3 Great Ways Green Tea Will Make You Leaner & Happier

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world, behind only water. The earliest documented use of tea as a beverage dates back to China in 59 B.C. It has been used for medicinal purposes for over 3,000 years.

Green, Black, White and Oolong tea all come from the same plant (Camellia Sinensis). Each variety of tea is picked, processed, and manufactured differently – resulting in different tastes, nutrient compositions, and health-boosting properties.

Antioxidant Power of Green Tea

Green tea contains higher levels of the antioxidants called polyphenols and catechins, as compared to black or oolong teas. You may have heard of EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), the most abundant (and well studied) antioxidant in green tea.

Relax with Green Tea

In addition to antioxidants, green tea also contains high levels of the amino acid theanine. Theanine is responsible for green tea’s relaxation and anti-stress effects.

In one study, researchers followed over 4,000 Japanese individuals for 11 years and found that the people who drank the most green tea were least likely to suffer symptoms of psychological distress.

Green Tea and Weight Loss

Green tea is a popular additive to weight loss supplements as it is consistently shown to help boost weight loss. But you don’t need a supplement to reap these benefits. Drinking 5 cups of green tea (not the de-caffeinated version) every day for 12 weeks can increase your weight loss by 3 pounds while decreasing your waistline by almost an extra inch.

Green tea does this by enhancing several different fat burning pathways in your body, from increasing the expression of fat burning genes, to properly stimulating your nervous system, to enhancing abdominal fat loss.

Nature’s Appetite Suppressant

Green tea can also help you feel more satisfied after a meal – a feeling that is often lacking from most dieters’ dining experiences. New research published in Nutrition Journal showed that drinking a 10 ounce cup of green tea while eating lunch increased study participants’ feelings of fullness and decreased their desire to eat more of their favorite foods.

Increased levels of neurotransmitter norepinephrine can help reduce food intake and increase the feeling of fullness. The antioxidants in green tea prevent the breakdown of norepinephrine, helping you eat less.

Next time you have a food craving, snack on a handful of pistachios and a large cup of green tea. The anti-hunger effects of green tea, combined with the protein and fat in the pistachios, are a powerful enough combination to curb any craving attack.

The Perfect Cup of Tea

The bottom line about green tea is that you should drink it – but how? To make the best tasting cup of tea, allow the water to sit for one minute after it has boiled, then let the tea bag sit in the water (also known as steeping) for 1-1:30 minutes.

The longer you steep the tea, the more antioxidants will be drawn from the tea leaves. However, antioxidants tend to taste bitter. So, the longer you steep your tea, the more bitter it will taste. Research from Temple University shows that Americans in general do not like overly flavored or bitter green tea. If green tea isn’t instantly your favorite beverage, try steeping it for a shorter amount of time. You can still get the most antioxidants from your tea by re-using the tea bag and having another cup.

Skip the bottled artificially-sweetened teas sold in stores. An independent food lab based out of North Brunswick, New Jersey found that these products have only 6% of the antioxidants found in regular green tea.

Health Food Phoenix

Once quarantined as the food you must avoid if you had heart issues, a new growing body of research touting their nutritional benefits have caused eggs to rise from their nutritional grave to take their rightful place as a true power food.

Cholesterol, Eggs, and Your Heart

Improving heart health has long been about lowering your cholesterol. It would seem to make complete sense that if you wanted to decrease the amount of cholesterol in your blood stream then you should decrease the amount of cholesterol you are eating.

Eggs pack a whooping 200mg of cholesterol per serving (essentially the limit of recommended intake on ‘heart healthy diets’) making eggs public enemy #1 when it comes to reducing dietary and thus blood cholesterol levels.

Here’s the good news…for most of us the amount of cholesterol that you eat doesn’t have that much of an effect on the levels of cholesterol in your blood. Research shows that only 30 percent of people experience significant increases in cholesterol levels after following a diet high in cholesterol. After looking at the dietary habits of 100,000 people, a group of researchers from Harvard University reported that daily egg consumption in healthy people did not lead to an increase in risk of coronary heart disease.

Gold Standard of Protein Quality

Once you can take your focus off the eggs and cholesterol debate, you are able to see that eggs are a nutritional powerhouse, especially when it comes to protein. Eggs have always been the gold standard of protein. When protein quality is measured, researchers compared the protein food that they are measuring to eggs.

