Can You Eat Green Tea Leaves?

Eat Green Tea

I drink a lot of green tea for two reasons. First it is delicious and second it is good for you. So when I came across the Website, Eat Green Tea, I was intrigued to find out that they claim that eating just 1 teaspoon of their edible organic green tea leaves is equivalent to drinking 30 cups of brewed tea.

A lot of research has been done on the benefits of drinking green tea. Generally most articles recommend three to five cups a day to reap not only the health benefits of green tea but also the weight loss benefits.

So the question is, if drinking green tea is good for you is it better to eat green tea?

The process of steeping green tea in water releases the catechins from the leaves. It does not however release them all. If you re-steep each leaf three time, you will likely get most out but not all. So common sense would tell you that if you eat green tea you will get all of the catechins that are in each leaf.

If you subscribe to this logic, and I tend to lean that way, the next question is, how do you eat green tea leaves.

There are many recipes out there that help you eat green tea leaves. You can sprinkle chopped leaves on your mashed potatoes, roast potatoes with green tea leaves or add Matcha green tea to ice cream or smoothies. The possibilities are endless. There is a great book called Cooking with Green Tea: Delicious dishes enhanced by the miraculous healing powers of green tea that gives you a lot of different ways to eat green tea.

If you choose to eat green tea leaves then you should look for an organic food grade tea. The folks at EatGreenTea  sell some high quality food grade tea. Check it out.

While I will continue to get my daily dose of green tea from my iced green tea, I have ordered the cookbook and will be buying some food grade organic green tea to get even more health benefits out of natures perfect leaf.

What To Do If You Do Not Like Green Tea?

Almost everyone has heard of the great health benefits of consuming green tea. Believe it or not, a large number of those people do not like the taste of green tea. So one question I get asked a lot is:
What can I do to incorporate green tea into my diet if i do not like the taste of green tea?

Fortunately there are a number of methods to consume green tea without actually tasting the green tea. I will outline two solutions below.

1) Make regular (or black) iced tea at a ratio of five to 1

If you do not like the taste of iced green tea, hopefully you do like black iced tea. Black iced tea is the standard iced tea most people are familiar with. It is a strong flavor, much stronger than green tea.

The strength of the flavor of black iced tea makes it perfect to slip a little green tea into without being able to taste the green tea.

Here is a recipe. In a 3 quart pot, heat water to just before boiling,or bring it to a boil and turn off the heat till it stops boiling. Take five small Lipton black tea bags and one small green tea bag and steep the bags in the water for four minutes. The result is a regular iced tea with green tea benefits without the taste.

Black tea has health benefits as well, so your drink will be an overall healthy one. If so inclined, the next time you make iced tea with this method, use two bags of green tea and see if the taste offends you. Keep experimenting till you find the right ratio of black to green tea while striving to use as many green tea bags in your iced green tea hybrid.

2) Eat green tea

Yes you can eat green tea. I recommend finding a source of food quality powdered green tea. You can check out EatGreenTea.com for quality food grade edible green tea.

Once you have a source of organic edible green tea, go nuts. You can add it to a lot of things that will mask the flavor of the green tea.

Examples include: tomato sauce, smoothies, soups (creamy ones mask the taste better), mashed potatoes, cereal, oatmeal, and yogurt.

These are just examples, the possibilities are endless. If you are worried about the green tea flavoring the food think about this. One teaspoon of edible powdered green tea has as many health benefits as 30 cups of green tea. So a couple dashes probably equals a couple cups of brewed tea. the point is you do not need to eat a lot of green tea leaves to get the benefits, and by not having to add too much to your food you have less of a chance of effecting the flavor of almost any food.

If you are planning to eat green tea, do yourself a favor, and look for an organic edible green tea. Eating pesticides or fertilizer may offset the health benefits of green tea.