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10 Benefits of Green Tea (Infographic)

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Health Benefits of Green Tea

What is green tea good for? Read this infographic to discover green tea’s most powerful benefits. Use the embed code to share it on your website.

<img src="http://media.mercola.com/assets/images/infographic/green-tea-benefits.jpg" alt="Health Benefits of Green Tea" border="0" style="max-width:100%; min-width:300px; margin: 0 auto 20px auto; display:block;"><p style="max-width:800px; min-width:300px; margin:0 auto; text-align:center;">What is green tea good for? Read this <a href="http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/04/23/green-tea-dementia.aspx">infographic</a> to discover green tea's most powerful benefits.</p>


Tea Review: My Green Teapot’s Beautifully Subtle Whole Leaf Green Oolong Teas

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My Green Teapot Strawberry Green Oolong Tea

I love many things about working from home as a web publisher and blogger, but none any more than doing tea reviews. Come on, what Crazy Tea Chick wouldn’t love everything about that?!  Today’s tea review is for My Green Teapot: a tea company with a beautiful name, beautiful packaging, and beautiful tea.

How are you going to top that?!

I was sent small samples of two of their teas to review. First up is a beautiful, subtle green tea, Strawberry Green Oolong. After one taste, my first thoughts were, “Lovely, soft, and very enjoyable.”  My Green Teapot’s Strawberry Green Oolong Teas are all natural whole leaf teas from Taiwan infused with strawberry.

My Green Teapot Tea

The fact that this tea has a small amount of caffeine makes it one you can enjoy throughout the day.

As with all of my tea reviews, I tried it both hot and iced and, while it was exceptional both ways, I think I prefer it iced because you get more of the strawberry flavor that way. Since strawberry is one of my absolute favorite flavors in the world, the more the better!

Steeping instructions:  8 oz cup   –   195°F   –   1-3 min

My Green Teapot

Before I get to the second My Green Teapot tea, I just want to say a little something about the packaging – it is adorable. I love when companies (tea, chocolate, coffee, food…) put a little extra thought into their packaging. It just makes the entire experience sweeter. These adorable little “Chinese Takeout boxes” are as unique as they are cute. I was going to save them for Christmas packaging but couldn’t get the green teapot sticker off cleanly.

Oh well, they served their purpose – setting a special mood for a couple of special teas.

My Green Teapot Orange Green Oolong Tea

In addition to the Strawberry, I was sent a little sample of the Orange Green Oolong tea and it, too, was wonderfully subtle and altogether lovely. While I didn’t have any oranges on hand (which is odd – I usually have a whole bowlful!), it occurs to me that a slice of fresh orange floated in a hot mug or tall glass of this tea would be a beautiful thing.  This tea was equally delicious hot and cold – I honestly couldn’t decide which one I preferred.

Like the Strawberry Green Oolong, Orange Green Oolong teas are all natural whole leaf teas from Taiwan infused with orange.

My Green Teapot Orange Green Oolong Tea

Steeping instructions:  8 oz cup   –   195°F   –   1-3 min 

I hope you’ll check out My Green Teapot and all of their wonderful natural whole leaf teas. I highly recommend the two I’ve reviewed here.

My Green Teapot Orange Green Oolong Tea

Review: Creme D Orange Green and White Loose Leaf Tea from Kent & Sussex (Amazing!)

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Creme D Orange Green and White Tea from Kent & Sussex

As I said, emphatically, in my Kent & Sussex Spring Tea Review, the tea lovers at Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Company know their tea.  Each loose leaf tea I’ve had from Kent & Sussex has made my top 10 list of all-time favorite teas. The one I’ll review today is no exception – in fact, it’s a strong contender for top 3.  The Creme D Orange Green and White Tea is phenomenal.

Creme D’Orange is a mixture of Green and White Chinese tea, with vanilla flavoring and orange which make absolute magic together. This beautiful tea reminds me of Orange Creamsicles. The vanilla and orange combination is a throwback to a time I grabbed an Orange Creamsicle each time I passed the refrigerator.

If you aren’t familiar with Orange Creamsicles, just know this – the flavor combination is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Creme D Orange Green and White Tea from Kent & Sussex

Creme D Orange Green and White Tea is fantastic on ice but you get a much heavier vanilla flavor when it’s cold.  The Vanilla/Orange balance is most noticeable when this tea is served hot, and that’s the way I prefer this one.  With the Spring Tea, I love it equally both iced and hot, but with this tea, the hot is just so extraordinary, iced really never stood a chance.

