Why green tea should be a part of your diet

I’ve never really been a tea person, but after reading up on the health benefits of tea, and especially green tea, I try to drink it as often as I can. I used to be a lot better at it drinking it every morning, but somehow the habit got lost along the way. So from today; I will change things around, green tea first thing when I wake up.

There are so many nice options for green tea in Thailand, but the one we are using now we picked up from our travels through Nepal. It’s crazy how cheap the green tea is there. In Thailand I always end up paying 3-500 from markets or 300 baht from a little package of japanese green tea from Villa Market. Does anyone know where I can get some reasonable priced green tea here, please let me know.

For Tom’s birthday last year I surprised him with a long weekend trip to Chiang Rai and we stumbled upon this beautiful “little” tea center called tea center 101 on the way up to Mae Salong. They have all types of tea and show you how to drink it, list the benefits, and also sells all kinds of cups, pots and whatever you can imagine it being possible to drink tea from. They also had some delicious honey we brought home. On the way out I saw they had some cherry wine that I really wanted to buy, until they let me taste it, it was so strong I didn’t know what to do, haha. They had many different makes of these too so i definitely recommend you to try it if you ever go there.

While writing this post I went through my photo album from our trip to Chiang Rai, wanting to post some of the photos in this blog post but I’m going to keep it strictly to the tea, so I will be sharing it in it’s own post, as there are so many photos I want to show you.

Since Tom is an English man, well at least part English, he’s always been a fan of tea, whereas me just drinking it, just because it’s cold or I’m out in the mountains. Somehow warm drinks tastes delicious in high altitude. Anyways, my point was, I didn’t start drinking it until I did a little research on my own about it and found the health benefits to green tea, or even tea in general.

After reading it I thought it was dumb not to at least give it a try, and after a while I started to love drinking it.

Not only does green tea give me a lot of energy, but I believe it helps with increasing my fat burning too.

Got these cute little sets, for only 100 baht each… they make drinking tea quite a hazzle, but at least it looks fancy! The tea “pot” on the other hand makes it so easy, if you are drinking tea without tea bags, you just put the tea in the top part, push a little button on the top and if filters the tea for you.

The list goes on and on but here are the top five reasons that convinced me.

1. Weight Loss. Green tea increases the metabolism. The polyphenol found in green tea works to intensify levels of fat oxidation and the rate at which your body turns food into calories.
2. Diabetes. Green tea apparently helps regulate glucose levels slowing the rise of blood sugar after eating. This can prevent high insulin spikes and resulting fat storage.
3. Cholesterol. Green tea reduces bad cholesterol in the blood and improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.
4. Blood Pressure. Regular consumption of green tea is thought to reduce the risk of high blood pressure.
5. Anti-viral and Anti-bacterial. Tea catechins are strong antibacterial and antiviral agents which make them effective for treating everything from influenza to cancer. In some studies green tea has been shown to inhibit the spread of many diseases.

Are you also becoming a regular tea drinker now?

-A