Skip to main content

How do you like your Tea?

Image
By

The way we drink our tea may not only reflect our taste and style, but our health as well.Tea drinking is around 4700 years old and had its origin in China. Leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis (tea plant) were in use at that time as a remedy for wounds and diseases. With the legendary emperor Shenong brewing and drinking its extracts, tea drinking became a popular habit in this part of the world.
The British, impressed with the brew and the customs that go with drinking it in China and Japan, tried to emulate and evolve a tea-drinking custom of their own, and soon “tea-time”became a familiar term across the globe.
Every home or cafe seems to have its own flavour. The north Indian variety of “chay” is a glass of hot creamy milk (more cream as it gets more “special”) with lots of sugar and a lacing of  “tea liquor” of strong tea that grows on lower heights (Assam, Nilgiri, Sri Lanka etc). In contrast, the Chinese and Japanese prefer light green or jasmine tea without a drop of milk. Those with taste relish the Darjeeling variety that grows on high altitutudes: it has a distinct flavour but the liquor is mild, and is best consumed with no or little milk.
Tea contains a substance called caffeine (15 -50 mg per cup) that boosts mental alertness, increases short term memory, and has a mild antidepressant effect; hence the morning cup to get up from bed, and before exams or when alertness is required.
A special group fof healthy substance called anti-oxidants, are abundant in tea, especially the green or jasmine varieties. The anti-oxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) has ant-cancer properties, lowers stress levels, protects the heart and prevents degenerative diseases like Parkinsonism or dementia. A recent study showed that people who drank 2 cups of green tea a day had a 50% less decline in mental function with aging. Not surprisingly, tea-drinking Chinese and Japanese elders often live till 100 and remain alert till late.
Tea (green or jasmine only, not the creamy ones) also boosts our metabolic rate and help maintain slim figures. Catechin polyphenols and caffeine probably do the trick by increasing burning of fat in the body. Where tea really scores over coffee is in its glycemic index, or propensity to push up the blood sugar. It is 3 with green tea compared with 13 with “chay” and 27 with a cup of coffee. Tea drinking also helps avoid bad breath.
 Many are taking to Jasmine tea these days. It is a blend of jasmine buds (originally from Persia) with green or white tea, is mild and soothing. Try drinking 2-5 cups a day and see how refreshing you feel. Or should you prefer a strong flavour, you have the masala, cardomom, elaichi, orange-pico varieties to pick from.
Enjoy your cup of tea!
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 6 February, 2011. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more