Nigel Busts Tea Myths

In anticipation of Lainie Petersen's podcast tomorrow, in which she will be busting tea myths about caffeine in tea, I thought I'd repost Nigel Melican's tweets on the subject. (Please note, some changes on format, because they did not cut-and-paste cleanly.)

By the way, reading Mr. Melican's Twitter posts makes me feel like I have the inside scoop on all things tea. Do yourself a favor and just keep hitting "More". Much there about unusual tea origins, the chemistry of tea, and so on. Incidentally, he also corrected some misinformation I had about oxidation versus fermentation in black teas, while I was researching this.

1. TEA MYTHS BUSTED No4: Black tea (at 16.5 mg/g) does NOT have significantly LESS AOX polyphenols than Green tea (=17.0) http://bit.ly/PB98l
2. TEA MYTHS BUSTED No3: Green tea has SAME caffeine level as Black tea - based on 30 samples of each from German market http://bit.ly/PB98l
3. TEA MYTHS BUSTED No2: White tea is NOT unbelievably rich in AOX - just 2% more catechins than Green tea (av of 30 each) http://bit.ly/PB98l
4. TEA MYTHS BUSTED no1: White tea has MORE caffeine than green - White = 4.85%, Green = 2.9% (av of 30 samples each) http://bit.ly/PB98l
5. The "30 second home decaffeination" myth blown out of the water: see http://bit.ly/Raa37