Here on Breaking Muscle, we’ve talked a lot about green tea’s benefits as an anti-inflammatory agent, a brain-boosting superfood that can reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, a fat-burner, and how it can even protect your skin from sunburn.
In an article published late July in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, bringing three more benefits of green tea to light.
A team of researchers from the College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F University, in Yangling, China examined the effects of green tea on mice. The control group was fed a standard diet, a second group was fed a high-fat and high-fructose diet, and the third group was given green tea along with their high-fat, high-fructose diet. The mice were on the diet for 16 weeks, during which time the researchers analyzed the effects on their bodies.
As intended, the mice given the high-fat, high-fructose diet had a significantly higher body weight at the end of the study than the control group. However, the body weight of the group that received green tea was far lower than expected, almost on par with the control group. The green tea helped to reduce the obesity-related outcomes resulting from a high-fat, high-fructose diet.
But the benefits didn’t stop there. The mice that consumed green tea with their diet performed significantly better on their maze tests than the mice that didn’t. The ECGC (a potent antioxidant) in the green tea improved their cognitive performance and ameliorated the memory impairment induced by a high-fat, high-fructose diet. This just means that green tea can protect the brain and enhance cognitive function, reducing the brain insulin resistance caused by a high-fructose, high-fat diet.
“Green tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world after water, and is grown in at least 30 countries,” said Xuebo Liu, Ph.D., a researcher at the College of Food Science and Engineering, Northwest A&F University, in Yangling, China. “The ancient habit of drinking green tea may be a more acceptable alternative to medicine when it comes to combatting obesity, insulin resistance, and memory impairment.”
Reference:
1. Yashi Mi, Guoyuan Qi, Rong Fan, Qinglian Qiao, Yali Sun, Yuqi Gao, Xuebo Liu. “EGCG ameliorates high-fat– and high-fructose–induced cognitive defects by regulating the IRS/AKT and ERK/CREB/BDNF.” The FASEB Journal, 2017; fj.201700400RR DOI: 10.1096/fj.201700400RR.
