What is Green Tea Extract?
Lately there has been a trend towards the natural and holi
stic approach to just about everything. You see it everywhere, buy this because it’s natural, use this because its natural, this has all natural ingredients, and so on and so forth. Well what about all natural when it comes to weight loss? One of the products that is getting a lot of buzz lately is the green tea extract which is said to promote weight loss. So, lets take a look at this good ole green tea extract.
Prior to understanding what green tea extract does, we must know what it is. That is we need to be concerned with the chemical and biochemical aspects of the green tea extract itself. The chemical properties are going to allow us to see the compound or make up of the supplement which will then lead us to understanding the biochemical processes that are promoted by green tea extract.
Green tea extract is made by via the infusion of green tea leaves or leaves from the plant Camellia sinensis. It is made up of polyphenols, which are organic chemicals that are known for their potent antioxidant capabilities. In regards to all teas, the polypheols are also referred to as catechins, of which green tea has four major ones. Green tea also contains alkaloids, which are additional chemical compounds on the molecular level of the plant itself. It is thee alkaloids, such as caffeine, that give green tea the stimulant properties. There are a wide variety of health benefits that are attributed to the use of green tea. These benefits include the reduction of risk of development of a wide variety of different cancers. This is due to the catechins working in a variety of different ways. Not only do they have strong antioxidant properties, possibly even more so that Vitamin C, they also serve as an anti-inflammatory agent. That being said green tea has four major functions in terms of biochemistry. It serves a purpose of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogen, and anti-radiation. Also, for a side note, more recently green tea extract has been used as a preservative for different meats. The high antioxidant properties are supposed to be able to preserve the meat more safely than alternative additives.
Now, what about fat burning capabilities? Well, this is an interesting question
. As discussed in the previous paragraph, there is an alkaloid element to the green tea extract, which is responsible for the caffeine portion of the compound. That is why green tea can also be produced in a decaffeinated product, because the alkaloids portion of the compound can be removed. So, back to our question. Researchers are actually still in debate about the promotion of weight loss with the use of green tea. They are not exactly sure of the origin of the initiation of weight loss with the use of a green tea extract supplement. The split idea is that either the catechins and/OR the caffeine is responsible for the weight loss. However, studies have shown that the use of green tea extract supplement with caffeine resulted in more weight loss as opposed to those supplements that were used containing no caffeine.
Sources and Photo Credits
Y.S. Zhen, Z.M. Chen, S.J. Cheng & M.L. Chen, Tea: bioactivity and therapeutic
potential, London, UK: New York Taylor & Francis, 2002, pp. 121–225.
I.T. Johnson & G. Williamson, Phytochemical functional foods, Cambridge, UK:
Woodhead Publishing, 2003, pp. 135-145
http://www.food-info.net/uk/colour/enzymaticbrowning.htm
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/green-tea-000255.htm
http://mish-mash.ucoz.com/index/green_tea/0-11
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