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    • Healthy food – part 2

    Posted in Food

    3) Matcha (stone-ground Gyokuru green tea powder)
    So those green tea bags at the office water cooler aren’t the ultimate form of green tea? Do I need something better? What brand of tea bags ARE better?
    Oh dear. Where to begin. If you’re used to getting your tea from tea bags, you’ll need to put aside notions of brands, tea bags, and tea in general for a moment and take a big step back: as we discussed in our BrainReady health feature on the health benefits of Matcha, Matcha — which is the finely-ground powder of the highest-quality, most revered part of the shade-grown green tea plant (Gyokuru leaves…the very top part of the shade-grown green tea plant then dried to become”Tencha”) carefully grown, selected, dried, stone-ground, processed and prepared according to an ancient Japanese tradition, is not your average green tea. Nor does it come in tea bags. Nor do you brew it, boil it, or consume the watery extract from leaves.

    Perhaps best known as the traditional, ceremonial drink tightly interwoven with the Buddhist ceremonies and tradition, Matcha’s unique effects on the brain were a perfect fit for those monks in Japan preparing to endure 12-hour straight meditation sessions: calming and focusing while stimulating at the same time, it’s no wonder that Matcha became integrated into the monks’ meditative practices (thanks in large part to the amino acid L-Theanine).
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    Tea and Milk

    Posted in Food

    From black teas to green teas to Matcha green tea powder Ooolong to white teas and the many in between, there’s been something of a worldwide tea Renaissance in recent years, with some people looking for a caffeinated alternative to coffee while others continue to expand their existing tea tastes to new cultural frontiers.

    For many of us, a prime motivator for adding more tea into the daily diet is health – and rightly so, given the overwhelming body of research studies illustrating the wide variety of health benefits that many teas provide. And as with coffee, many (perhaps even most, in the West) choose to augment the flavor and texture of tea by adding that magic ingredient that makes almost anything taste good: milk or cream.
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