Home-brewed Tea Healthier Than Bottled

BOSTONBottled teas contain fewer polyphenols than home-brewed green or black tea, according to research presented at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Consumers understand very well the concept of the health benefits from drinking tea or consuming other tea products," said Shiming Li, Ph.D., of WellGen, Inc., who reported on the new study with Professor Chi-Tang Ho and his colleagues. However, there is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrientspolyphenolsfound in bottled tea beverages. Our analysis of tea beverages found that the polyphenol content is extremely low."

In some cases, the polyphenol content in bottled tea was so low consumers would have to drink 20 bottles in order to get the same amount of polyphenols present in a single cup of home-brewed tea. Further, bottled teas often include large amounts of sugar.

The researches used high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to measure polyphenol levels in commercially available tea. Half of them contained virtually no" antioxidants; the rest had only small amounts of polyphenols.

In comparison to one cup of home-brewed tea, which contains 50 to 150 mg of polyphenols, the commercial teas contained 3 to 81 mg of polyphenols per 16-oz. bottle.