Instant Green Tea Q

So I have a drink mix, Green Tea with Peach, one of those calorie free/low calorie powders. A Crystal Light type thing. The brand isn’t important.

What I want to know is whether instant green tea has any of the health benefits of real green tea. I’m primarily concerned with the antioxidants and EGCG.

The ingredients, for anyone who’s interested are:
Citric acid
Maltodextrin
Instant Green Tea
Aspartame
Acesulfame Potassium
<2% Flavor
Magnesium Oxide
Ascorbic Acid
Color

It’s 5 calories per serving (1g of carb).

I don’t need a lecture on the dangers of aspartame, thanks.

I’ve tried cold tea RTD’s, tea bags, and EGCG pills; solo and in combination.

I am not sure for the health benefits, as all studies I have read choose to use brewed tea and many of the benefits are not overt.
As for the thermogetic effect (which I use as a sort of marker), assuming that if the thermogetic effect is present that EGCG and the health benefits are, I have only seen noticeable effects with brewed tea, cold tea mixes and pills have failed to produce.

If any other poster could chip in with the possible stability of EGCG outside of leaves, maybe it could shine some light on the topic (as it is one I am also interested in)

I love the stuff. But I can’t be helpful with regards to the benefits of it compared to real green tea. Though, Citric acid (vitamin C) is an antioxidant, so there’s that.

Aspartame causes cancer and that’s reason enough to swith to the real deal.

I think it depends largely on how the tea leaves are instantized. I’m partial to teatech, a product I’ve been using for about five years now.

http://www.teatech.com/extraction_process.php

In 2007, The US Department of Agriculture did a pretty good study on 400 foods for their flavonoid content.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Flav/Flav02-1.pdf

To sum things up (and translated to an 8 ounce glass):

Regular green tea tops the list. One cup has a 180 milligrams of EGCG…

Decaffeinated brewed green tea has only 60 milligrams, about a third of regular tea.

Flavored brewed green tea has 45 milligrams.

Instant or bottled green tea with only a pitiful 9 milligrams.

Personally, I brew my own green tea by the gallon, throw in a touch of splenda and lemon, and drink on ice.

[quote]JN7844 wrote:
In 2007, The US Department of Agriculture did a pretty good study on 400 foods for their flavonoid content.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Flav/Flav02-1.pdf

To sum things up (and translated to an 8 ounce glass):

Regular green tea tops the list. One cup has a 180 milligrams of EGCG…

Decaffeinated brewed green tea has only 60 milligrams, about a third of regular tea.

Flavored brewed green tea has 45 milligrams.

Instant or bottled green tea with only a pitiful 9 milligrams.

Personally, I brew my own green tea by the gallon, throw in a touch of splenda and lemon, and drink on ice. [/quote]

Thanks for the info.

[quote]JN7844 wrote:
In 2007, The US Department of Agriculture did a pretty good study on 400 foods for their flavonoid content.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Flav/Flav02-1.pdf

To sum things up (and translated to an 8 ounce glass):

Regular green tea tops the list. One cup has a 180 milligrams of EGCG…

Decaffeinated brewed green tea has only 60 milligrams, about a third of regular tea.

Flavored brewed green tea has 45 milligrams.

Instant or bottled green tea with only a pitiful 9 milligrams.

Personally, I brew my own green tea by the gallon, throw in a touch of splenda and lemon, and drink on ice. [/quote]

Good info, how many tea bags do you use for a gallon?

I imagine six should do the job.

[quote]Chi-Towns-Finest wrote:

Good info, how many tea bags do you use for a gallon?

I imagine six should do the job.[/quote]

Good guess. That’s how many I use.

Without the “green tea” being a standardized extract there’s just no way of knowing its EGCG or total pholyphenol content.

I use a green tea standardized extract powder; it’s dirt cheap (~$10.00 for 100 g.) and standardized to 90% total polyphenol content, and 50% EGCG. So, I use .5 g. 2 X day= 900 mg. polyphenols and 500 mg. EGCG a day. That comes out to $3/month! I think I might up it to 1 g. 2 X day.

Crowbar

I used to drink the crystal light green tea mixes but got bored of the same flavors. What I do now is brew some green tea pour it into a gallon and then add any crsytal light I want.