I know most of you were hoping the answer here was beer, but to date no one has developed a high-resveratrol beer. Sorry. If any company gets close to developing one–buy stock. And although wine has been shown to raise HDL levels, that’s not the subject of this post either.
Green tea has been shown consistently across studies to have positive impacts on any number of chronic diseases. When I’m asked, most people assume that it is green tea with all the benefits. While many of the studies are done on green tea, that does not mean that black tea is without benefit and certainly white tea probably has more. Personally, I shift between all types on a very frequent basis.
While this particular study focuses on the ability of green tea to lower cholesterol, I would never recommend tea as a sole means to lower cholesterol. Rather, it is part of a comprehensive package of lifestyle changes all geared to improve physiology, which would, of course, also lower cholesterol.
As would be expected, I’m an avid tea drinker and our household goes through about a pitcher of tea per day. Since everyone seems to be under the false impression that living healthier has to be expensive, let’s squash that notion right now.
I have a reverse osmosis filter on the sink and fill up a stainless steel crock pot that sits on the stove that is only used for this reason. Teas come from a variety of locations: Tazo from Target, some 30 flavors from Teavana (teavana.com), tons of flavors from Maya Tea, flavors from Republic of Tea, flavors from China Mist.
The tea goes in the pot:
1) loose leaf goes in an infuser….http://www.teavana.com/tea-products/tea-makers-infusers/p/perfect-tea-ball is my favorite and easy to use
2) Republic of Tea – 5 of the circle tea bags per pot
3) China Mist – one package per pot
I bring the pot to a boil and let it cool down. Takes maybe 2 hours to cool down. After this the tea gets poured into a glass picture and into the fridge. While you can make tea any way you’d prefer, this type of an approach, drinking over a pitcher per day costs around $10-15 / month. Can’t beat this cost with anything other than tap water.
Bradley Clark says
How much water are you boiling in the pot for one pitcher of tea? And does the tea infuser just get dropped into the pot? Do you just use the teavana recommended amount of tea for each batch?
James Bogash says
Brad,
I usually use enough water to fill up the pitcher (or pitchers) that I am using. Add extra water for evaporation during boiling. If you follow Teavana’s recommendations you’ll go broke. I just fill up half the infuser for each pot.
Dr. Bogash