Benefits of Green Tea. Biological & Biomedical Sciences Article (Article Sample)

Green Tea
Overview
Tea is the most frequently consumed beverage worldwide after water (Chen and Lin, 2015). It is well known that the tea plant originated from Southern China, North India, Myanmar, and Cambodia (Hicks, 2001). Tea is manufactured in four different forms; black, green, white, and oolong (Jigisha et al., 2012). All of these variations are produced from the leaves of Camellia sinensis, but differences in processing result in the different types of tea (Jigisha et al., 2012; Yuan, 2013). Of the tea produced worldwide, 78% is black and 20% is green tea (Parley et al., 2012). The primary difference between green tea and black tea is in the fermentation process required to produce the tea (Archana and Abraham, 2011). In case of black tea, the leaves and buds are fermented or oxidized after they have been dried, where in the case of green tea, the leaves are steamed after they are dried (Archana and Abraham, 2011).
right219574700The health benefits associated with the consumption of tea have been described hundreds of years ago (Chen and Lin, 2015; Suzuki et al., 2012). From a biological standpoint, tea is a mixture of a large number of bioactive compounds, including flavonols, lignans, and phenolic acids (Yuan, 2013). The beneficial effects of green tea are attributed to the polyphenolic compounds, particularly the catechins that belong to a family of compounds known as flavonoid-like polyphenols or flavanols (Jigisha et al., 2012; Khan and Mukhtar, 2007; Parley et al., 2012). These catechins are present in higher quantities in green tea than in black or oolong tea, because of differences in the processing of tea leaves after harvest (Parley et al., 2012). For green tea, fresh tea leaves from the plant are steam-dried to inactivate the polyphenol oxidase enzyme, a process that essentially maintains the polyphenols in their monomeric forms (Parley et al., 2012).