Why Drinking Tea Is Not Always Healthy
We all know that green tea is healthy and because we all know that, many people are beginning to add it to their daily routine. Some of those people will drink a cup of green tea, a cup to which they have added nothing and these people are doing it right. Unfortunately, these people are in the very small minority. Most people do not do this and what they do is nowhere near as healthy and often even unhealthy. Tea can lead to a healthy lifestyle, but it doesn't directly make you healthy.
A lot of people, in their attempt to add green tea or any other type of tea to their diet, will not drink plain tea and will rarely make it themselves. Even if they do make it themselves, they will generally use tea bags and then add sugar to the tea. This practically defeats the purpose. If you get used to the taste of tea, you will realize how delicious it is without anything added to it. If you do need to add something, adding lemon is the best and if you absolutely need a sweetener, add honey. Ideally, though, you will do without either of these.
Those who do not brew their own tea will buy it somewhere, which means they will usually get a bottled or canned tea from a store. Unless they are in Japan, that tea bottle will contain sugar and in some countries, most countries in fact, it will contain more sugar than tea. The stuff they pass off as tea in the US, usually calling it something like green tea drink, is insanely unhealthy. If you are trying to add green tea to your diet for the health benefits, you want to stay far away from these products.
Believe it or not, these are not the worst options, though. No, the worst options come from some of the best-known food and drink providers. There are a lot, but I'll name two here.
One is Starbucks. They have a matcha green tea latte on their menu. People order this thing thinking they're getting green tea and are being healthy. They are not. That is not to say there is not some green tea powder in this thing, but there is much, much more sugar than anything else. Basically what you want to remember is this: nothing at Starbucks is healthy. Besides that, it is overpriced. Stay away.
An even worse example comes from our old favorite when it comes to unhealthy things: McDonald's. In some countries, notably Japan and Singapore, McDonald's offers a matcha McFlurry. They advertise this as if adding the word matcha to something makes it healthy. Adding the powder itself would make it healthy and while I'm sure there is some in this disgusting concoction, there's also all kinds of other crap in there, first and foremost a ton of sugar.
If you want to be healthy by consuming matcha green tea powder, simply buy the powder and add it to your own recipes. Even better, brew it and make yourself a cup of delicious tea. Don't rely on companies like Starbucks and McDonald's to feed you healthier food. They may disguise it as healthy, but it is not and they don't care. They simply want your money and if they know you will pay more for something healthy they will try to convince you that this is exactly what they are offering. And most likely, they will overcharge you for it.