Via Vegan Porn comes a CNN story where tea is once again touted as a way to lower bad cholesterol levels. Herman of VP muses, “Results like those take about five cups of tea per day to achieve, which is probably less overall hassle than cholesterol lowering drugs and their associated side effects, although this is probably a lot of caffeine for people who aren’t used to it.” Here’s the response I posted, something I can’ t believe I haven’t mentioned here before:

There are a few simple ways to combat that:

  1. Drink green tea or (best yet) white tea. Both have higher levels of antioxidants and less caffeine than black tea.
  2. You can decaffeinate your tea (any kind) very easily with the following method:
    • Pour your hot water over the tea bag or tea leaves and let it steep for 30 seconds.
    • At the end of 30 seconds, pour off the liquid. Now add more hot water and brew the tea as you normally would. Between 80 and 95% of the caffeine in tea comes out in the first 30 seconds, so this is a good way of eliminating most of the caffeine in your tea. Also, you can usually re-use a teabag or leaves a few times, and subsequent cups of tea won’t have as much caffeine as the first cup.

The good thing is that this method doesn’t hurt the integrity of the tea or its taste.