Green tea helps you burn more fat during a workout

Medical doctors and health gurus Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen — authors of bestsellers such as You: The Owner's Manual — say that drinking green tea before a workout will help you burn even more fat.



A cup of our Top Leaf Green Tea


—Mellow Monk

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Japan's "banana zombies" strip supermarket shelves clean

The Muzac you hear in Japan's supermarkets nowadays may be "Yes, We Have No Bananas," for dieters there are stripping the yellow fruit off the shelves as the country is swept up in a banana diet craze.



There are more bananas on magazine covers than on store shelves this week.


—Mellow Monk

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It's official: diets don't work (but green tea does!)

Research done at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and reported in the journal American Psychologist delivers the devastating (to the diet industry) news: dieting does not work.

"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

Instead, what does work is exercise and eating healthy and in moderation — and green tea can play a pivotal role in your eat-healthy-to-lose-weight strategy.



Authors of the UCLA study, psychologists Traci Mann (right) and Janet Tomiyama.


—Mellow Monk

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Another way green tea fights obesity

Researchers at Australia's Monash University have found that carbohydrates and and sugars promote weight gain not only by being converted into fat but also by damaging the brain cells that suppress appetite.


This happens because carbs and sugars create large amounts of free radicals, which attack neurons in the brain known as POMC neurons. When we eat and our stomach fills up, these neurons — when functioning normally — "turn off" our hunger by telling the brain, "OK, you can stop eating now. We're full!"


(Nature has an illustration describing how POMC cells regulate appetite.)


But when these neurons degenerate prematurely over time due to the free radicals in carb- and sugar-rich diets, these cells lose their ability to suppress appetite. A person with weakened POMC neurons will still feel hungry even after eating his fill and consequently pack on the pounds.


But green tea, remember, is positively rich in antioxidants, which zap free radicals — including (presumably) the ones that attack POMC cells. So, by keeping our POMC cells healthy, green tea can fend of obesity.



There will be a test on this tomorrow.


—Mellow Monk

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The fat-building double whammy of your sweetened green tea drink

The sugar/carbohydrate fructose is widely used in mass-market sweet snacks and beverages (such as sweetened green tea) because of its low price.


A study done at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that fructose-laden foods are more likely to increase your body fat than other types of sugars for two reasons:

The carbohydrates came into the body as sugars, the liver took the molecules apart like tinker toys, and put them back together to build fats. All this happened within four hours after the fructose drink. As a result, when the next meal was eaten, the lunch fat was more likely to be stored than burned.

In other words, not only does the liver turn fructose into fat more easily, but once that molecular process is set up, any fat you consume after that is more likely to be stored as body fat than burned for energy.


So this is yet another reason to avoid those sweetened green tea drinks. Of course, even unsweetened bottled tea (if you can find it) isn't that great, either.


And if you ever wondered why high-calorie, bad-for-you snacks are, paradoxically, cheaper than wholesome foods, it's because junk food is produced making liberal use of fructose and other super-cheap sugars and fats:

Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat[.]

Dr. Elizabeth Parks, who headed the UT Southwestern study on how fructose increases body fat.


—Mellow Monk

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Japan gets tough on spare tires

Yikes! Workplaces in Japan are cracking down on obesity:

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. [. . .] Those exceeding government limits [. . .] and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight.

"Goodbye, weight!"

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, weight loss, diabetes, and caffeine

I recently received an email asking about the health benefits of green tea, so I am posting my replies here.

Weight loss. To answer your question on weight loss, Commandment Number 2 in diet guru Charles Stuart Platkin's "five-pound panic" diet is:

Thou shalt drink green tea every day. It sounds crazy but it's true: Green tea helps burn fat. Two recent studies showed a 4 percent increase in metabolism in subjects who consumed green tea (rich in catechins, a type of antioxidant) at each meal versus a placebo. This may seem insignificant, but a woman who requires 1,800 calories a day could burn an extra 500 calories per week just by making this small change. That's an average of seven lost pounds per year!

And if you're a coffee drinker, switching to green tea can help you lose weight by avoiding the acids in coffee that increase your levels of insulin, which locks in fat, as Nicholas Perricone said on the Oprah show:

Oprah: Now I've read in your book that you said if I just replaced coffee with green tea instead, that I could lose 10 pounds in six weeks.

Dr. Perricone: Absolutely.

Oprah: Now really. How could that -- what is the big deal about this?

Dr Perricone: Coffee has organic acids that raise your blood sugar, raise insulin. Insulin puts a lock on body fat. When you switch over to green tea, you get your caffeine, you're all set, but you will drop your insulin levels and body fat will fall very rapidly. So 10 pounds in six weeks, I will guarantee it.

Green tea also contains theanine, which naturally enhances your feeling of well-being (thereby cutting down on stress-related snacking).

