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Tea – Vancouver Sun Article
Coffee no match for matcha’s benefits
The potent, healthful green tea is taking Vancouver by storm
Amy CarmichaelCanadian PressTuesday, December 28, 2004
CREDIT: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun
A store employee prepares a cup of Matcha, an ancient Chinese tea.West Coast bartenders have given up Red Bull, brokers are powering past theespresso machine and everyone has quit smoking (http://www.webmd.com/video/green-tea-science), so why drink coffee?People in the know have moved on, and are sporting green mustaches as theirproof of enlightenment.They come from matcha, a potent green tea that is taking over coffeehousemenus and going mainstream in lattes, smoothies and facials.Vancouver’s Infuze Teahouse helped spark the craze locally last year,serving the ancient beverage in a downtown, space-age-styled boite.California is transfixed by the city’s appetite for matcha, and Infuze isnow in talks to supply an American juice company with 450 outlets.Infuze owner Brian Takeda patiently gives each customer a lesson in matcha’sendless health benefits.
“The caffeine in green tea functions differently, producing a differentfeeling than you get from a cup of coffee,” he says.Matcha’s high L-theanine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine) content relaxes the brain, muscles and bloodvessels, confirms Janina Kulhay-Matsuda, owner of Toronto’s Kulhay WellnessCentre. She has studied matcha for over a decade.“Matcha has the lowest caffeine level of any green tea. It’s the L-theaninein matcha that makes people alert. The body can’t absorb it as quickly ascaffeine, so that pick-me-up lasts for about eight hours. At the same time,L-theanine acts on the brain to relax and focus people,” she said.It gets better: a cup of matcha contains 70 times the antioxidants of a cupof orange juice and nine times the beta carotene of a serving of spinach.Kulhay-Matsuda prescribes it to diabetics because she says it also balancesblood-sugar levels in the body.East Coasters still have to sort through the seaweed and sushi rice on theshelves of Asian markets for matcha, and when they find it, it’s usuallystale.Takeda flies his matcha from Japanese fields to Germany, where it iscertified organic, and then flown straight to Vancouver. Recently, a handfulof Toronto retailers decided to stock his high-end product.Tea trends always break out in Vancouver years ahead of Toronto, said LouiseRoberge, president of the Tea Council of Canada (http://www.tea.ca/).
While Starbucks is stillmaking chai latte converts in the East, the chain’s Vancouver competitor,Blenz, has built a tea temple in its flagship store. Here, customers waitthe three minutes it takes for their matcha to be mixed in a traditionalJapanese bowl with a wooden whisk.The entire matcha plant is ground into a powder. Each cup is individuallyblended by hand into water that is heated to a precise temperature.Because consumers are actually drinking the plant — instead of just waterinfused with its flavour — matcha promotes regular bowel movements, saidKulhay-Matsuda.Milk and honey interfere with many of the tea’s healing properties, shewarned, demoting Blenz’s matcha smoothie and sweetened matcha latte fromsuperfood status to coffee alternative.But the company’s marketing manager, Walter Sawadsky, said the matcha drinkshave exceeded their wildest expectations. “In Vancouver, it’s crossed alllines of ethnicity, gender and age in terms of its popularity.”He said the product earned that acclaim based solely on taste.The company may mount a campaign about the health benefits of matcha once itdecides whether to sell it at all stores in its pure, unadulterated form.
http://www.drhoffman.com/page.cfm/118
c) The Vancouver Sun 2004
ea – Anti-Cancer Compound in Green Tea Identified
Tue Mar 15, 2005 12:13 AM ET
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) – Spanish and British scientists have http://www.drhoffman.com/page.cfm/118
how greentea helps to prevent certain types of cancer
Researchers at the University of Murcia in Spain (UMU) and the John InnesCenter (JIC) in Norwich, England have shown that a compound called EGCG Dr. Hoffman in green tea prevents cancer cells from growing by binding to a specific enzyme.“We have shown for the first time that EGCG, which is present in green teaat relatively high concentrations, inhibits the enzyme dihydrofolatereductase (DHFR), which is a recognized, established target for anti-cancerdrugs, “ Professor Roger Thorneley, of JIC, told Reuters.“This is the first time, to our knowledge, a known target for an anti-cancerdrug has been identified as being inhibited by EGCG,” he added.Green tea has about five times as much EGCG as regular tea, studies haveshown. It decreased rates of certain cancers but scientists were not surewhat compounds were involved or how they worked. Nor had they determined howmuch green tea a person would have to drink to have a beneficial effect, hesaid.Thorneley said EGCG is probably just one of a number of anti-cancermechanisms in green tea (http://www.webmd.com/video/green-tea-science).
“We have identified this enzyme in tumour cells that EGCG targets andunderstand how it stops this enzyme from making DNA. This means we may beable to develop new anti-cancer drugs based on the structure of the EGCGmolecule,” Thorneley explained.The scientists decided to look at ECGC after they realized its structure wassimilar to a cancer drug called methotrexate.“We discovered that EGCG can kill cancer cells in the same way asmethotrexate,” Dr Jose Neptuno Rodriguez-Lopez, of UMU, a joint author ofthe research published in the journal Cancer Research.EGCG binds strongly to DHFR, which is essential in both healthy andcancerous cells.
But it does not bind as tightly as methotrexate, so itsside effects on healthy cells could be less severe than those of the drug.Thorneley said EGCG could be a lead compound for new anti-cancer drugs.The findings could also explain why women who drink large amounts of greentea around the time they conceive and early in their pregnancy may have anincreased risk of having a child with spina bifida http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spina_bifida) or other neural tubedisorders.Women are advised to take supplements of folic acid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid) because it protects against spina bifida. But large amounts of green tea could decrease theeffectiveness of folic acid.“This enzyme, (DHFR), is the one folic acid supplements are given for. Folicacid deficiency leads to neural tube development defects,” Thorneley added.All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content fromthis website for their own personal and non-commercial use only.Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing orsimilar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent ofReuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks ortrademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
(c) Reuters 2005