For centuries the Chinese have been brewing this wonderful and magical green fountain of gloriousness not for the fun of it but with massive intention, for it really and truly has unbelievable… PHENOMENAL benefits!
For those who know me, at starbucks you will usually find me swerving the caramel lattes and opting for a green tea instead, although it’s usually much hotter sans milk and more often than not burns my tongue initially, I do it for so many worthy reasons (it’s metabolism-speeding, anti-carcinogenic, antioxidant-loaded, packed with vitamins & minerals etc), but above all else, it is a wonderfully warming, calming and natural ‘pick me up’. It contains materially less caffeine than its big brother (coffee), and it’s actively hydrating whilst coffee delivers the opposite result.
Green tea was first introduced in Japan during the Nara period (710-794), when numerous Japanese Buddhist monks visited China and brought tea seeds back to Japan. One of the first Japanese uses of the tea ceremony in public was when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, then the most powerful warlord in Japan, held a tea party in his camp the evening. Which if the most powerful warlord in Japan having a tea party isn’t brilliant enough in its own right, he also did it before a massive battle in order to calm his warriors and inspire morale… which just adds to the awesomeness if you ask me!
All throughout my India days I was drinking Green Tea. 13-15 hour days on film sets where exhausting and when the spot-boys did the rounds of overly sugar deposited syrupy chai and coffee runs, I opted for green tea… I must have drank around 6-8 small cups of it per day and along with my fruit and veg caps I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, this was the secret to keeping me standing and wanting to play games at the end of every shoot!
My time living in Singapore was also perfect to access all of the Asian herbal remedies, the readily available full body massages, Ba guan (拔罐) fire cupping and the copious amounts of Green Tea! I’ve literally sampled the works.
Since I have been back in the UK however, there has been a particular British brand that I have taken a liking to called Teapigs. It is a finely grounded, organic brew of Matcha Green Tea. Being far stronger than normal green tea (as you are in fact drinking the entire leaf rather than just a cup of pigment-coloured teabag water)…Matcha in which is part of a 900-year old Japanese tea ceremony, and is an even older Buddhist monk equivalent of Pro Plus!
What makes these beautifully illustrated boxes of Matcha so amazing is that they:
– Are hand-picked by happy, skilled workers (with only young leaves & buds being used)
– Contain zero cheap stems or veins
– Have been grown such as to maximse the chlorophyll content… YAAAASSS
– Are granite-ground, to preserve as much of the nutritional value as possible.
– And the Teapigs organic Matcha is 100% organic (certified by almost every relevant authority there is)
According to David Weiss, from the pretty-niche Journal of Chromatography:
In 2003, researchers from the University of Colorado found that the concentration of the antioxidant EGCG available from drinking matcha is at least three times greater than the amount of EGCG available from other commercially available green teas.
To summerise… If you didn’t know, now you know… Go meet your Matchaaa!
Peace and Love
Olivia