Why small-farm green tea is better. As for why our tea is better than what you'd find at the local grocery store, there are at least two main reasons: (1) Our tea is grown in a location where the tea plant thrives naturally (not where land and labor are cheapest), so it grows hearty without the use of chemical fertilizers. (2) At harvest time, our small-scale family farms harvest only what they can process into tea right away, thus locking in all the antioxidants before they're broken down by oxidation or fermentation.

A good book on green-tea basics. The best introductory book on green tea I've come across is Nadine Taylor's "Green Tea." This concise, well-written book covers everything -- the history of tea, how it's made, how green tea is different from other types of tea, and what it's health benefits are. I highly recommend it.

Green tea and caffeine. A problem with decaf green tea is that it usually contains less EGCG (one of green tea's most powerful antioxidants) than ordinary green tea.

Green tea already has about two-thirds less caffeine than coffee does. What's more, the polyphenols in green tea smooth your body's uptake of caffeine, so you get less jolt and no crash later on. Here is a somewhat lengthy article I wrote on green tea and caffeine.

Green tea and diabetes. Diabetes is no laughing matter. My own grandmother has it and my mother is working on it, so I'm trying to keep my own numbers in check naturally, and one of the "tools" I've been using is green tea. There's more on green tea and diabetes here.

How to "spice up" green tea. As for the flavor of green tea, I recommend starting out with our Genmaicha, which is green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. The rice imparts a nice nutty flavor that covers up the grassy aroma that can, I admit, take some getting used to. But the roasted brown rice doesn't chemically interfere with any of the tea's good stuff.

Other things you can add to green tea on your own include honey, pieces of fruit, and vanilla extract (just a couple of drops!), just to name a few. As for fruit, research has recently been announced that citrus fruit can boost the health benefits of green tea by allowing more of the tea's antioxidant molecules to be absorbed into the bloodstream from the body's digestive system. This is a new finding which I haven't blogged on yet, but here is an article on it.

So a way to get citrus juice into you tea would be to brew a pot of tea with a couple of pieces of dried orange peel (which is actually an Asian custom that goes back hundreds of years) or squeeze a couple of drops of citric acid from a fresh orange peel into your brewed tea, or just drop an orange or lemon wedge right into your tea.

Thanks for all your inquiries!

A scene in Aso, Japan, where our small-farm tea is grown.


—Mellow Monk

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Green tea helps you burn fat faster

A study published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that drinking green tea before exercising increases the amount of fat burned during exercise by making more of it available as fuel.

This study is the first to show that green tea extract can increase the amount of fat burned during moderate-intensity exercise. The researchers observed a 17 percent greater fat contribution to total energy expenditure during exercise when the extract was taken, compared to taking a placebo.

You can read the abstract of the study here.





—Mellow Monk

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Green tea can help you lose weight

Green tea makes yet another list of foods that help you lose weight:

Recent clinical trials at the University of Geneva suggest that green tea can help you lose weight. Researchers believe that compounds in the tea called catechins increase metabolism, helping your body to burn fat more quickly. Taken without milk or sugar, the tea has no calories.

And by the way, you most definitely do NOT want to add milk to your green tea. But citrus juice, on the other hand, actually boosts the benefits of green tea.



Another way that green tea can help you lose weight—by picking it.


—Mellow Monk

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Skip breakfast and gain weight

Did you eat breakfast today?


A study done by the University of Minnesota has found that "[t]eens and adolescents who eat breakfast every day are less likely to become overweight or obese in the near future and they typically lead a more active, healthier lifestyle than their peers who skip breakfast."



Hey, Junior, that citrus juice is a great thing to add to your green tea.


—Mellow Monk

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Dr. Oz's anti-aging checklist

Dr. Mehmet Oz—known as "Dr. Oz" and author of books such as You on A Diet—has put up his "Ultimate Anti-Aging Checklist" at Oprah.com.


Number 4 on the list is—drumroll, please—green tea.



Dr. Oz says you should drink about four cups of green or white tea a day.


—Mellow Monk

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Zero-calorie sweeteners make us fat

A while back one of my kids asked me what the word "paradox" means. I explained that it's something that seems like it couldn't be true but is, or a situation that is the opposite of what you'd ordinarily think it would be.


At the time I couldn't think of a good example to illustrate the concept, but now I have one:


Researchers have found that zero-calorie artificial sweeteners like saccharine can actually make you fatter than if you had stuck with good, old-fashioned sugar.


In the study, done at Purdue University, "rats given saccharin-sweetened yogurt actually ate more and gained more weight than rats given regularly-sugared yogurt." The reason could be that the rats who ate saccharin never felt satisfied, which made them eat more, thereby getting more calories from the other ingredients in the yogurt.


What's more, the story I heard on the radio this morning about this study said that the saccharin-fed rats were also meaner than their sugar-fed counterparts.


