in germany we drank YERBA MATE quite regularly. i don't know if it is available here in canada; should check with the local health-food store. here is a web-site; it's quite neat even has a picture of someone drinking it (i love illustrations). hbg.
www.noborders.net/mate/index.html
huh. black tea. cool. (and a months old article, at that.)
Black tea rocks!
(o.k., i haven't really had any today, but i love it)
Thanks to hamburger for teaching me the proper way to have tea : at a campsite, with sugar cubes and tinned milk! (it still tastes best to me that way)
No I thought we were on the same page, Hamburger, I was just confused. I think we can get yerba mate here in the states.
I had a mug of green tea earlier and some lemon zinger right now.
i got a tiny bit bored waiting for a concert to start tonight, so i read a bit in the magazine i'd taken along. there was a health blurb on tea and anti-oxidants. black tea top of the list, then green tea - both either caffeinated or decaffeinated, though they think (in that study) that caffeinated had a slightly better effect. herbal teas did not have any appreciable anti-oxidant.
I'm gonna try to track down the study tomorrow.
thanks Beth, I have long wondered about whether there was a diff level of anti-oxidants in caff and non-caff teas
www.stashtea.com/index.shtml ... there is enough info about TEA on this site to keep you happy for a while. it's a commercial site, but really great ! did you know TEA will even make you more beautiful than you already are (a must read for us -slightly- older guys). hbg
I have, despite my relative savvy on overpriced stuff, fallen head over heels with some damn thing called vitamin water, because I am long over pop drinks (way too sweet and fulla weirdlets). I first discovered them at a Union Station on a drive from SF to Northnorthcalifornia.
There are a variety of vitamin waters put out by Energy Brands, Inc., Whitestone, NY. The one I am looking at as I type is called
focus
kiwi-strawberry
ingredients
vapor distilled/deionized water, crystalline fructose, citric acid, natural kiwi strawberry flavor, ascorbic acid, gum arabic, electrolytes (calcium, magnesium, potassium), natural color, ester gum, gotukola extract, vitamin E acetate, niacin, pantothenic acid, siberian ginseng extract, lactic acid, gingko biloba extract, vitamin A palmitate, pyrodoxine hydrochloride (b6), cyanocobalamin (b12).
Well, years ago I used to work in an immunology lab with an interest in Intrinsic Factor Autoantibody, and learned that the average american diet gets plenty of b12, unless the person is a vegetarian, whence they need to make sure they get it from this and that.
So a lot of this is probably silly. But it sure tasted good the first time I tried it, and still does. I keep some around.
couldn't find the exact article i was looking for - but here's some black tea/health related info from the same researcher. The article I have in front of me says that black, green or oolong, caf or decaf work equally well. Herbal teas don't contain L-theanine, the particular healthy component of tea.
http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?docID=512827
Quote:Drinking tea may help "prime" your immune system and enable you to fight off bacterial infections better, a new study suggests.
The research, appearing in the April 21-25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to the growing list of health benefits researchers have attributed to tea. Previous research has found that the drink can help ward off heart disease and cancer, probably due to its abundance of antioxidants.
The infection-fighting ability of tea, however, is attributed to a substance found in some tea, called L-theanine, which is broken down into a group of chemicals called alkylamine antigens. Antigens are substances that produce antibodies to fight infections.
i'm still poking around, trying to find a link to the article - seems there was research after this initial one, released in April 2003.
To get back on the topic of water, and to be a tad controversial, I'd like to point out that there have been NO scientific studies done to support the 64-ounces of water a day. The original quote was in a book by a nutritionist named Dr. Fredrick Stare, who recommended 6-8 glasses of water a day, but provided no scientific evidence to back up that recommendation.
Another quote from the link below.
Quote:
Studies also show that caffeinated beverages, such as coffee, tea, and soda are legitimate contributors to the total daily fluid intake, despite the contention of some physicians that these fluids induce dehydration.
Ingesting very high amounts of water can actually be toxic in some instances.
Here's a link to a reasonable summary of the issues:
Re: Water Intake Recommendation
I couldn't agree with you more, Mezzie, and wrote about it in some other water related topic. Too bad I don't retain data in m'head very well.
mezzie, welcome ! there was a study released recently warning against excessive intake of water/fluids. the study was conducted by a british university team and based upon the measured performance of marathon runners (i think it was runners in a london marathon that were the study objects). the interview was broadcast sometime this summer on the canadian brodcasting system(cbc-televison). hbg
I've seen articles, though, decrying the 6-8 glasses a day thing, probably from the NY Times medical reporting, but I don't hava a link. One of these days I'll go look for it.
