Friday, July 19, 2013

What is Oolong Tea ?

Oolong tea, referred to as the Champagne of teas, is a semi oxidized whole-leaf tea, which retains all of the nutrients and natural healing factors contained in unfermented green tea, but without the raw, grassy taste. It falls somewhere between green and black tea, with complex flavor and aroma. The leaves go through a very brief fermentation process, which eliminates harsh irritants from the raw tea and creates the subtle fragrances and f lavors that distinguish this tea from all other varieties.

Oolong legend tells us Wu Liang (who lived during the Ming Dynasty in China, around 1400 AD), a tea farmer, went out one day to pick tea, as he did every day in the tea-picking season. He had collected quite a bit when his eye was caught by a deer drinking by the river. He stopped his tea-picking activities and killed the poor animal (sorry to have to report this). He took the slain deer home, as it would provide him with a week’s worth of meals. He forgot all about his tea. When he went back to collect his load, he
found that the tea had started to blacken. We know today, it had begun to oxidize.

Wu Liang thought that it might have gone bad, but decided to proceed with his traditional preparations. He dried the tea by pan-firing, as was done with the green teas of the day. When he made a cup of this tea, he was surprised to find that it tasted different than his usual green tea, and discovered that he loved the flavor.

He taught his neighbors and friends how to make the new tea, and it came to be named after him. Language being what it is, the name eventually evolved from Wu Liang to Oolong.

The processing sequence for oolong tea is:
1. Leaves and buds are harvested.
2. Leaves and buds are cleaned.
3. Leaves and buds are placed in bamboo containers and air is blown
    through them. This process is referred to as “withering the leaves.”
4. The withered leaves are rolled, which releases the oils within the leaf. These oils mix with the oxygen in the     air and the leaves begin to ferment or oxidize.
5. When the rolled leaves reach a dark blue-green color, they are placed into a hot wok to stop the              fermentation process and add flavor.
READ MORE - What is Oolong Tea ?

Tea helps you lose weight

Do you know which beverage is the most consumed in the world? No, it’s not coffee, or beer, or wine. It’s water. And what comes next on the list? Still  not coffee. Nor wine nor beer. It’s tea. In the most populated countries in the world, the drink they consume most often after water is tea.

It’s time for tea to be recognized in this country, not only for the health benefits most of the world have known about for centuries, but for its incredible ability to help stop one of the world’s biggest health crises to date: obesity.

Americans, and American children and teenagers, are getting larger and larger every year and are paying the consequences in diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Millions of Americans go on and off diets every day, you are probably one of those millions, and you are probably tired of your own yo-yo dieting experiences. We try to eat right, to make healthy choices, and to get off our addictions to sugar and caffeine, but it’s just too hard.

So we turn to drugs; we buy supplements made from obscure plants found only in African deserts; we cut out entire food groups; and we get totally confused by what the latest diet guru is telling us to eat (which is just the opposite of what the previous guru espoused). What we don’t know is that we don’t need drugs, supplements, or slide rules to help us f igure out how to shed the pounds.

What we do need to know is very simple: Drinking tea will help us lose weight. Yes, tea. Inexpensive. Good tasting. And available to everyone everywhere. Tea, with  natural ingredients that will not only help us lose weight, but will reduce our cravings for sweets, suppress our appetite, increase our insulin’s effectiveness, lower our cholesterol, and stimu late thermogenesis, which helps the body burn fat for energy. All this from a cup of tea!

This is not theory, guessing, or wishful thinking. This is hard science, proven in study after study conducted over the past ten years by some of the most respected scientists around the world who have all come to the same conclusion: tea helps you lose weight.
READ MORE - Tea helps you lose weight