One egg contains 6-7 grams of the best protein that you will find. Full of essential amino acids that are readily absorbed by your body.

Whole Egg vs. Egg White

The popularity of eating only egg whites came from the drive to eat less fat and cholesterol (as all the fat and cholesterol is in the egg yolk).

Eggs whites are great but they are nutritionally a one trick pony – protein. An egg white contains all protein ~3 grams; the rest of the nutrients, protein and fat are hiding in the golden center, aka: the yolk.

Egg yolks are much more than just protein. They contain key fat soluble vitamins A, D, and E, a muscle building nutrient. If you opt to buy eggs from chickens that were fed omega-3 rich feed, the health promoting omega-3 fats in the feed transfer to the egg, giving you as much as 150mg of the long chain omega-3 fat DHA.

Egg yolks also contain, leutin, and zeaxanthin. Choline is an essential nutrient for brain health, while leutine and zeaxanthin are two potent antioxidants that may help prevent age-related problems with vision.

When you think about antioxidants, eggs are probably not the first food to come to mind, but a study published in Food Chemistry found that the antioxidant capacity of eggs was equal to that of the poster child of good health: apples!

Whole Eggs and “Good Cholesterol”

Researchers at the University of Connecticut wanted to test the power of whole eggs vs cholesterol/fat free egg substitutes. They found that men who ate three large whole eggs per day increased their HDL or good cholesterol by 20 percent. There was also no impact on LDL or bad cholesterol. The people who ate the egg substitutes didn’t experience any change in either risk factor for heart disease.

Liquid Calories could be Sabotaging Your Health – How to Stop It From Happening

While all 6 of the Pillars of Nutrition are important – this could be the most important. For many people, consuming calorie-containing beverages, (more specifically sugar- sweetened beverages), is the difference between losing 15-20lbs, or not.

On any given day, a typical American may have a latte (w/whole milk) in the morning, a 20oz Coke or Pepsi at lunch, iced tea from a vending machine in the afternoon, and some ginger ale or another type of soda at dinner. You probably know people who do this. Do you know how many calories a person like this would drink in a day? 800 calories. You’d have to walk 8 miles to burn them all off!

Did you know, from the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s, soda and ‘ade (Gatorade, Powerade, Kool Aid, etc) consumption increased 100% in the U.S.? Even worse, in 2002 it was reported that 44% of toddlers (18-24 months) consumed sweetened fruit drinks or soda at least once per day.

Drinking calories is a major problem, but an easy one to fix. Drink water, drink unsweetened tea, drink Crystal Light if you need a sweet fix. Whatever you do, start cutting out calorie-containing beverages today.

If you are currently drinking a lot of sweetened beverages, here’s what you can do to curtail the habit (this works every time). Calculate how many sweetened beverages you are drinking each day. Remove one completely and replace it with water. Take another one of your sweetened beverages and replace it with the ‘diet’ version (you can find the diet version of just about anything). Do this for 1 week. The next week, replace your ‘diet’ drink with water or tea and replace another one of your sweetened beverages with the ‘diet’ version. Repeat the process until you have completely eliminated calorie-containing and sweetened beverages from your diet. This is a painless and effective solution for weaning yourself off of your sugar fix and getting rid of those wasteful and waistline increasing liquid calories.

1 Cup of Blueberries a Day Could Keep Your Memory from Going Away

Whenever you find an article about anti-aging foods, super foods, or brain boosting foods, you can bet that blueberries are at the top of the list. Over the past decade, blueberries have achieved the status of the ultimate health food. But, unlike many heavily marketed foods, blueberries actually deserve the title.

Blueberries are one of a limited number of fruits with origins in North America (researchers estimate that blueberries have been around for 13,000 years). They were a long time staple of Native American foragers, and were used for nutritional and medicinal purposes (the reasons behind which science has just begun to uncover – centuries later).

Blueberry Nutrition

One cup of blueberries contains only 80 calories and a healthy 3.5 gram dose of fiber. However, the nutritional power of blueberries won’t be found on its nutrition label. The true power of blueberries comes from their deep dark blue color where the anthocyanidins live.

Blueberries’ Blue Power

Blueberries are loaded with anthocyanidins, an antioxidant similar to those found in pomegranates and dark chocolate. A study in 2004 looked at the antioxidant capacity of 100 different foods and blueberries came out on top.

