Green Tea: Is Source/Brand Important?

Nutrition
1

I was wondering if there’s a difference in brand/quality of green tea available at stores. What I mean is, I just bought a package of 100 Lipton Green tea bags, that say “Pure Green Tea” on it, and all the green teas at the grocery store listed 1 ingredient “Pure green tea” but are they really? Should I be buying raw green tea leaves from some hippie store/Asian supermarket if I really want to reap all the benefits green tea has to offer?

2

I tend to stay away from the mass-marketed kinds (Lipton for example). Just seems those companies are always just about the marketing and the money.

But, it would be nice to know what brands are good.

3

Tea connoisseurs would shit on you for buying tea bags. And then crucify you for getting near Lipton.

4

I bought a green tea sampler from http://www.adagio.com, pretty good stuff. It’s loose leaves in tins. You can get some tea bags there as well.

5

If nothing else you can save quite a bit of money buying loose tea as opposed to tea bags. I usually make a gallon at a time and put it in the fridge. With the tea bags it would require like 15-20 tea bags to get any taste, whereas the loose tea is lasting quite a bit longer. Tastes much better too IMO.

6

[quote]lixy wrote:
Tea connoisseurs would shit on you for buying tea bags. And then crucify you for getting near Lipton.[/quote]

But I don’t care about my lack of tea etiquette I just want to know if I’m getting the same benefits (anti oxidants, anti estrogenic effects, other nutrients etc etc) as drinking say tea leaves in an authentic ceramic chinese tea cup.

7

[quote]JLu wrote:
lixy wrote:
Tea connoisseurs would shit on you for buying tea bags. And then crucify you for getting near Lipton.

But I don’t care about my lack of tea etiquette I just want to know if I’m getting the same benefits (anti oxidants, anti estrogenic effects, other nutrients etc etc) as drinking say tea leaves in an authentic ceramic chinese tea cup.[/quote]

Nope. The best tea is baby tea leaves, which appear to stand vertically when boiling water is added. The best tea in China is from a place called huang shan which directly translates to yellow mountain. It has a different texture/aftertaste kind of thing to it. Yea, I’m chinese haha.

8

Ah, that’s the stuff my step grandfather would drink I was like wtf is this shit lol. Is it only available at Asian supermarkets?