Women Health and Environment

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles center for Human Nutrition recently tested 20 brands of green and black teas to measure their antioxidant levels. What they found is that there’s a strong variation between different brands of tea.

The researchers only looked at a single group of antioxidants, known as catechin content of green tea accounts for much of its disease-fighting power. The researchers measured the catechin content of a variety of green and black teas that were brewed for about three minutes each, and found levels as high as 217 milligrams for Celestial Seasonings Green Tea, 201 milligrams for Lipton Green Tea, 164 milligrams for Bigelow Darjeeling Blend (black tea) and 157 milligrams for Uncle Lee’s Green Tea. At the lower end, they found 53 milligrams of catechins in Stash Premium Green tea Decaf, 46 milligrams in Twinings Earl Grey Tea, 38 milligrams in Bigelow Constant Comment (black tea) and just 10 milligrams in Bigelow Constant Comment Decaf.

Here’s surprise: Only two iced tea mixes were evaluated, but tests revealed that both Lipton Iced Tea and Snapple Peach Iced Tea had no measurable catechin content. Another surprise: Green tea is commonly thought to contain more antioxidants than black tea. This was often, but not always, the case in this study. And the researchers did not test for thearubigin and theanine, powerful antioxidant compounds contained in black tea.

There have been fewer studies of black tea – which makes up 80 percent of the tea consumed in the U.S. – and there is a weaker understanding of how to measure the amount of antioxidant chemicals it contains. Some black tea actually exceeds the number of antioxidants found in green tea. Clearly, more research is required to sort out the important differences between green and black teas, but we already have a real-life test of green tea – a test that is thousands of years old in millions of people living in Asia.