Creme D Orange Green and White Tea from Kent & Sussex

This is a perfect loose leaf tea and I whole-heartedly recommend it. You cannot possibly order it soon enough and you cannot possibly order too much of it.

Ingredients– China Sencha Lung Ching, Yunnan Pai Mu Tan, Rose buds, Vanilla Flavoring, Orange slices and Carrot shreds.

Where to Buy – Find Creme D Orange Green and White Tea on Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Company’s website.

Also See: Kent & Sussex Spring Tea Review

Creme D Orange Green and White Tea from Kent & Sussex

Review: TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea

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TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea
TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea
It’s been my experience that all TAZO teas are delicious and the TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea is certainly no exception.   I buy at least three boxes of TAZO tea each time I go to Target (great selection). If I’m out – or even remotely low – on their Wild Sweet Orange or Passion, I’ll buy those. If I see a new flavor, as long as it isn’t mango (deathly allergic), I’ll also grab a box of it.

This is all, of course, on top of the TAZO Chai Tea Concentrate I can’t possibly live without.

After loading up on the “regulars” last week, I grabbed a box of the TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea to try. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, to be honest. It had been tempting me for quite a while. The problem is, though, I’ve been jilted by so many “peach” flavored teas that… well… I’m having to learn to trust again.

{Review continued below….}

TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea
TAZO Organic Peachy Green is Great Hot and Iced
Since TAZO is one of the names I trust the most, I actually accepted its invitation this time and brought it home with me.  Somehow, between leaving Target and getting home with my tea stash, my hopes began to soar so high that the first thing I did was make a cup.

Then another.

It was phenomenal and, honestly, made me forget every peach flavored tea that’d ever broken my heart before.

Peach is one of my favorite flavors in the world, so it frustrates me when teas don’t do right by it. Nine times out of ten, the flavor they call “peach” isn’t even close to the peach I know and love. With TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea, however, I literally knew it was going to be special the second I opened the tea bag. My nose knew even before my taste buds.

The flavor is 110 percent peach… not just a flavor that’s in the neighborhood. What’s more, TAZO did a perfect job of distributing just the right amount. It doesn’t taste like you’re drinking a peach – it tastes like you’re drinking a great cup of green tea that happens to have peach on its mind.

Trust me, it’s a beautiful thing.

This tea is also fantastic iced. A clear indication in my house of how much I love a tea is how fast the box disappears. TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea  has become an “instant legend” in our home – the box was completely empty within 4 days.

Do you have any idea how many cups and glasses of tea that is?!?!

Look for TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea in your local grocery store or Target. You can also find it on Amazon:  TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea.

It’s now joined the ranks of TAZO’s Passion, Sweet Wild Orange, Zen Green Tea, and Chai Tea Concentrate on my trips to Target… If TAZO keeps this up, I’m going to need two carts.

TAZO Organic Peachy Green Tea

How Green Tea Helps Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

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Matcha Tea

Matcha Green Tea

In addition to being a “crazy tea chick” and food blogger, I also write for several other websites I have covering subjects that I’m passionate about. These passions range from cats to Kentucky, from dream analysis to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and from self help to mental fitness. For each subject I “cover,” needless to say, I do a great deal of research and fact-finding.

While working on an article about Foods that Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease, two of my world collided when I read that green tea is actually wonderful for brain health.

Rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (Alzheimer’s is actually a form of dementia) are, tragically, on the rise. Millions of Americans (about 1 in 8 seniors) suffer from Alzheimer’s and it’s the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

Until a cure for Alzheimer’s is discovered (and let’s all pray that this will happen in our lifetime), experts have given us many steps we can take to ward off (or at least delay) the chance of developing the disease.  One of the easiest ways we can put the odds in our favor is to eat the foods that have been proven to benefit our brains (see Brain Food).

An easy way to remember which foods are healthy for your brain is to simply ask yourself which foods are healthy for your heart. The same types of food can be found on both lists.

Green tea is a perfect example. We know it’s healthy for our bodies, but now research shows that it’s also great for our brains. Researchers from the University of Michigan have found that an element in green tea helps stop plaque growth in the brain that’s connected to Alzheimer’s disease.

Whether you drink your green tea iced or hot, know that each cup is great for you – body, mind, and soul.


Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino With Whipped Topping and Raspberry Syrup on Top

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Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino
 

I am as big a fan of Starbucks as you’ll ever find. In fact, every member of my family know the “right” thing to get me for Christmas, Mother’s Day, or my birthday is a Starbucks gift card.  One Christmas I racked up 5 and I was in caffeinated bliss for weeks.

