Tea Blog

Green Tea: A True Fat Burning Food

Supermarket checkout lines are full of magazines with eye-catching headlines like “7 negative calorie superfoods” or “Delicious foods that fight fat”. While the headlines may be compelling, when these claims undergo the scrutiny of science, the concept of a fat burning food is usually revealed as too good to be true.

Or is it?

Green tea leaves are a fat-burning food out there with the support of a slew of clinical research. In fact, studies show that green tea can help people lose weight, burn fat, and keep it off. Here’s how green tea works at burning fat:

1. Metabolism Boost: Green tea interacts directly with your sympathetic nervous system –telling it to ramp up your calorie-burning machine. A 2001 study published in The Journal of Nutrition found that green tea significantly increased the amount of calories burned at rest, known as resting metabolic rate.

2. Torches Fat Cells: While an increase in metabolism can result in significant fat loss, this isn’t always the case. However, in the case of green tea, it does directly act on fat cells. Research in The International Journal of Obesity concluded that green tea has the unique property of increasing the rate that your body uses up stored fat.

3.Blocks Fat Absorption: Green tea interferes with your body’s ability to digest and absorb the fat from your diet. It appears that the catechins in green tea blocks many of the enzymes required for proper fat absorption. French researchers found that green tea resulted in a 37% reduction in fat digestion.

4. Stops Appetite: Scientists think that green tea’s appetite suppressing properties are much of the reason behind the correlation between regular green tea drinking and weight loss. In fact, University of Chicago researchers found that green tea hinders a pathway that makes you hungry.

While you may get some of these benefits by taking in green tea every chance you get, here are some tips for maximizing green tea’s fat burning:

1. Eat The Leaves: While you only get a limited amount of green tea catechins from brewing and drinking green tea, eating the leaves themselves gives you the full spectrum of antioxidants found in the leaf itself. Or, have you tried matcha?

2. Take Enough: Research shows that to reap the benefits from green tea, you need to drink serious amounts of the stuff (at least 5 to 10 cups /day). This may seem like a LOT of green tea to drink, but don’t worry: there are so many amazing flavors to choose from. (Again – see the point above about eating the whole leaves.)

3. Spread Out Doses: It seems that green tea works best if you take small amounts throughout the day, rather than all at once. This way, you’re giving your body small metabolism “jolts” at regular intervals.

4. Take With Meals: Because green tea can block absorption of some of the fat that you eat, it’s ideal to have green tea with meals. The easiest way to do this is to incorporate green tea leaves into your recipes.

Republished with permission from EatGreenTea.com, the original edible green tea.

On the first semi-cool Texas Monday of the season, we tested out a steaming blend of our premium organic White Rose and Dragon Phoenix Zhi teas to create a flowery flavor that was light and refreshing – a good mix as a hot tea for early Autumn. At a 1:1 ratio, the florals in both teas complemented each other perfectly and resulted in a subtle taste and invigorating aroma.

Delicate, smooth, mild, and always satisfying, this blend is great for anyone who loves floral tea. Even if florals are not your go-to, the pronounced Oothu Estate white tea base of the White Rose tea and the highest grade organic Jasmine Pearls that comprise our Dragon Phoenix tea keep the florals from becoming overwhelming.

If you’ve been blending together Zhi teas, let us know how your experiments have gone, or request a review of a mix you’ve been curious about. We’re always open to new ideas for Monday Mashups and are happy to try any interesting combo!

After months of anticipation and loads of planning, the Zhi Tea 5-year anniversary week has come and gone. We wish every week were party week here at Zhi because we had a wonderful time with our friends and neighbors, celebrating a great half-decade of the best premium organic tea Texas has to offer.

The week began with an exclusive blending party, where Zhi’s own Dr. Oolong led attendees in mixing their very own Zhi Tea creations. We also had a full day of free tea that concluded with a private tea tasting, offering varieties of green, white, rooibos, and oolong teas for our friends to enjoy. The low-key gatherings ended with a flower arranging class led by Austin’s Ikebana.

Friday night marked Zhi Tea’s very first cocktail party, which featured a diverse array of tea mocktails and cocktails to please every palate. Homegrown brands like Kickin’ Kombucha, Texas Sake Co., and Paula’s Texas Orange served up some exciting new flavors to combine with Zhi teas. Plus, local band E is for Eagle brought down the house with plenty of original tunes and some fun covers to keep the crowd engaged.

Our final anniversary event, the Austin appreciation picnic, was an afternoon potluck gathering where participants baked, simmered, and stir-fried various tea-infused dishes to share with everyone involved. Guests voted for their favorites and prizes were awarded to the top four plates of the day.

With our Austin appreciation picnic coming up this Sunday, the last of our 5th anniversary events, we’re digging around for some delectable treats to cook up for the party.

We like tea-infused-just-about-anything, but we’re especially excited about this tea-infused cherry scones recipe from Tea Time magazine.

If you, too, are looking for the perfect tea treat recipe, we think this one is bound to be a crowd-pleaser. Baked with dried cherries, heavy cream, and our fair trade organic rooibos tea leaves, these scones are totally poised for greatness.

Whip up a batch for yourselves or bake some for our potluck-style picnic this weekend. Share a few with us, and we know who’s going to be our best friend at the party!

Time flies when you’re drinking tea! Can you believe it’s already been five years since we opened Zhi Tea here in Austin and began the path toward becoming Texas’s premier source of premium, organic teas?

Of course, we could never have gotten to where we are today without the support of all our favorite tea lovers in Austin, Texas and around the world. So, we’re saying a big “thank you” to all of Zhi’s friends with a week of exciting events in honor of our 5 year anniversary.

To begin, we’re offering free shipping all week long (use the code ZT5), so all our out-of-town fans can participate in the festivities. Here at our tea tasting room, we’ll first be offering a blending workshop for guests to create their own fair trade organic tea mix with black, oolong, white, green, rooibos, and herbal tea options.

Next, we’ll have a day of totally free tea and an evening tea tasting, a tea cocktail party with local live music, a flower arranging tea extravaganza, and finally an Austin appreciation picnic chock full of tea-infused treats. That’s a whole lot of tea and free stuff – a couple of the nicest parts of life, as far as we’re concerned!

So if you’re in Austin, put on your party pants and head over to Zhi Tea’s tasting room. Everyone else, don’t forget to stock up on your favorite Zhi teas with free shipping online.

Somehow, somewhere, a rumor was started that tea did not hydrate you. And regretfully, the answer boards at Yahoo.com are not always a reliable place to get information. Zhi would like to set the record straight.

Tea hydrates as well as water. Recent studies from India compared two controlled groups: one drank water and the other drank tea. There was no measurable difference between hydration indicators, leading to the conclusion that drinking tea is just as effective for bodily functions as water. This validates results from a 2010 study that showed the same conclusion: the trace amounts of caffeine in tea did not compromise hydration.

Additionally, there is evidence to show that tea actually hydrates better than water! Tea contains beneficial elements that water does not: antioxidants, polyphenols, and flavonoids. Plus, since tea has such a range of flavor, your eight cups a day could each be unique! Today, we’ll have an eight cup marathon of our current favorite: Cherry Sencha. What will you hydrate with today?