Researchers believe that these powerful antioxidants can improve your heart health and slow the aging of your brain. There is also evidence that they can ward off age-related effects like reduced cognition, and even the progression of full blown neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

Some scientists believe that the antioxidants in blueberries work directly within our brains to improve memory as well.

Blueberries & Cardiovascular Disease

Blueberries have been shown to fight America’s Silent Killer, high blood pressure. Eating 2 cups of blueberries each day for 8 weeks can lower your blood pressure by 6%, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Nutrition.

In addition, the people who ate blueberries also had reductions in oxidized LDL cholesterol, the type of bad cholesterol that directly leads to plaque formation in your blood vessels.

A Little May Be Enough

Researchers from Finland found that you do not need to eat endless amounts of blueberries to reap their health benefits. In fact, eating one cup of blueberries each day is enough to increase antioxidant levels in your blood by up to 50%.

Fresh vs. Frozen

Frozen blueberries should be a staple in your nutritional arsenal. Since they are quickly frozen shortly after picking, frozen blueberries maintain a high level of their antioxidants (the antioxidants in blueberries can degrade over time when stored on shelves).

Frozen blueberries also give you instant access to this power food all year round.

Don’t worry about eating them raw or cooked – just eat them. A study published recently showed that the antioxidant power of blueberries is the same either way.

Healthy Blueberry Dessert

Here is a simple frozen blueberry dessert recipe that you can use to curb your sweet tooth late at night instead of reaching for a bowl of ice cream.

In a blender, add together 2 cups of frozen blueberries, 2 cups of low fat plain yogurt, 1 TBSP of Splenda (or zero calorie sweetener of your choice), and 1 TBSP of orange zest (grate the skin of one quarter of a washed orange against a fine cheese grater). Blend the ingredients together until the mixture is smooth.

Pour the mixture into ice cube trays or muffin tins and place in freezer for 1-2 hours.

Improve Your Health at Less Than 4 Calories a Stalk

Modern food lovers like to think that we discovered everything, but we can’t claim asparagus. Asparagus was originally found growing on Mediterranean hillsides, and recipes date back to late fourth-century Rome and Apicius Book III, one of the oldest known cookbooks. Early American colonists referred to asparagus as a “food of kings.”

Although farmers in California, Washington, and Michigan grow substantial quantities, the U.S. is the world’s largest importer of asparagus, with much of it coming from China and Peru. We love our asparagus, and for good reason.

Stalking Good Nutrition

One serving of asparagus – 5 stalks – contains 3 grams of fiber and 60% of your recommended daily intake of folic acid, a vitamin that’s essential for mental and physical health. Folic acid is known to prevent birth defects in developing fetuses, and is an essential part of key enzymes and neurotransmitters.

Asparagus also contains glutathione, the major detoxifying antioxidant in your liver.

One stalk contains fewer than 4 calories, making it a great tasting, low calorie addition to any meal.

Functional Fiber

Asparagus contains a unique type of soluble fiber called fructooligosaccharides (FOS), which goes undigested until it reaches your large intestine. From there, it serves as food for the good bacteria that lives in your gut and helps improve your digestive health. Because of its unique ability to support the growth of beneficial bacteria, scientists have even started putting FOS in infant formula.

In addition to improving digestion, FOS can help lower triglycerides, decreasing your risk for cardiovascular disease, and improve your body’s ability to absorb minerals from your diet.

Nature’s Hang Over Cure

Asparagus is the perfect food to have the day after a night out with friends.

A 2009 study from the Journal of Food Science found that asparagus can boost, by 200%, the effectiveness of 2 key alcohol-metabolizing enzymes in your liver. In addition, asparagus can help replenish your body’s supply of glutathione, which gets used up quickly by your liver after you have a couple of drinks.

The Best of the Best

Size matters when buying asparagus. The thicker the stalk, the more tender it will be. Make sure the tips are closed and compact; these are signs of freshness, which will lead to better taste.

Hot and Steamy

For best results, steam your asparagus with the stalks straight up for 5 to 8 minutes, or until they become tender. Top with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a little extra-virgin olive oil for the perfect complement to a salmon filet or grilled steak.

Stir It Up

Stir-frying asparagus is another fast and easy way to get this power food in your diet. Cut the asparagus stalks diagonally into 2-inch pieces and sauté them in a nonstick pan over medium heat with sesame oil, fresh ginger, and a splash of soy sauce.

You can make this a complete meal by adding sliced mushrooms, chicken breast strips, and steamed brown rice.