Tea Fasting: Healthy or Hyperbole?
Let’s start with the simple fact that Camellia Sinensis (that’s tea to you and me) is complex. A lot happens in these little leaves, and depending on how you process and ferment, brew and serve, different flavours and health benefits can be achieved.
Quick Science: tea leaves are chock-full of polyphenols, nature’s bioactive protective compound. Within these compounds are found flavonoids and these are particularly rich in catechins - or antioxidants.
Instagram Fasting Debunked
Influencers can sell you snake-oil subscriptions one week and be fined the next for promoting weight loss cure-alls. In September 2019, Instagram rolled out new policies¹ protecting users under the age of 18 from viewing content advertising detox, diet pills and cosmetic procedures.
Search #teatox² and you’ll be greeted with a myriad of companies selling various 14-day detox teas fit for your lifestyle and weight loss goal. Highly irresistible branding and celebrity endorsements may distract the consumer from ever reading the ingredients list, as the majority of these miracle teas include one pesky active ingredient: Senna.
Senna is a fruit pod that irritates the lining of your bowel, and for centuries has been used as a natural laxative to get things moving. These detox teas are essentially flushing out your system and calling it weight loss. If used for a prolonged period and at an unhinged rate, senna has been known to cause acute liver problems and a spike in your toilet paper usage.
Healthy Weight Loss Tea Regime
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. (1739). Pistachio Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/81d78270-6da5-0136-3610-7de8d53ab1a7
Pistachios, peaches, pears and pecan nuts all contain the super-catechin Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), and Porter Hill are glad to inform you that green tea is packed to the gunnels with it! One of its many health promoting benefits, aside from stress and inflammation reduction, is weight loss - but how? In a process known as thermogenesis, the pairing of EGCG and green tea’s natural caffeine stimulates the metabolism and increases fat burning. Researchers at the University of Sao Paulo³ found that participants who drank 20g of green tea throughout the day and completed sets of resistance training, had an increase in ‘decreased body weight and fat percentage opposed to the placebo group who showed no significant change’.
This particular research experiment lasted 8 weeks. No laxatives were given, no false hope was sold, no hashtagAD.
It seems a sustained exercise routine coupled with our Sencha Samurai green tea might just be your ticket to a healthier lifestyle. Who knew?