Neelanjana Singh Senior Nutrition Consultant PSRI, New Delhi: It is important to set the record straight about many aspects related to health benefits of tea consumption. Tea is rich in antioxidants. These antioxidants help prevent heart disease and cancer by scavenging the free radicals that are continually attacking our body. This is an important enough reason to endorse the consumption of tea.

Of course the presence of the antioxidants varies with the quality of the tea.

Green tea has significantly higher levels of antioxidants and is thus more beneficial. Unfortunately, the addition of milk to tea reduces the effectiveness of the antioxidants but the other properties do not seem to change.

Besides drinking tea, there are other ways to imbibe the goodness of tea and more and more products are being introduced in the market to this effect.

The most recent use of the benefits of tea has been brought to us by the skin care products industry. Nowadays it is common to find extracts of green tea in many skincare products.

There is evidence that the polyphenols (antioxidants) present in tea may actually protect against skin cancer and ultra-violet radiation damage.

Studies on humans and animals suggest that the elastic tissue content of damaged sun-aged skin has improved when green tea was both ingested as a drink and was topically applied.

The antioxidant properties (present both in black as well as green tea) are possibly responsible for this benefit. There is also some recent data suggesting that another chemical — EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) — found in tea may stimulate hair growth. It is therefore no surprise to find tea in shampoos and hair products as well. (Next week: Think tea, not toothstains)

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