The health and nutrition industry is full of advice -- and products you buy to apply that advice -- about how to live better and longer. Sometimes, that advice is spurious and poorly researched, more advertising copy than legitimate information. In other cases, it's solid information at the forefront of nutrition science. When it comes to claims about decaf green tea and cholesterol, it's a little bit of both.
Cholesterol Basics
Your body produces two cholesterols: high-density lipoproteins and low-density lipoproteins. LDL is the cholesterol most people know about: it's important to body function but can hurt your circulatory health if your levels are too high. Your body produces it when your diet contains saturated fats. HDL is healthy cholesterol. It cleans contaminants, including LDL, out of your bloodstream and contributes to your circulatory health. Your body makes it in response to your eating unsaturated fats.
Green Tea Basics
Green tea is a traditional tea originally consumed in China and Japan but now popular all over the world. From a dietary cholesterol standpoint, green tea makes little positive or negative contribution to your cholesterol levels. It contains no fats of any kind, so it promotes neither production of LDL nor of HDL cholesterol.
Catechins
Catechins are a micronutrient contained in many teas, including green tea. This micronutrient directly improves your circulatory health by affecting the way your body interacts with foods that produce blood cholesterol. They can block your absorption of fat and cholesterol, improve how quickly your body flushes cholesterol via its natural cleaning process and contribute to liver function for longer and healthier cholesterol production.
Caffeine
Naturally produced green tea contains caffeine. Numerous studies, including a 2007 study by Dr. David Moore of the Baylor College of Medicine, suggests cafestol, a compound found in coffee, might increase LDL cholesterol levels in some subjects. This means that, from a cholesterol standpoint, decaf green tea may be a better choice than regular.
Bottom Line
Evidence suggests that decaf green tea may have a positive effect on your blood cholesterol levels. However, since green tea contains no substances directly related to cholesterol production, this effect won't be as important as your daily fat consumption. In short, decaf green tea will have an impact, but not the miraculous impact suggested in some ad campaigns.
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