Antioxidants in Tea

Many of you will agree with me when I say that tea is a healthier option for you and the best form of tea for your health is green tea. One of the main elements why tea is so healthy, are the amount of antioxidants in tea. But what are these antioxidants exactly and what are they good for? The most normal process which takes place in our body is oxidation. It damages our cells and it is believed that this multiplying damage can result in aging and eventually death. Regular metabolism is behind this, however, oxidation accelerates due to pollution, overexposure to sunlight, smoking and alcohol.

A charge atom or a piece of molecule is a free radical. To reinstate its own constancy, that free radical searches for an electron to steal from its environment (an electron from your own healthy cells). Due to this, slight DNA damage occurs or a protein becomes dysfunctional. Even though this may not seem such a big deal now, but all these minute damages can add up. Now this is where antioxidants show their magic. As antioxidants are chemicals, they voluntarily offer their electrons to these free radicals and help save our cellular damage. Each time these antioxidants neutralize a free radical, even they lose an electron and stop their own functionality as an antioxidant.

Vitamin C and E, beta-carotene, and selenium are a few chemicals that perform as antioxidants and can easily be availed from nuts, fruits, meats and vegetables. However, the specific type of antioxidants called phenols (also found in berries and grapes) is what does the trick here and gives tea its well-deserved fame.

Amount of Antioxidants

With over 3 billion tea grown and manufactured each year, it's no surprise that tea has become one of the largest consumed beverage in the world. And consuming such high level of tea means it is essential to understand possible health aspects of tea. Good news is that tea contains various beneficial compounds like theaflavins (black tea), epicatechins, catechins (green tea), etc. which are antioxidant polyphenols found in tea leaves.

To calculate the amount of antioxidants in black and green tea, let's take one tea bag of each and steep in 200 ml distilled deionized water at 100º C for about 2 minutes. We can find that the antioxidant capacity per serving of black tea comes to 239 mg vitamin C equivalents and for green tea, 436 mg vitamin C equivalents. Hence, green tea has more health benefits than an equal volume of black tea.

Benefits of Antioxidants

Legend has it that tea was first discovered by a Chinese emperor when few leaves blew in his bowl of hot water. Even though the process of brewing tea has slightly altered, the tea we drink presently is still the same. In the following section, we will go over the benefits of antioxidants in tea and why drinking it is so powerful.

• Rich with antioxidants, drinking tea on a regular basis can reduce the risk of certain cancers, heart disease and stroke, protection against Alzheimer's disease and help weight loss.
• Black and green tea can block DNA damage related with tobacco and other toxic chemicals.
• Green tea has highest flavonoid content (30% to 40% in dried green tea) known as catechins. Just 1 gm of green tea leaves contains 127 mg of catechins.
• As white tea dries in natural sunlight, it can preserve the antioxidant properties easily. Which means, white tea is also a good source of antioxidants.
• 1 cup of green tea contains 200 mg of catechins, which is equivalent to 8 apples.
• Green tea contains gallic acid (an antioxidant), carotenoids, tocopherols, minerals like manganese, zinc, chromium and other phytochemical compounds. Green tea has beneficial synergistic effects.
• Drinking at least 3+ cups of green and/or black tea (together or separately) each day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and promote fertility.

Since drinking black and green tea benefits our body, adding milk with the tea will not inhibit the body's ability to benefit at all. Each year, new research studies keep going back and forth with their claims if in fact, milk can or cannot reduce antioxidants. It is quite difficult to digest that milk can actually prevent absorption of herbal properties. So until further research and studies prove otherwise, why not enjoy a nice cup of hot tea with (or without) milk!