Green Tea and Weight Loss

[Oshii-chan]

I've heard quite a few times that the ginseng in green tea helps you burn fat. Is this true?

Either way, I've become addicted to Arizona Green Iced Tea. It's got<1 g of sugar and 0 carbs  

[Groovy Spleen]

Iced green tea is no substitute for real green tea.
It's basically just a fad drink.
From a health standpoint, White Tea is better, and it has a higher caffeiene content, which makes me happy.  

[Oshii-chan]

Oh. Didn't know that. I looked in the ingredients, and assumed that since it still had gynseng, it was basically the same.  

[Groovy Spleen]

Im prettysure it's sweetened with some sort of low-cal artificial sweetner  

[dangerousfish]

Green tea itself has no ginseng, that's something Arizona adds to their tea. Don't they also add honey? Anyway, green tea's epigallocatechin gallate (or, EGCG, lawl, I had to look up the real name) raises your metabolic rate so does cause a calorie burn - the increase is so small Coca-cola and Nestle should be shot for trying to market their new Enviga drink as a metabolism enhancer. Caffeine is also an increased calorie-burning ingredient but again the doses are too small for it to be omgwhoa and you don't want to ingest that much caffeine anyway, limited to a cup of coffee it can be beneficial but too much can be bad or even toxic. Black tea has more caffeine than green tea and green more than white. Tea actually has more caffeine than coffee by weight but you use less tea when you brew than with coffee so tea ends up with less caffeine. As far as I know ginseng doesn't do anything for your metabolism.

I make my own iced green tea and keep it in the fridge and drink about 2 liters everyday (in addition to close to a gallon of water). I like itoen's oo ocha which is the brand I drank about 4 bottles of everyday when I was in Japan. Partly because it was the cheap one that cost 88 cents and later because I loved it the most. Buuuut, since it's more expensive over here I just stick with brewing my own. I think the bottled tea you can get in the US and Europe are pretty not good but if you like bottled tea there isn't anything wrong with that but check the indgredients and make sure you aren't drinking a ton of sugar. Arizona's ginseng and honey has high fructose corn sryup in it - just like drinking a high sugar pop but with less calories.

I use meijer (store brand) bagged tea to keep the costs down but I also love the bag tea itoen makes for Costco's kirkland label.  

[Divash]

Note: Arizona also has a DIET Green Tea with Ginseng. It's sweetened with Splenda, which has no calories, instead of corn syrup.

The ginseng isn't what causes the metabolic rate to rise, though it is healthy for other reasons.

It's very refreshing, and because it's not carbonated, it won't give you gas. blaugh  

[Oshii-chan]

I drink the diet one. Well, thanks for all of the info!