So put down that diet soda, but don't reach for the sugary soda. Instead, brew up something even better—green tea.



Drink only when you need to get mean.


—Mellow Monk

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The ultimate (green) tea diet

Mark "Dr. Tea" Ukra's book The Ultimate Tea Diet is getting consistently excellent reviews on Amazon.com. Here are quotes from a couple of reviews:

On January 1, I cozied up with my copy of The Ultimate Tea Diet, steaming mug of coffee in hand, and by page eleven I was firing up the teakettle.

—The Culinary Tourist


I have read this book and found it to be totally fascinating and informative. I have already started the diet and have started shedding pounds but more importantly inches! It's great... they are just melting away. Plus I have more energy and feel great. I bought some of the craving teas on line and love the way they taste. I have a real sweet tooth and they have really helped me stay away from my daily dose of candy and ice cream.

—Sue from Chicago

And remember—of all the varieties of tea, green tea is thought to be the best at helping you lose weight, as it contains the highest levels of green tea polyphenols, including one found only in green tea—EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate).


Mr. Ukra has promoted his book, diet, and recipes on Good Morning America.


Here's a recipe from The Ultimate Tea Diet:

Rosemary Orange Tea Chicken
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 oranges
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon of dried, plus fresh sprigs for garnish
• 1/4 teaspoon finely ground green tea
• 1-1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

Mix together the olive oil, juice of 1-1/2 oranges (set aside the other half0, pepper, salt, chopped rosemary, and dry tea. Pour this marinade into a large resealable plastic bag. Add the chicken, seal the bag and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Heat a grill pan or barbecue until hot. Remove chicken from the bag, discarding the remaining marinade, and grill until browned on both sides. Thinly slice the remaining orange half and serve with the chicken. Decorate with a sprig of rosemary.

Serves 4.
Nutrition Per Serving: calories 170, fat 2.5g, protein 28g, carb 8g

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea, weight loss, diabetes, and caffeine

I recently received an email asking about the health benefits of green tea, so I am posting my reply here.

Weight loss. To answer your question on weight loss, Commandment Number 2 in diet guru Charles Stuart Platkin's "five-pound panic" diet is:

Thou shalt drink green tea every day. It sounds crazy but it's true: Green tea helps burn fat. Two recent studies showed a 4 percent increase in metabolism in subjects who consumed green tea (rich in catechins, a type of antioxidant) at each meal versus a placebo. This may seem insignificant, but a woman who requires 1,800 calories a day could burn an extra 500 calories per week just by making this small change. That's an average of seven lost pounds per year!

And if you're a coffee drinker, switching to green tea can help you lose weight by avoiding the acids in coffee that increase your levels of insulin, which locks in fat, as Nicholas Perricone said on the Oprah show:

Oprah: Now I've read in your book that you said if I just replaced coffee with green tea instead, that I could lose 10 pounds in six weeks.

Dr. Perricone: Absolutely.

Oprah: Now really. How could that -- what is the big deal about this?

Dr Perricone: Coffee has organic acids that raise your blood sugar, raise insulin. Insulin puts a lock on body fat. When you switch over to green tea, you get your caffeine, you're all set, but you will drop your insulin levels and body fat will fall very rapidly. So 10 pounds in six weeks, I will guarantee it.

Green tea also contains theanine, which naturally enhances your feeling of well-being (thereby cutting down on stress-related snacking).

Why small-farm green tea is better. As for why our tea is better than what you'd find at the local grocery store, there are at least two main reasons: (1) Our tea is grown in a location where the tea plant thrives naturally (not where land and labor are cheapest), so it grows hearty without the use of chemical fertilizers. (2) At harvest time, our small-scale family farms harvest only what they can process into tea right away, thus locking in all the antioxidants before they're broken down by oxidation or fermentation.

A good book on green-tea basics. The best introductory book on green tea I've come across is Nadine Taylor's "Green Tea." This concise, well-written book covers everything -- the history of tea, how it's made, how green tea is different from other types of tea, and what it's health benefits are. I highly recommend it.

Green tea and caffeine. A problem with decaf green tea is that it usually contains less EGCG (one of green tea's most powerful antioxidants) than ordinary green tea.

Green tea already has about two-thirds less caffeine than coffee does. What's more, the polyphenols in green tea smooth your body's uptake of caffeine, so you get less jolt and no crash later on. Here is a somewhat lengthy article I wrote on green tea and caffeine.

Green tea and diabetes. Diabetes is no laughing matter. My own grandmother has it and my mother is working on it, so I'm trying to keep my own numbers in check naturally, and one of the "tools" I've been using is green tea. There's more on green tea and diabetes here.

