From there you can ask on the boards for help in finding teas that run along your personal taste lines.

[beforewisdom]

Thanks for the second round of information.

It looks like the Japanese tea vendors are the better deal. Is it possible to find fair trade tea among those vendors? How about organic tea?

Most of the tea I've been drinking so far has been Frontier Herb green gunpowder and jasmine green from bulk jars.....but it is from a co-op that has a pretty good turnover in its bulk spice/herb/tea section.