The crazy thing is, I never… seriously, never…. order coffee at Starbucks. In the cooler months, I always get a Chai Tea Latte or hot black tea and in the warmer months, my Baristas know exactly what’s coming out of my mouth, “Grande Green Tea Frappuccino with Whipped Topping and Raspberry Syrup on Top.”

It’s absolute perfection and I’m as associated with this drink as Cookie Monster is cookies.  I, admittedly, get as worked up as he does for the object of my affection to.

Years ago, I began ordering the Green Tea Frappe “straight up,” without whipped topping or anything. Honestly, it’s absolutely delicious like that too and sometimes I still order it without the frills. However, I’ve found that a little whipped topping, followed by raspberry syrup on top creates such an incredible work of delicious art that I even dream about it.

Honest.

When you order this masterpiece, you have to be sure to specify, “raspberry syrup on top” plainly or you’ll get it mixed in with the green tea frappe, itself. That’s happened to me before and, while it’s still delicious, it’s just not the same magical drink as you see pictured here.  Without the whipped topping and Raspberry syrup, it’s more like a delicious green tea smootie… add the other two and what you have is Heaven in a plastic cup.

This one’s a real head-turner and tastes even better than it looks.

 

Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino 2

Twinings Green Tea With Mint: Refreshingly Delicious!

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Twinings Mint Green Tea

I’m not sure why, but when it came to tea  I was slow when it came to jumping on the mint bandwagon. I’ve always grown mint in my herb garden and am obsessed with the smell, but the thought of flavoring food or drinks with it never seemed like an attractive idea.  I’d read raving reviews about mint tea and pretty much shake my head wondering, “How could people even do that?!”

Now I know – because the results are breathtaking!

One of my favorite new teas I’ve tried is Green Tea with Mint from Twinings.  This tea is extraordinary.   You can always judge how wonderful a tea is by how fast it disappears from our tea shelf.  This one may have broken a record. I bought a box on a Saturday and by Wednesday it was completely gone.

Suffice to say I love, love, love this tea.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but when doing a review (whether it’s one of my Kentucky restaurant reviews, food blog reviews, book reviews, or tea reviews), I pay particularly close attention to the first words that come to mind.  After one sip of Twinings Mint Green Tea, the first three words that came to mind were refreshing, delicious, and wow.  Wow’s always good.

The second thing I thought was that I should have bought 2 boxes instead of just 1. I knew this one wasn’t going to last long.

If you can’t find Twinings Cold Brewed Iced Tea Green Tea with Mint in your favorite store, click the link and order a box from Amazon.

Better make that 2 boxes….

Lower Your Cholesterol, Naturally, with Green Tea

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Inspiring Green Tea
Everyday Health recently published a great slideshow showing ways to Lower Your Cholesterol in Five Minutes or Less. Click the link to see all the potentially life-saving tips.

One of these tips was of great interest to those of us who love tea.

From Everyday Health:

Research reviewing 20 studies, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that sipping green tea reduces LDL by an average of 5.30 mg/dL, though the amount of green tea sipped varied widely from one study to the next. The secret ingredient in green tea to help lower your cholesterol? Antioxidants called catechins. One cup has between 50 and 100 mg of catechins. Get out your mug — across the studies, participants had between 3 and 10 cups a day.

You’ll definitely want to see the rest of the tips. Interestingly enough, there are many everyday things we can do that’ll help keep our cholesterol levels in a healthy range. Things that don’t involve medication… most of us are all for that! See Lower Your Cholesterol in Five Minutes or Less for more information.

Live Longer by Drinking Green Tea and Black Tea

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Live longer by drinking tea.

I do a great deal of reading about nutrition, heart health, mental health, and living longer (and better!).  While I do a great deal of research on these subjects for my self help blog and mental fitness blog, the main reason I do so much “healthy reading” is to keep my loved ones, and myself, as healthy as possible.

This morning, I read a great article on Prevention.com called “How Long Will I Live: Surprising Signs You’ll Live to Be 100?”  The gist of the article was for the reader to learn what things he/she was doing right and what things they might want to consider doing. If, that is, they want to live as long and as healthy as possible.

As I was reading along, I’d think things like, “Good, I do that…” or “Ooops, I’m dropping the ball there.”  When I came to the tip below, I thought, “I’m all over this one!”

Surprising Signs You’ll Live to be 100: You’re a Tea Lover

Both green and black teas contain a concentrated dose of catechins, substances that help blood vessels relax and protect your heart. In a study of more than 40,500 Japanese men and women, those who drank 5 or more cups of green tea every day had the lowest risk of dying from heart disease and stroke. Other studies involving black tea showed similar results.

