Tea and Health
We all are very concern about our diet and try our best to take a balance diet as it is proven that a balance diet helps greatly in reducing the risk of diseases. But, most of us ignore the value of beverages we consume which is a very important part of our diet. Recent research had shown that tea is not only a safe beverage for regular consumption but also helps to improve health and reduce the risk of some diseases.
Water soluble components such as polyphenols, which contributes mostly to the taste of tea, and proteins of tea brew are the most important part of tea drink. A typical brew of tea contains 0.35% tea solids in water. The amounts of tea components that come into the cup could vary due to many factors such as type and amount of made tea, temperature and water use for preparing tea brew, duration and method of brewing etc.
Tea becomes important not because it is a rich source of major nutrients such as carbohydrate, protein and fat, but because of the providing of useful amounts of some minerals and vitamins. Also, tea drinking significantly contributes to the daily fluid intake and helps to keep the body hydrated.
In addition to the importance of tea as an ideal drink for the modern day calorie conscious consumers, it becomes an ideal beverage for hypertensive individuals because tea is rich in potassium and low in sodium. Caffeine, well-known as a stimulant, acts on central nervous system to increasing alertness while reducing drowsiness and fatigue feelings.
Tea contains a very high amount of polyphenols (up to 40% of solids in the tea brew) which contributes to the decreasing the risk of many diseases. Tea helps to improve oral health by reducing tooth decay as it contains a significant amount of fluoride also.
Lot of scientific studies done in the dietary importance of tea has proven that tea could be very useful in preventing most of the common degenerative diseases such as heart diseases, stroke and cancer. It is obvious that such degenerative diseases are mainly caused due to the stress made by modern day imbalanced life styles. The anti-oxidant properties of tea brew components helps in reducing the effects of such stress reducing the risk of degenerative diseases as well.
In addition, most of other studies have shown that tea is useful in reducing the risk of diabetes, increasing the important microbial activities in the intestine etc.
