Green Tea Capsules Versus Tea Leaves and How Much?

by Richard
(Baton Rouge, Los Angeles)

Would taking green tea capsules be just as good as using green tea leaves? If so how many milligrams are needed per day? Thank you very much.

Answer:

Richard, personally I recommend drinking the beverage. However, there may be some people who prefer taking green tea capsules, because they like the convenience, is extremely sensitive to caffeine or for other reasons.

Beverage is preferred because tea extract is a processed product, and so it is more likely to use inferior leaves. The problems for most consumers is that there is no way to tell the good from the bad (unlike tea beverage), and you are much more likely to overdose.

Tea Supplements Vs Beverage
Pros and Cons

When deciding how much to take, my advice is to follow the manufacturer's instruction, because every product is different.

To give you some guidelines, many health benefits associated with green tea are observed in the Far East, where people drink 3 cups of tea a day. Three cups of high quality tea (which are unlike those drunk in the West contains young tea buds) contains about 300 milligrams of catechins. So a daily intake of 300 to 600 milligrams a day sound reasonable.

My Tea Shop currently features three high grade green tea made from young tea shoots harvested in spring. It is worth a look.

Chinese Tea Shop

Further information about tea extract can be found at

Green Tea Extract - Diet Pills, Capsules and Tablets

I hope this helps.
Julian