How to "spice up" green tea. As for the flavor of green tea, I recommend starting out with our Genmaicha, which is green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. The rice imparts a nice nutty flavor that covers up the grassy aroma that can, I admit, take some getting used to. But the roasted brown rice doesn't chemically interfere with any of the tea's good stuff.

Other things you can add to green tea on your own include honey, pieces of fruit, and vanilla extract (just a couple of drops!), just to name a few. As for fruit, research has recently been announced that citrus fruit can boost the health benefits of green tea by allowing more of the tea's antioxidant molecules to be absorbed into the bloodstream from the body's digestive system. This is a new finding which I haven't blogged on yet, but here is an article on it.

So a way to get citrus juice into you tea would be to brew a pot of tea with a couple of pieces of dried orange peel (which is actually an Asian custom that goes back hundreds of years) or squeeze a couple of drops of citric acid from a fresh orange peel into your brewed tea, or just drop an orange or lemon wedge right into your tea. In fact, that sounds so yummy, I think I'll do that right now!

Thanks for all your inquiries.

A scene in Aso, Japan, where our small-farm tea is grown.


—Mellow Monk

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Sweetened drinks - a culprit in America's obesity epidemic

Americans are drinking themselves fat, say nutritionists. Soda pop and other sweetened drinks account for 10 percent of the calories in the American diet.


(But that doesn't mean that if you cut out sweetened drinks you get to eat more. . . . Well, maybe an extra cookie or two, but let's not push our luck, okay?)


And if you want to take off even more pounds, then why not switch from coffee to green tea?



Replace this with 100 percent calorie-free and 100 percent natural green tea—hot or cold.


—Mellow Monk

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Eat like the Japanese, live to be 100

Eating like the French? That's so last year. It's time to take a look at the Japanese diet and its benefits:

It's true that Japan has one of the world's lowest obesity rates. Only 3 percent of Japanese women are obese, compared with 13 percent in France and 33 percent in the United States, according to the International Association for the Study of Obesity.

The Japanese also are global longevity champs, particularly the people of Okinawa -- home to the world's largest population of centenarians.

This article even has a recipe for "Aromatic steamed salmon with shallots and broccoli." Hmm... Sounds yummy! Is it too early to break for lunch?

—Mellow Monk

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She lost 20 pounds by switching to green tea

A reader of Sally Squires's "Lean Plate Club" tells Sally how she lost 20 pounds by switching to green tea:

Fairfax, Va: Sally,

I've lost 20 pounds in the past month. How did I do it ? You'll be amazed.

I substituted green tea for coffee, soda and whatever. I drink between 2-3 liters of green tea during the day and nothing else. Let me tell you, my pants fit a whole lot better now.

I wouldn't have believed it unless I did it myself.

Sally Squires: Another great example of finding what works for you. Thanks for weighing Fairfax and congratulations on those 20 pounds!

Switching to green tea is also the advice that Dr. Nicholas Perricone gave Oprah.

—Mellow Monk

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Green tea and high-fiber cereal: a healthy, filling snack for dieters

Cynthia Herringa rises at 4:30 a.m. and starts her job as a nurse at 6:30 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., hunger starts to set in. So as a healthy but filling snack, she munches on high-fiber cereal while sipping green tea. "It really helps to fill me up," she says.


—Mellow Monk

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Eat slowly, lose weight

A recent study verifies that women who eat slowly tend to lose weight.


—Mellow Monk

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Defend yourself against sugar

Here's an article from Men's Health about flipping the fat switch—learning "how to defend your gut against sugar—without giving up the foods you love."

—Mellow Monk

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Dieting secrets from two women who succeeded

Actually, the title of this posting should be "weight loss secrets," since the two women interviewed for this article lost weight not so much by dieting as by exercising.

They also discuss the concept of "trigger time"—the time of day when a person is most likely to succumb to the temptation to snack.

Here's a previous posting on green tea and weight loss.

—Mellow Monk

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Dr. Nicholas Perricone on green tea (from The Oprah Winfrey Show)

The following is part of the transcript of Oprah Winfrey's interview with the popular anti-aging guru, Dr. Nicholas Perricone, author of such books as "The Perricone Promise," which hit the No. 1 spot at Amazon.com late last year:

Oprah: Now I've read in your book that you said if I just replaced coffee with green tea instead, that I could lose 10 pounds in six weeks.

Dr. Perricone: Absolutely.

Oprah: Now really. How could that -- what is the big deal about this?

Dr Perricone: Coffee has organic acids that raise your blood sugar, raise insulin. Insulin puts a lock on body fat. When you switch over to green tea, you get your caffeine, you're all set, but you will drop your insulin levels and body fat will fall very rapidly. So 10 pounds in six weeks, I will guarantee it.

Oprah: I'm gonna do that. OK. That is so good! Whoo! That is great.

-- The Oprah Winfrey Show: "Look 10 Years Younger in 10 Days" - Nov 10, 2004

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