Slimming Tea

Let me read your tea leaves. I see a large shape saying this cup of diet tea was a waste of time. Stick to sensible eating and more exercise instead of lying around drinking your brew of 'Bye Bye Fat'.

We all like an easy option, and what could be easier than sipping yourself slim with a fat-busting tea? Health food stores offer some of these super-charged brews, but it's on the internet that you're really spoiled for choice. And it's also on the internet that you can say or sell just about anything you want and get away with it. As with many things in life, not all everything is what it seems, and tea is no exception.

Let's take black tea, which is the regular tea you find everywhere, and green tea first of all. Both contain flavonoids with myriad health benefits including protection against heart disease. This is proven, so drink up and you'll do yourself some good. Just use skimmed milk and limit the sugar. Green tea has been in the spotlight recently, following various research projects. It has been linked with having a preventative effect on all kinds of diseases, including certain cancers, as well as having the ability to lower cholesterol and, to speed up fat oxidation, i.e. to burn calories quicker. Further research is needed in all these areas, but it's safe to say that if you like the taste of green tea, you've got nothing to lose apart from just possibly a few kilos.

TRIED AND TRUSTED?

Herbal teas go back a long way and are used in both traditional Chinese and Indian medicine. They're popular everywhere as an alternative to regular tea and coffee and in some countries are used as "cures" for common complaints, including for example, fennel as an aid to digestion and camomile to ease anxiety and promote sleep. Of course quite how healing they are is a matter for debate, primarily because they may not in fact contain enough of the herb to have any effect. But still, a herbal tea whose ingredient you recognise won't do you any harm at all. It's the blends that are given compelling weight-loss promising names that you need to be cautious about.

In fact, many people think diet teas, which contain ingredients such as licorice root, senna and buckthorn, should really be called laxative teas because that's what they do to you! In small amounts they can just be a little, well, inconvenient, as you have to run to the loo rather a lot. If you consume them in large amounts, you're asking for trouble. Others act as diuretics, especially if they have dandelion, parsley or juniper as ingredients, so you lose water weight. Then there are the diet teas that contain stimulants such as yerba mate, kola nut and guarana. They're OK in small doses, but if you're sensitive to the ingredients or have just a little too much, you'll get palpitations, the jitters and have difficulty sleeping. It's rare, but there's a risk of heart attack. Since the only reason you'll be drinking the teas that are marketed as slimming aids is to lose weight (most of them don't actually taste that great) and as there's absolutely no proof that they can help, I'd leave them well alone. Stick to a nice cup of real tea, or traditional herbal tea that doesn't make any other claim than it tastes good!


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