Okinawan Tea Diet

Okinawan tea is supposed to help you lose weight with little effort beyond brewing the tea, and give you a plethora of health benefits to boot. If this sounds too good to be true, you may be right to be skeptical: Scant evidence exists to back the tea-maker's claims, according to a Diet Spotlight review of the product. Always check with a doctor before adding a new weight-loss aid to your regiment.

Procedure

Following the Okinawan tea diet requires nothing more than sipping this type of tea. There are no recommendations for exercise, certain foods to eat, the amount of calories to consume or meal plans.

Significance

Okinawan tea is similar to green tea, coming from the same plant, Camellia sinesis. However, Okinawan tea is partially fermented, as is oolong tea. Okinawan tea undergoes the fermentation process for slightly less time than oolong. Green tea is made from unfermented leaves, according to University of Maryland Medical Center. The unfermented tea has the highest levels of polyphenols, powerful antioxidants thought responsible for many of the tea's benefits. Since there's no official ingredient list for the Okinawan teabags sold as a weight loss aid, it's unclear whether they have any other ingredients, according to the Diet Spotlight website.

Considerations

One tea producer claims Okinawan tea is 157 percent more effective at boosting calorie burn in your body than green tea. However, there's no scientific citation to back this claim, according to the experts at Diet Spotlight. Scientific studies on this version of green tea in general are scant. One study does associate it with decreased lung cancer risk, according to "The Green Tea Book," by Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Dolby. The association was particularly strong among women, according to UMMC. However, no analyses of the tea's properties, such as its polyphenols content, are available, note Mitscher and Dolby. Some studies cited on manufacturer websites, such as one published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, address green tea extract rather than Okinawan tea specifically, though a product website implies the benefits are unique to the Okinawan tea.

Features

To perform this "diet," you have to buy the Okinawan teabags. These cost between 24 and 60 cents per cup as of 2010. However, there's no advice for dieters on how often to drink this tea, notes Diet Spotlight. That makes it hard to assess the program cost or how long teabags will last.

Potential

This diet appears similar to the green tea diet, which advocates quaffing regular green tea for its weight loss and health benefits. Green tea does have health benefits and has been extensively studied, according to UMMC. It's possibly effective for preventing ovarian, pancreatic, bladder and esophageal cancers; reducing risk for Parkinson's disease; decreasing levels of triglycerides and cholesterol in the blood; and reducing abnormal cell growth caused by human papilloma virus infection in the cervix, according to the National Institutes of Health. There is insufficient scientific evidence, however, to say whether the tea is effective as a weight loss aid, notes NIH.