You really need only 1 or 2 cups of tea daily to start doing your heart some good—just make sure it’s a fresh brew. Ready-to-drink teas (the kind you find in the supermarket beverage section) don’t offer the same health benefits. “Once water is added to tea leaves, their catechins degrade within a few days,” says Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, a professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University. Also, some studies show that adding milk may eliminate tea’s protective effects on the cardiovascular system, so stick to just lemon or honey.

I’ve always loved tea and tend to drink, not only my own share, but a family of eight’s share as well.  I started drinking EVEN more tea when I reluctantly kicked my diet soft drink habit a short while back. Giving up drinks that were filled with things that were BAD for me and replacing them with drinks filled with things that were GREAT for me was one of the smartest things I ever did.

If you’re trying to give up soft drinks or diet soft drinks, stick with it.  It’s tough, I know that as well as anyone.  However, tea is a fantastic replacement. It’s delicious, healthy, refreshing, and has no downside.   I found that, for some reason, while trying to kick the soft drink habit, it helped if my black tea was extra strong. You may also find that adding lemon and/or honey will make it even more enjoyable as well.

Read the great article in its entirety: How Long Will I Live: Surprising Signs You’ll Live to Be 100

Green Tea Review: Triple Leaf Tea’s Ginkgo & Decaf Green Tea

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Triple Leaf Tea Ginkgo and Decaf Green Tea

As you’d expect from someone who runs a tea blog, I drink tea all day long. From the first glass of iced green tea in the morning (as odd as it may sound to some people, I drink iced green tea along with my cups of coffee each morning) to my last cup of hot tea in the evening, there’s a steady stream of tea bags and flowing tea leaves in my kitchen.

I don’t really like to have much caffeine late in the evening, though, so I’ve been experimenting with a few different decafs. One I’ve fallen particularly in love with is shown above, Triple Leaf Tea, Tea Bags, Ginkgo & Decaf Green Tea with Panax Ginsengs & Chinese Herbs, 1.4-Ounce Bags, 20-Count Boxes (Pack of 6).

Healthy and delicious? That’s something I can get behind.

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Herbal dietary supplement. Supports mental alertness & memory. Helps maintain a healthy immune system. Supports natural vitality. Naturally decaffeinated tea to maintain antioxidants. Ancient Chinese medicinals. Now you can enjoy the benefits of ginkgo, green tea and Chinese herbs without the caffeine! Our green tea is naturally decaffeinated using a carbon dioxide process that maintains green tea’s beneficial antioxidants. Research indicates that ginkgo helps promote healthy circulation and oxygen supply to the brain and extremities, and helps support normal mental alertness, concentration and memory. Gingko, Asian and American Panax ginsengs, eleuthero, astragalus, poria, fo-ti and eucommia are traditional Chinese longevity herbs, used to tonify the liver and kidney. They were used to help maintain the healthy function of the immune system, and to help build the body’s vitality, strength and resistance to mental and physical stress. Experts recommend drinking three or more cups of green tea a day. Drink this delicious tea anytime of day, hot or iced, as is, or try adding lemon and your favorite sweetener. Traditional Chinese medicine began in approximately 2500 B.C. Recently, here in the West, people have discovered the value of this ancient system which focuses on aiding the body’s own healing mechanisms through restoring harmony and balance. The Chinese system of herbology has been recorded in ancient texts which are studied and employed even today. This time tested knowledge has been passed on from generation to generation over the centuries. Triple Leaf Tea comes from such a tradition. It is made in the U.S.A. by a Chinese American family-owned business. The company owner can remember stories of his own grandfather selling herbs and teas in his village in China. Today, these traditional Chinese herbal formulas are available to you. We wish you harmony and balance! We use oxygen bleached tea bags. (These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.) Made in U.S.A.

All Triple Leaf Tea is excellent AND nutritious.  I’m beginning to feel like a complete expert on this brand because we’ve tried just about everything they make!

I love my Ginkgo & Decaf Green Tea with honey and a spritz of lemon but it’s actually a great tasting cup of tea without anything added. It’s also great on ice, but I prefer it hot.  Truth be told, even though I had it in mind for drinking in the evening, I often make a cup during the day simply because I’m hooked on the taste. In fact, it’s 10:40 am as I’m writing this review and I’m enjoying a cup right now.

A big, big cup.

Click either picture or the following link for more information about this flavorful, comforting, and ridiculously delicious tea: Triple Leaf Tea, Tea Bags, Ginkgo & Decaf Green Tea with Panax Ginsengs & Chinese Herbs, 1.4-Ounce Bags, 20-Count Boxes (Pack of 6).

Cup of Tea