Loobie wrote:
I had read that and now I drink about 2 qts. of that stuff a day! I just whip up a pitcher of iced and I'm off. My question is probably stupid, but does it being iced tea affect the EGCG in any way? I don't imagine, but I don't know either and I'll gladly start drinking it hot if it does.
Wow! How many tea bags go into making your half-gallon of tea? I try to limit myself to about 4 to 5 teabags worth of tea per day (each teabag contains 2g of tea). The tea plant,
Camellia sinensis, is known to accumulate fluoride which can have a negative impact on your bones if you consume too much. You may be interested in reading this prior thread which discusses this point in more detail.
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-4915.html
By the way, I know of no difference between drinking the green tea hot or iced. Do you use hot water to make the tea and then ice it or do you use cold water to make the tea? I've repeatedly read that the best temperature for making tea is to use fresh water at 180°F. In addition, the one thing that I have read which concerns the temperature of tea is that it shouldn't be too hot. For example, drinking piping hot tea, more than 140°F, has been shown to increase the risk of esophageal cancer.
A good all-around reference for green tea is the book "Green Tea" by Nadine Taylor, 1998. It's a few years old now and there has been much research published on green tea (and EGCG) since then but it's a good book for an introduction to green tea and it includes many references.
NHE