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Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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04.01.2010 |
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Cold brewed white tea contains most antioxidants
In Taiwan it's all the rage, and it's catching on elsewhere too: making tea by steeping leaves in cold water. Test-tube studies done at the Italian Universita Politecnica delle Marche show that if you do this with white tea or Oolong tea it's even healthier.
Well, it depends on the kind of tea you use. White tea is healthier if it is brewed cold; for other tea it makes no difference. The figure below shows the amount of polyphenols that the researchers found in hot and cold-brewed tea.
The researchers tested the antioxidant effect of the tea by bringing LDL cholesterol, copper and tea into contact with each other. In the body, unhealthy LDL cholesterol only becomes dangerous if it is oxidized. The Italians imitated this by using copper in their test-tube experiment. Antioxidants can delay this reaction. The longer the delay, the more powerful the antioxidant.
The figure below shows that cold-brewed white tea, Oolong and black tea protect the LDL cholesterol better than hot-brewed tea. For green tea it makes no difference how you brew it.
If you test the antioxidant effect of the tea in a different way, you get a graph like the one below. Here it is only the antioxidant effect of white tea that is increased by cold brewing.
White tea contains the polyphenol ECG, which is one of the more powerful antioxidants found in tea. The researchers suggest that this polyphenol is released more easily into the solution by steeping white tea in cold water rather than brewing the tea in boiling water.
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