If you want to follow a green tea diet -- a weight loss plan that includes restricting calories or carbohydrates and taking green tea in pill or capsule form -- choosing Japanese green tea may help you slim down and live longer, too. Antioxidants in green tea may boost your metabolism and protect you against heart disease, according to "The Globe and Mail," Canada's leading newspaper.
Weight Loss
Green tea may be especially effective in burning belly fat, according to a United States study conducted by Kevin Maki and published in the February 2009 edition of the Journal of Nutrition. Men who drank green tea that provided 660 mg of catechins daily lost significantly more weight around their waists than men who drank black tea containing 22 mg of catechins. Both the green tea and black tea drinkers, all of whom followed a restricted-calorie diet and exercised during the 12 weeks of the study, lost weight. The green tea drinkers lost more, 5.4 lbs., compared with 2.9 lbs. for the black tea drinkers.
Protection Against Heart Attacks and Strokes
Green tea consumption may be the reason that people born in Japan are 30 percent less likely than North Americans to die from heart attacks and strokes, according to Shinichi Kuriyami of Japan's Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine. Shinichi's study, published in the September 2006 issue of the "Journal of the American Medical Society," tracked 40,000 people for 11 years and found that green tea drinkers lived longer and were less likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes.
Antioxidants
The benefits of green tea in Shinichi's study were ascribed to catechins, powerful antioxidants with health benefits that include improved metabolism. In a study led by Arpita Basu of Oklahoma State University, people who drank 4 cups of strong green tea daily for eight weeks lost 5.5 lbs. Four cups of green tea brewed from loose leaves contain about 500 mg of catechins, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Longevity
You may enjoy a healthier, and longer, life by drinking Japanese green tea. In 2000, the World Health Organization, or WHO, said that people in Japan live the longest, healthiest lives. In a new ranking that counted not just the number of years people spent on the planet but the length of time they were without disabilities, Japan topped the list, with its citizens living an average of 74.5 healthy years. The United States ranked 24th, with a healthy life for a newborn baby in 1999 expected to be 70 years. Other countries that made the top 10 were Australia, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Monaco and Andorra.
Catechin Comparisons
Green tea is virtually free of calories unless you add sweetener or milk to it. Diet bottled green tea is also a minimal-calorie source --- fewer than two calories per serving --- but the process involved in making bottled tea reduces its catechin content. While a cup of green tea brewed from loose leaves contains 127 mg of catechins, a cup of bottled tea contains an average of 12 mg, according to the FDA. In Shinichi's study, people who drank a cup of brewed tea received no health benefits, while those who drank 5 cups or more were 26 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease. The people in Maki's study drank the equivalent of about 5 cups of fresh-brewed tea per day. You would need to drink 50 cups of diet bottled green tea daily to obtain the same number of catechins.
References
- "The Globe and Mail"; Green Tea a Possible Factor in Why Japanese Live So Long; Michelle Fay Cortez; September 13, 2006
- WHO: New Healthy Life Expectancy Rankings
- "Journal of the American Medical Association"; Green Tea Consumption and Mortality and Mortality Due to Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer, and All Causes in Japan: The Ohsaki Study; Shinichi Kuriyama, Yoshikazu Nishino, Yoshitaka Tsubono, Ichiro Tsuji; September 2006
- "Journal of Nutrition"; Green Tea Catechin Consumption Enhances Exercise-Induced Abdominal Fat Loss in Overweight and Obese Adults; Kevin Maki et al; February 2009
- "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; Green Tea Supplementation Affects Body Weight, Lipids, and Lipid Peroxidation in Obese Subjects with Metabolic Syndrome; Arpita Basu et al; 2010
- USDA: Brewing Up the Latest Tea Research
Member Comments