The science is a little deep at first glance on this one but it looks like Chinese scientists are studying using nanotechnology with tea. More specifically they are trying to encapsulate the polyphenols from green tea in order to provide more of them to consumers.
We know that tea and especially green tea, has many health benefits. Some of these come from the polyphenols within tea. Our source says that 30-40% of the polyphenols can be extracted by water whereas black tea only has about 3-10% water-extractable polyphenols. That’s why they are looking hard at green tea.
It looks like they are trying to determine the best encapsulation material to use as their nanoparticles. I don’t know whether this will be a good thing or not. I guess a lot of that depends upon the material used to hold the polyphenols at the end of this research. But I gather what the point is is to provide more health benefits to consumers by delivering more polyphenols than can be achieved from just having a good hot cup of tea.
Source: http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Green-tea-catechins-go-nano-study
Filed under Health Benefits of Tea by on Aug 1st, 2008. 
Healthy Innovations has created a ready-to-drink green tea combo for those who like healthy drinks. It starts with a sparkling green tea that has antioxidants added and is sweetened with organic agave nectar. Presently it is available in two flavors. Healthy Innovations is targeting natural food stores to distribute the new brand such as Jimbo’s and Henry’s. These must be California based stores.
The use of the organic agave nectar has the added benefit of not only being sweet, but it does not raise blood-sugar levels and insulin production. Good for those who are insulin resistant.
During the World Tea Expo in June, the new tea drink was selected as Best Tea in the green tea sweetened category. Not bad for a new tea in a field with hundreds of competing companies.
The new ready-to-drink organic agave nectar sweetened green tea is called VidaTea.
Source: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080803-9999-lz1mc3tea.html
Filed under Tea by on Aug 5th, 2008.
A lot of drinking tea in China seems to center around elaborate tea making. I realize that China and Japan both have their tea ceremonies but it seemed to be a theme in the sources I found today.
The first source centered around the reporter stopping into the Confucian Tea House across from the Confucian Temple in Beijing. She goes on about the process of serving tea that their server performed for the tea they had ordered, white tea and a “smoky” red tea.
The second source provided steps and some of the why behind the process of making gong fu or kung fu cha. The process consisted of 15 steps. Perhaps you will be interested enough to follow all the steps.
Source 1: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080807/BLOG09/80807011/1065/SPORTS17
Filed under Tea by on Aug 8th, 2008. 1 Comment.