Five best different types of green tea for health and fitness   by Gavin Edley

There are many blends and types of green teas that you can buy, but which one is the best for your health?

Here we work down the 5 most powerful.

Before I begin, I have to explain that the antioxidant/nutrient level of just about any tea can also be reliant on the growing environments and the point in time at which the tea is actually harvested.

And even though a lot of these points are often the ones that inevitably identify the 'type' of tea it is classed as, there nevertheless remains to be some degree of variation in nutrient/antioxidant values in the various categories of teas - depending on the quality of the tea itself.

5. Longjing

Longjing is a massively popular Chinese green tea, and the sort of leaf you will sometimes find in supermarket and lots of popular blends of tea.

Filled with vitamin C, amino acids, plus a powerful content level of catechins, this variety of tea can also have even more incarnations - which means the level of previously mentioned nutrients and vitamins can in fact differ from type-to-type of LongJing.

Bai Longjing (albeit theoretically not really a genuine LongJing tea), is said to be the one LongJing to deliver the most amino acid content.

4. Kukicha

Kukicha green tea is basically a by-product associated with sencha or gyokuro tea (see no. 2) - made up of stems, stalks and twigs.

It is because of its simple, unrefined formula that it has turned into a popular staple of the 'macrobiotic diet' which precisely avoids the intake of refined or processed food products.

3. Schincha

Schincha is a Japanese green tea that essentially translates to 'new tea' i.e. the earliest, young new leaves from the plant which develop at the begining of Springtime.

Due to the fact the leaves are picked so early on, they comprise concentrated nutrients that the tea plant has held onto through the entire wintertime.

Whilst it contains a high vitamin and amino acid content, catechin content is rather low (which has been found to have cancer-fighting properties). And so, on to our number 2 rated tea with regard to health qualities.

2. Gyokuro

Gyokuro is shade-grown for approximately the final twenty days of growth - enabling the crops to fill with a good content level of amino acids and vitamins.

In addition to the health advantages, Gyokuro also features a specific aroma and sweet taste shared by our number one standing green tea.

1. Matcha

Matcha is actually grown in a really similar fashion to Gyokuro. The key variation comes about through the processing of the tea.

Matcha is crushed on traditional stone-mills whereas Gyokuro is left to look like a normal green tea (dried up leaves). Because of this, with matcha, you actually consume the tea leaves themselves.

And because the development process makes it possible for these leaves to fill with a content level of amino acids and nutritional vitamins, you will get the immediate benefit from this with a volume of potency equalled by no other green tea.

And so, there it is, our top 5 green teas based upon their health qualities.