Sunday 2 January 2011

Five top types of green tea for health and wellness

There's lots of blends and varieties of green teas in the marketplace, however which one is best for your overall health?

Here we count down the 5 most powerful.

But before I begin, I must point out that the antioxidant/nutrient level of any tea is usually dependent on the cultivating environments and the point in time at which the tea is actually plucked.

And whilst these factors are usually the ones that ultimately determine the ‘type’ of tea it is labelled as, there still remains some amount of difference in nutrient/antioxidant values in the various categories of teas - dependant upon the quality of the tea .

5. Longjing

Longjing is actually a massively popular Chinese green tea, and the variety of leaf you will often find in supermarket and lots of mainstream blends of green tea.

Filled with vitamin C, amino acids, and a powerful amount of catechins, this variety of green tea can also have even further incarnations - which means the level of above mentioned vitamins and nutrients might actually change from type-to-type of LongJing.

Bai Longjing (albeit technically not a real LongJing tea), is considered to be the one LongJing to contain the most amino acid content.

4. Kukicha

Kukicha green tea is basically a by-product of sencha or gyokuro tea (see no. 2) - composed of stems, stalks and also twigs.

It is because of its basic, unrefined formula that it has become a popular staple of the ‘macrobiotic diet’ which precisely avoids the intake of refined or refined food products.

3. Schincha

Schincha is actually a Japanese green tea that basically translates to ‘new tea’ i.e. the very first, young brand-new leaves from the plant which grow at the begining of Springtime.

Because these leaves are harvested so early on, they comprise concentrated nutrients that the tea plant has held onto over the winter months.

Although it has a high vitamin and amino acid content, catechin content is fairly minimal (which has long been found to possess cancer-fighting qualities). Thus, over to our number 2 rated green tea for health properties.

2. Gyokuro

Gyokuro is shade-grown for approximately the last twenty days of production - letting the plants to fill with a strong content level of amino acids and nutritional vitamins.

Alongside the health benefits, Gyokuro moreover features a distinct scent and fairly sweet flavour shared by our top rated positioning green tea.

1. Matcha

Matcha is cultivated in a really similar manner to Gyokuro. The major variation comes about through the processing of the tea.

Matcha is actually ground up on traditional stone-mills when Gyokuro is left to look like a standard green tea (dried up foliage). Which means that, with matcha, you actually ingest the tea leaves themselves.

Also , since the growth method enables these leaves to fill with a concentration of amino acids and vitamins, you will get the immediate advantage of this with a level of strength equalled by no other green tea.

And so, that's it, our top 5 green teas based on their health attributes.

For more information, visit Health Benefits of Green Tea.

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