black tea benefits
Posted in tea on 04/30/2009 10:04 pm by admin
How do the health effects of green tea and black tea differ?
I keep seeing the health benefits of green tea.
I believe most of these studies are done in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, where green tea is prevelent.
However, I mostly drink black tea.
How does the fermentation of tea affect the antioxidant levels, and other phytochemicals?
Green tea antioxidants consist mainly of small molecules catechins, such as EGCG, ECG EG etc.
During the tea making process, these antioxidants oxidise to form larger molecules such as thearubigin and theaflavin.
The evidence is mixed so far, but there are studies that found catechins to be a lot more powerful than thearubigins and theaflavins.
However, more studies are still needed to understand why green tea has more health benefits than black tea.
Some scientists say there are more green tea health benefits because there are more studies on green tea. It does not make any difference which tea you drink since they are the same species.
Personally, I doubt it. If you look at the proportion of studies showing positive results, green tea do better than black tea.
The problem is that black tea molecules are larger and more difficult to study. So it will be a while before we understand the difference between them.
Why not drink both?
Black Tea Benefits