BLOG A SUSTAINABLE MATCHA CHALLENGE:
So if you’re addictied to coffee via caffeine but what a somewhat better optinion and aren’t ready to fully abandon caffeine, here it is.
I challenge you to switch to matcha green tea for a month. For a cup of coffee containing 100mg caffeiene, that would be about 4g of normal matcha, or about two 2g matcha servings. It’s good hot, warm with milk, frothed or not, or iced without anything extra, my preference. As noted in many image searches, the caffeine hits you more slowly (including if you were to chug 100mg cafeeine) but lasts longer and is much smoother.
Try this for a month; I’m confident the health benefits will be obvious over simply coffee, and you can still sitch backk.
Again, the benefits from coffee might not actually comeFROM coffee itself (flavanoids or antioxidants or whatever), rather from a combination of daily routines/rituals for the body and keeping the body in a fasted state for the mornings (very healthy, even if only to have low glucose and no carbs in the morning).
Also as noted elsewhere, the risks inherent
DISTRACTION – Can chat GPT or Bard or LLMs provide multpile prepoulated URL web links with various search engines based on these terms “what are the health risks and problems with coffee?” That would be great to the site, along with an overview of the response from the LLM!
I’d love to hear your findings and comments and what happens with this!
FINALLY, one end goal would be to use this caffeine consumption for good. While processed, matcha is, in my opinion, the least wasteful of the caffeine sources (cofefe beans, green tea leaves boiled, yerba mate leaves boiled, and cacao seeds ground), because while processed and ground, we consume the entire harvested leaf. Cacao usually wastes the white delicious sweet upulpy fruit outside the seed, and always the cacao husk, and yerba mate and traditional tea extracts water soluble compounds via hot water but wasts the rest. So matcha is the least wasteful… but does it have to come from Japan?
Tea leaves grow on our continent, increasingly are planted. Oregon has a tea leaf farm in Salem, but no matcha, to my knowledge. But that’s port of the challenge — buy A) the best matcha you can afford, and b) ideally, shift your matcha purchasing to as local as is possible. If it’s not, write local businesses and/or farmers that you’re ready to buy matcha from US growers!
DO NOT BUY CHEAP MATCHA
I can share the full story of why I recommend high-quality, expensive matcha, but basically I chipped my tooth on low quality crap matcha, and I do NOT recommend saving money by buying the cheap stuff. Matcha (well, the tea leaves physically themselves) absorbs certain toxins like fluorine(fluoride? I forget what a web search found), and because matcha eats the whole tea leaf, rather than is boil-extracted, we consume too much. I’m actually afraid of what the cheap stuff at Costco might be doing to people! The expensive stuff is worth it.
A cup of matcha traditionally uses about 2g (usually 1g = $0.50 – $1), and a 2g spoonful usually has about 50mg of cafeeine, give or take depending on many factors. So 4g of matcha to get a 100mg serving of caffeine.
I do NOT recommend varying the amount of caffeine consumed during the days of the week. (At least for myself.) And I’d love to discuss this (and you discuss it with your husband first, so I can get two opinions for the price of one?).
… catechins in matcha …
What about fluoride or fluorine or something like that?
Yes, matcha green tea also naturally contains fluoride, which is a mineral that is important for dental health. However, excessive intake of fluoride can also have negative effects on health. While matcha contains more fluoride than regular green tea, the amount is still relatively low and generally considered safe for consumption when consumed in moderation. It's important to note that if you have any concerns about your fluoride intake, you should speak with your healthcare provider.Blog Post DO NOT BUY CHEAP MATCHA —
that’s how I chipped my tooth. Now, sure, the coconut chipped my tooth…. But as soon as I stopped that matcha (I think I decided to demp it rather than give it away, but I’m not certain).