Chinese tea time

Do you know which beverage is the most consumed in the world? No, it’s not coffee, or beer, or wine. It’s water. And what comes next on the list? Still not coffee. Nor wine nor beer. It’s Chinese tea. In the most populated countries in the world, the drink they consume most often after water is tea.It’s time for tea to be recognized in this country, not only for the health benefits most of the world have known about for centuries, but for its incredible ability to help stop one of the world’s biggest health crises to date: obesity.Americans, and American children and teenagers, are getting larger and larger every year and are paying the consequences in diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Millions of Americans go on and off diets every day. If you’re reading this article, you are probably one of those millions, and you are probably tired of your own yo-yo dieting experiences. We try to eat right, to make healthy choices, and to get off our addictions to sugar and caffeine, but it’s just too hard. So we turn to drugs; we buy supplements made from obscure plants found only in African deserts; we cut out entire food groups; and we get totally confused by what the latest diet guru is telling us to eat (which is just the opposite of what the previous guru espoused). What we don’t know is that we don’t need drugs, supplements, or slide rules to help us figure out how to shed the pounds. What we do need to know is very simple: Drinking Chinese tea will help us lose weight. Yes, tea. Inexpensive. Good tasting. And available to everyone everywhere. Tea, with natural ingredients that will not only help us lose weight, but will reduce our cravings for sweets, suppress our appetite, increase our insulin’s effectiveness, lower our cholesterol, and stimulate thermogenesis, which helps the body burn fat for energy. All this from a cup of Chinese tea!Doesn’t tea have caffeine?Yes, it does, but it has far less than you’ll find in a cup of coffee. And here’s the “magic” of tea: It also has L-theanine, an amino acid that works to counter caffeine’s harmful effects. L-theanine also influences the neurotransmitters in the brain that affect your dopamine and serotonin levels which send the brain signals of satiety. The more tea you drink, the stronger the message to your brain that says “I’m not hungry.” Therefore, Chinese tea not only helps you lose weight, it helps you to reduce your appetite and stay on a diet as well. The third secret ingredient of tea is EGCG, the miracle antioxidant that stimulates your body’s metabolism; you’re actually burning fats as you sit there drinking your tea. EGCG also lowers the levels of triglycerides in the blood and inhibits the accumulation of fatty acids in the fat cells, thus making it a significant antiobesity agent.The Oolong teaAll tea comes from one plant. There is not a white tea plant, a green tea plant, an Oolong tea plant, or a black tea plant. There is only one tea plant. Now you know more about tea than 95 percent of the rest of America does. So when you read about a medical study where green tea is proven to aid in weight loss, or if you read that white tea is good for reducing cholesterol, you now know that all tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, so it does not matter which type you drink.I am often asked which kind of tea is the healthiest. My answer is always the same: “The kind you like to drink.” There are some minor differences in the four kinds of tea: White teas and green teas have slightly higher levels of polyphenols (antioxidants found in plants); Oolong tea and black tea have recently been shown to be more effective in preventing certain diseases, such as heart disease and high blood pressure. However, the general consensus is that the kind of tea you drink is not as important as the fact that you drink it.All four types of tea have the same health benefits. All four types of tea willaid in your weight loss; all four types of tea will help reduce cholesterol. Andall four types of tea have many more proven health benefits, which you’ll read about in the next two chapters. If the beverage you’re drinking does not come from Camellia sinensis, it is not tea. “Tisane” (tee-SAHN) is the term used within the industry for anything that resembles tea but does not come from the tea plant. When we talk about tea throughout the rest of this book, unless we specifically say otherwise, we are talking about the four main categories of tea that come from this plant: white, green, oolong, and black.