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Is this your cup of tea?

It is a cup that cheers. Change over to green tea and you could be on the path to glowing health, writes PANKAJA SRINIVASAN

PHOTO: K.ANANTHAN

MAGIC BREW Go green

Chai! The magic four-letter word that instantly conjures up deliciously strong, steaming hot tea on cold misty mornings. We are a nation of great tea drinkers. But the beverage we gulp down is not exactly what the doctor ordered. What is good however is green tea. And not many people are drinking that. But now with `wellness' campaigns, weight loss and holistic health treatments being aggressively pursued, there are those who have woken up to the benefits of green tea and the more upmarket of supermarkets are stocking various brands of green tea promising miraculous cures— from glowing skin, great hair, a better figure right up there to fighting cancer.

The beginning

Actually green tea is the mother of all teas. At one time it was the only kind of tea there was. Five thousand years ago a sprig of tea accidentally found its way into the Royal cup of hot water that Emperor Shen Nung was sipping, and that was perhaps the first ever cup of brewed green tea. The Chinese emperor was smitten and soon the brew became the sought after drink the rich and the famous sipped. And they called it `Cha', too.

The difference between green tea and the other kinds of tree is that the former is not fermented. This helps in preserving its powerful anti-oxidants. And what are anti-oxidants? They are substances that keep sickness at bay and oxidise fat. In fact the story goes that poorer Chinese people stopped drinking the non-fermented green tea as it so effectively reduced fat. They wanted to retain some of the fat in their bodies as they were living in hard times. So they started drinking partially fermented tea instead as that had less fat-oxidizing elements! Green tea is also packed with vitamins and minerals that really make it a healthy alternative to any other kind of beverage.

Despite its beneficial effect, green tea has not quite caught on in the Indian sub-continent. The owner of the Nilgiris supermarket Mr Chellayan said, "Perhaps only one in a thousand drink green tea. While we do stock it, it moves very slowly. It is mainly foreigners who shop for it," he said. "As compared to regular tea that sells about 70 Kg a month, only 10 Kg a month of green tea is sold," he said.

Benefits

This could perhaps be because we are not used to drinking tea without adding milk and sugar, said a spokesperson from the R&D department of a leading tea manufacturing company in South India. But she added that no one could deny the health benefits of green tea.

"While we do not actively recommend that they take green tea, a few of our clients who have been losing weight quite successfully have been drinking it regularly," said a dietician of a leading weight-loss clinic in the city. "My skin seemed to clear up when I started drinking green tea, on the recommendation of a friend who is in tea business," said boutique-proprietor P. Kausalya. Not everyone however has positive things to say about this tea.

A cultivated taste

Diet-conscious Maya confesses, "I tried green-tea but it tasted like sawdust in hot water to me!" Green tea experts say that this may be because the average Indian palate is not used to tea the flavour of which could be best described as grassy. Obviously green tea has some way to go before it jostles for shelf space in Indian kitchens. But studies have shown it as being an effective remedy for colds and flu, and there are statistics that show entire villages in the green tea belt of China showed fewer incidences of cancer and other illnesses when compared with the national norm. If that doesn't get you exclaiming "Wah Green", nothing will.

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