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Brewed Tea vs. Instant Tea
It may be hard to imagine, but some people believe tea comes in a powder form
and you simply mix it with water. They have never heard of actual tea bags or
loose tea, or maybe they've simply never tried it. As far as they are
concerned, "tea" is a powdered mix.
The reality of course, is that powdered tea is instant tea. This form of tea
is similar to kool aid, where the flavor and maybe some dehydrated bits of the
real stuff are put into a can so that people can make an instant beverage from
it. This is an easy, convenient and fast way to make any kind of beverage of
course, but like all heavily processed foods... it loses most of it's
beneficial properties when it goes through the processing stages.
Instant tea does still have a little bit of health benefit to it - assuming
your instant tea is not just flavored water without any real tea in it - but
these benefits are a mere fraction of the health benefits you get from
drinking brewed tea.
Both bottled tea and instant tea have much fewer antioxidants in them, and
bottled tea has the added problem of additional sugars, preservatives and
chemicals being included in it.
Drinking brewed tea is the best way to get the full health benefits of both
green and black tea, and since brewing tea by either tea bags or with loose
tea is fairly quick and easy by default, it shouldn't be a problem for most
people to make the switch from instant. If you have always consumed either
instant or bottled tea only, though, you may find the taste drastically
different when you start brewing it naturally.
Some specialists say that excessive tea drinking can affect iron absorption
in the body, though, so they recommend not giving too much to children and
teenagers. In reality however, a healthy American diet should counter the
small effect tea has on iron in the body, and you can even just add lemon
juice to your tea to make sure it's not a problem.
The jury appears to still be out on whether adding milk to your tea effects
its health giving antioxidants and flavonoids though. Some research shows that
milk blocks the effects of green tea while others say it doesn't have any
effect. The difference in opinions might be contributed to differences in teas
tested, or differences in testing environments and criteria.
Your best bet, however, is to drink both green and black tea regularly. Be
sure to brew it yourself from tea bags or loose tea, and avoid the bottled and
instant tea options whenever possible.
http://usaweekend.com/01_issues/011118/011118eatsmart.html
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