June is National Iced Tea Month. Only in the U.S. would we have a special month for iced tea probably because the majority of tea drunk in the U.S. is iced tea. With all the ready-to-drink tea products coming out that are available in your local convenience store, I suspect it’s just going to become more so that way. Well, it’s tea and that’s all good.
The story goes that iced tea dates back to the 1904 World Fair where an Englishman, Richard Blechynden, was trying to drum up business for Indian tea. At the time, China supplied the U.S. with tea. One source even said green tea was the major seller in the mid-West in those days. However, the Fair turned unbearably hot and no one wanted to drink a hot drink. They wanted cold drinks to relieve the heat. Blechynden got the idea to add ice to his tea to tempt the crowds. It turned out to be a big hit and now iced tea makes up 80% or more of the tea drunk in the U.S.
I don’t know who selects what to celebrate each month. One would presume some association would petition the powers-that-be. As someone else asked, why June when July and especially August are hotter? But being this is National Iced Tea month, guess you could get a start on your summertime iced tea drinking unless you drink iced tea all year as I do.
Source: National Iced Tea Month
Filed under Tea Events by on Jun 3rd, 2008. 
In a very small study out of Brazil, researchers from the “Federal University of Santa Catarina, and the Center of Physical Education, Physiotherapy and Sports of Santa Catarina State University” tested how the prior consumption of green tea vs. water affected athletes before and after doing resistance exercises. These exercises create a lot of oxidative stress in the body.
The athletes, aged between nineteen and thirty, drank water or green tea three times a day for seven days. Then they performed sets of a bench press exercise. Apparently, researchers
collected blood before and after the exercise sets. What the researchers tested for was the levels of glutathione, lipid hydroperoxide and the ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP) assay which helps them determine the total antioxidant capacity.
The benefits of drinking green tea that accrue before exercise is a FRAP level 21% higher than the water group. This could offer better protection against the oxidative stress done by exercise.
In addition, the finding after exercising were that the amount of glutathione was 37% higher in
those that had been drinking the green tea. Glutathione is a protein that helps protect us from the damage done by free radicals. Now I’m just musing here, but since free radical damage becomes worse as you grow older (part of what ages us as I understand it), then this seems to indicate that we would derive greater benefit from drinking green tea as we get older.
But back to the athletes. The amount of lipid hydroperoxides, which are apparently not only a by-product of vegetable oil processing, was reduced by 64%. That’s a pretty good reduction. And polyphenols were 27% higher before and after exercise.
One can easily guess that although more research will be needed, we will begin seeing green tea showing up in sports drinks in the future.
Source: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=84652-green-tea-sports-nutrition
Filed under Health Benefits of Tea by on Jun 6th, 2008.
We have a new study out that seems to contradict an earlier finding. In this one from the CSIRO Division of Human Nutrition at the Inaugural Australian International Symposium on Tea and Health (What a mouthful!), an experiment on mice showed a reduction of skin cancer when they were given tea. This tea was served with milk which is where the contradiction to an earlier study shows up.
Skin cancer development was reduced by 50% and papillomas development was reduced by 70%. Sounds like a good enough reason to be drinking tea even if further study on humans is needed.
The mice were given tea with 10% milk or 10% milk or water as their sole drinking source. Seems this implies at a minimum three different groups of mice. UVA+B induced skin cancer was what they were checking on. They wanted to know if tea with milk reduced the affect of the free radicals created by the rays which damage skin cells causing them to become cancerous.
Originally the thought was that milk bound to the flavonoids in the tea causing an impact on tea’s antioxidant properties. Looks like that might be wrong. Another reason for more research.
I don’t think it matters too much though. Every time we turn around there is another study coming out that indicates another benefit to human health from tea. In some things green tea seems better and in others black tea seems better. So just drink whichever you like best.
Filed under Health Benefits of Tea by on Jun 10th, 2008.