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White Tea – The Healthiest Tea

Much has been said and written about the beneficial antioxidants in beverages such as coffea and tea. Green tea, especially, has been hailed for its high antioxidant content.

Many think that green tea is the beverage with the highest concentration of the catechin antioxidants, which have been shown to have very beneficial effects on cancer, aging, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, and so on.

However, there is a type of tea which has even more antioxidants. The tea in question is known as white tea. White tea is made from tea leaves that are harvested very early in the spring, while they are still tightly rolled up in buds. At that time, the buds are still covered in fine, white hairs, and that is where the tea gets its name.

The healthiest tea

Now, green tea and white tea are made from the same plant, the tea bush cammelia sinensis, from which the regular black tea is also made. Because the tea leaves that are made into white tea are very young when harvested, the antioxidant concentration is very high.

But the most important factor in making white the healthiest tea there is comes from the way the tea itself is made. While green tea and black tea undergo fermentation after harvest, white tea is only dried and shipped. It is not fermented and not cut, which is crucial. Practically unprocessed, very nearly all the antioxidants in the young leaves are preserved in the same concenartion as when the leaves were still growing on their bush on a hillside in China. That makes white tea the tea with the highest concentration of antioxidants.

This means that all the positive effects that are attributed to black and green tea are also valid for white tea, but multiplied. For that reason, one cup of white tea will contain more antioxidants than the partly oxidized green tea, but less caffeine, and much less then the entirely oxidized black tea.

The finest quality of white tea, called Silver Needle, is the healthiest variety. It consists entirely of young, tightly rolled up buds of tea leaves. Other qualities have a proportion of rolled out leaves, or even leaves that have been cut. Cutting tea leaves gives them a larger surface, so that they oxidize quicker.

The fine catechins

The reason that tea in general is a healthy beverage comes from its high content of the antioxidant variety known as catechins. They are polyphenols, the same class of antioxidants that include the most important antioxidants in red wine, many fruits and chocolate. Teas, and to a lesser extent coffee, are the most important source of catechins in the human diet.

Fresh tea leaves contain about 20-30 percent catechins by weight, but the processing and fermentation of many tea varieties reduces this concentartion considerable. That is not the case for white tea, where the concentration of antioxidants actually rises when it's dried and the weight of the water is no longer present in the leaf.

Health benefits

The antioxidants in white tea have been shown to reduce the risk of four of the major health problems and causes of death in the Western societies, namely stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes. Among others, the antioxidant known as EGCG demonstrates considerable activity against many kinds of cancer, while also appearing to protect the heart and arteries from oxidative stress.

White tea is still rare in the West, but demand is accelerating as more and more health-conscious individuals are made aware of its fine qualities. White tea is still much more expensive than other teas, and some consider it a luxury. It is, however, widely available from vendors on the internet. This site has a lot of information about white tea.

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