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Early findings in Japan Research on Catechin
The revival of green tea's popularity in Japan in the 1980s was due in large
part to the idea that the beverage is good for you. At the very least, the fact
that green tea contains no sugar became an important deciding factor for many
consumers.
Ito En, Japan's largest supplier of tea leaves and a leader in the
ready-to-drink green tea market, has worked to unlock the mysteries of tea. What
scientists at this company have found is both surprising and exciting.
Ito En researchers have successfully isolated the active ingredients of green
tea, including catechin, theanine and saponin. Further studies have shown that
one of these ingredients -catechin- is responsible for many of the
pharmacological benefits attributed to green tea. Specifically, catechin works
to scavenge active oxygen species in the blood. These species are beneficial
because they help protect the body from harmful microorganisms, but they are
also known to cause damage when present in the body in larger quantities than
required at any one time.
Through its ongoing research, Ito En also has found evidence that other
ingredients in green tea are effective in promoting good health. This work has
led to the Company's introduction of non-tea products based on catechin and has
accelerated the recent growth in green tea consumption in Japan.
Spurred on by Ito En's discoveries, medical research institutions worldwide
are now looking into the health-promoting effects of green tea. In one of the
most important of these projects, the University of Texas M.D.Anderson Cancer
Center in the United States has initiated a testing program to gain clinical
evidence of the cancer-preventing properties of the tea.
In the first direct study of green tea in the field of cancer prevention, the
M.D.Anderson Cancer Center project is giving test patients capsules of
concentrated green tea powder. If the capsules provide clinical results over the
span of the project, an analysis of individual ingredients is likely to follow,
with the goal of discovering exactly which ingredients are responsible for
preventing the occurrence of cancerous tumors.
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