So why not try healthy iced tea when you’re thirsty instead of reaching for a soft drink?   The benefits of iced tea make it a better choice, especially as compared to the chemicals and massive amounts of sugar or artificial sweeteners in most soft drinks.

Healthy Tea Is A Super Health Food

Besides tasting good and being so refreshing on hot summer days, tea is a super health food!  True tea is made from the leaves, stems and buds of the Camellia sinensis plant.  It doesn’t matter if you prefer black, green, white or oolong tea, they all come from this same bush.  The only differences are when the leaves are picked and how they are processed.

• Green Tea: made from leaves that are dried right after harvesting.
• Oolong Tea: leaves are fermented for a short time after harvest.
• Black Tea: leaves are fermented fora  longer time than oolong.
• White Tea: leaves are shielded from the sun so they don’t produce any chlorophyll.

Although we call drinks made of such things as peppermint and other herbs tea, technically those are tisanes. I don’t think many people use that term these days though, but just use the word “tea” for both genuine tea and herbal tisanes.

Fields Of Green Tea

The Most Healthy Iced Tea Is Made With Green Tea

To make green tea, freshly harvested tea leaves are lightly steamed, rolled, then spread out and dried with hot air or fried until they are crisp. This produces a flavor close to the fresh leaf.

Because it undergoes the least amount of processing, green tea has the most antioxidant polyphenols.  The most important of these is EGOG, epigallocatechin-3-gallate.  Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?  This polyphenol is believed to be responsible for most of the health benefits of iced tea.

So What Are Some Of The Benefits Of Iced Tea?

Not only does iced tea do a great job of quenching your thirst, it’s full of flavonoids called catechins, which are great antioxidants. Though these are most abundant in green teas, they are found in other teas as well.

The antioxidants in tea are thought to:

• help prevent cancer,
• reduce the risk of heart disease,
• promotes fat loss,maintain bone density,
• increases exercise endurance,
• boosts insulin activity, and
• helps older people keep mentally sharp.

That’s lots of good reasons to drink healthy iced tea!

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

Healthy Iced Tea On National Iced Tea Day

The answer is… not really. Best guess is it’s a misinterpretation of normal physiological requirements. Adults lose about 64-ounces of water a day from breathing, sweating and going to the bathroom. A big part of that fluid is replaced by the foods we eat since there’s a lot of liquid in most of them.

In fact, there have been scientific studies that refute the need for drinking such large amounts of water. It seems that a daily intake of 5 or 6 glasses of water is more appropriate. Of course, it you’re outside on a hot day or exercising a lot, you might need a little more.

It’s probably more a matter of WHAT you’re drinking for most people. If you’re swilling down a liter of Coke every day, that’s not getting the job done for replacing fluids in your body. In fact, it can lead to lower calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood, causing calcium to be pulled out of the bones.

Which brings us back to the need for healthy drinks. Remember, the following are good replacements for some of the chemical concoctions many of us are fond of drinking –

• Yerba Mate
• Fizzy or Plain Juice
• Teas: herbal, green, and others
• Lemonade
• Kefir
• Milk
• Vegetable Juices

And of course, purified water tops the list!

If you improve what you’re drinking a little every day, before you know it, you’ll have acquired a taste for the “good-for-you” stuff.

And then you’re one step closer to a healthy diet.

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

Should You Be a Heavy Drinker?

Fizzy Juice – If you really miss the fizz of sodas, mix some of your favorite fruit juice with sparkling water. Do it a glass at a time unless you’re going to share a pitcher full, because like any other soda, it’ll go flat without being bottled.

Green Tea – Hot or iced, green tea has antioxidants, and research shows it to boost the metabolic rate and increase mental alertness. Derived from the leaves of Camellia sinensis, the leaves are steamed, which prevents the antioxidant EGDG (enigallocatechin gallate) from being destroyed. There are also decaffeinated varieties, although green tea has only about a third of the caffeine as a cup of coffee.

Lemonade – What’s more refreshing than a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer’s day? To control how much sweetener is in it, make your own! You don’t have to squeeze fresh lemons to make it, though that’s pretty delicious. Using bottled lemon juice makes a good tasting drink also. Put a cup of lemon juice in a 2-quart pitcher (don’t forget to shake the bottle of lemon juice first), then fill the pitcher with water. Add your favorite sweetener to taste, and there you go!

Kefir – This is a fermented milk drink made much like yogurt. Milk is inoculated with kefir grains, which are a combination of good bacteria and yeasts. It has a sour taste, and some people prefer it mixed with sweetener, or made into a smoothie with fruit added. Also like yogurt, it is considered a probiotic food. You can make your own with a starter culture, or buy it ready made from some online merchants, and also at health food stores, and even some grocery stores.

Milk, fruit juice, vegetable juice, and other teas are all good choices, too. You can also do an internet search for healthy drink recipes and come up with more choices if you feel adventuresome and want to make something different.

Remember, the idea is to consume less and less chemicals. Natural ingredients = health food, so go for the gusto and drink stuff that will be good for your body!

Post from: Health Food Made Easy

More Healthy Drinks