The Ultimate Tea Diet (A Book Review)

When Collins.gather.com offered its members a chance to review this wonderful book, The Ultimate Tea Diet, by Dr. Tea, aka Mark Urka, I jumped at the chance. I had read about several different studies on the health benefits of drinking tea and wanted to drink more for that reason alone. With the help of a friend who is a tea aficionado, I had also recently found several teas I really like.

The concept of combining tea drinking with weight loss really appealed to me as two months ago I had given up drinking diet soda and was attempting to eat only nutrition-packed, healthy foods. It seemed easier when I drank something sweet, but I had replaced those sodas with plain water and I was determined not to drink even one again.

Like most of you I was aware that the ancients believed tea offered medicinal benefits. I also have purchased at least half of the diet books published, so I wondered if this book would be more of the same. I also wanted to learn more about the ceremonial drinking of tea and its history and hoped he might have fattened up the book with those kinds of tidbits. I wasn't disappointed, thankfully.

Dr. Tea ended up educating me about a lot more than weight loss and tradition. For instance, here is the first passage that intrigued me:

"The secret is the synergy of tea's three main ingredients: caffeine, L-theanine and epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG)..."

Why would these things matter with regard to dieting, you ask? Most diets are based on taking something away. Dr. Tea's diet actually adds something. When tea is incorporated into the diet, it has a triple effect. Those three ingredients help it increase metabolism, raise the dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain and give the dieter a feeling of satiety. This trio helps the dieter feel better. As it is a gradual thing, portions are lowered and he or she becomes more active with less body mass to drag around as the cycle of health is further improved.

According to Dr. Tea, without having to endure that feeling of deprivation, the body begins to metabolize better and the person feels less hungry. Thus the person loses weight in a healthy way as it becomes a true lifestyle change. We all know changing bad habits is the only lasting way to diet, but Dr. Tea doesn't just lecture, he makes a plan for us.

Dr. Tea's book supplies very inspiring anecdotes from his clients who have followed his program throughout the years and he tells his own story. They all translate into hope.

I was further surprised when I realized he provides wonderful recipes for incorporating tea into the foods we eat. When he elaborates on the health benefits of tea, he is passionate about it and that is inspiring, but he makes it plain that drinking or eating large amounts have the greatest health benefits.

Here's a sample recipe:

Oven-roasted Tea Asparagus

1 lb. medium-thick asparagus

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon finely ground tea (one you love)

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

This recipe goes on to tell you how to prepare and bake the asparagus, of course, and it is obvious this is extremely nutritious. Now that I have read this book, flavoring food with tea seems perfectly logical. However it would never have occurred to me that adding tea would be the equivalent of adding other healthy ingredients like wheat germ, garlic and onions.

A fact that surprised me was that most of the drinks we call teas in this country are not really tea at all. Real teas, Dr. Tea tells us, all come from the plant Camellia Sinensis. If you are drinking an herbal 'tea', it is not tea at all but an herbal drink. The latter are also called 'tisanes' and have not been linked or studied with regard to the healing medicinal qualities the true teas have.

Hence, drinking the water from plants, seeds, bark, roots or flowers of other plants may not reduce your risk of developing cancer or provide the calming effect you can expect from the L-Theanine in real tea.

When Dr. Tea explains the perfection of the tea plant he describes how its caffeine component's negative effect on the nerves is counter-balanced by this wonderful non-protein amino acid, L-Theanine. Dr. Tea writes:

"Several minutes after the caffeine has entered your system, the L-theanine is secreted from the small intestine into the blood system and into the brain where it stimulates alpha brain waves, which produce a state of relaxed and effortless alertness, thus canceling out the harmful effects of caffeine. Since caffeine has already reached the brain and gotten a bit of a head start, so to speak, you will still get that short wake-up blast you want in the morning - but without the jitters and palpitations that come from other caffeinated beverages."

I must admit that having this advantage alone might be enough, but Dr. Tea's revelations of this almost magical chemistry continues:

When stress levels decrease, so do levels of cortisol, a hormone that, when stimulated, increases appetite and influences where body fat will be stored (mainly in the abdominal region).

Now I love my coffee lattes, but if I am getting twice the caffeine and none of the health benefits I would achieve with a chai latte? That seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? Dr. Tea doesn't expect the reader to take his word for it, however, and this book is packed with scientific information, understandably explained with the sources for those claims disclosed.

I felt like Dr. Tea respected the reader's intelligence, by the way, which is rare in any self-help book. His writing style is personable, but he doesn't talk down to anyone. He seems to sincerely wish to share a wonderful passion with the reader.

He has lots of great advice. For instance, instead of assaulting one's body and ruining one's liver with a slew of chemicals and the deadly high fructose corn syrup in sodas, Dr. Tea has a better idea. He proposes that the EGCG in tea with its antioxidant properties combined with caffeine might actually help the pancreas lower the insulin level in your bloodstream. The chapter on the metabolics of tea goes into the complete explanation, and it is fascinating reading, particularly for those who are prone to put their bodies into unhealthy carbohydrate overload or suffer from insulin resistance.

With so many of us becoming obese in this country, if there is something as simple as changing what we drink, shouldn't we at least investigate it? It is almost mind boggling how much this could mean in the reduction of suffering and the medical price tag. Just a few more of the benefits Dr. Tea recites:

Boosts the immune system; fights inflammation; increases the immune cells to react better to resist infection; Sjogren's syndrome (dry mouth disease that affects many post-menopausal women and elderly men) affects 5% of Chinese and 30% of Americans; links between tea-drinking and prevention of heart disease as it reduces cholesterol; reduction of the risk of developing hypertension by 65%; EGCG is believed to signal cancer cells to stop reproducing and there are hundreds of studies supporting tea drinking's ability to reduce the incidence of ovarian, lung, prostate and other cancers.

I don't want to imply with this review that the author gets overly scientific, but he does make his case and gives supporting data. Those of you who are red meat eaters will be thrilled with another of the facts in his book. Rather than having to give up this protein source, you can apply a tea rub on all surfaces of the meat before cooking. This inhibits the formation of the compounds (mutagens) that increase the risk of developing both breast and colon cancer.

Here is a rub recipe from the book, which sounds delicious to me:

Steak Tea Rub

4 teaspoons ground black pepper

4 teaspoons chili powder

4 teaspoons packed light or dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons finely ground dry oolong tea

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon paprika

Mix all ingredients together and use generously. Makes about 6 tablespoons.

Dr. Tea is not a sadist, however, nor does he expect us to change ourselves overnight and give up all our bad habits. In his book he seeks to enlighten us with information about the addictive power of caffeine without the calming effects of L-theanine, which is only contained in tea.

He states that a Starbuck's coffee has approximately 372 milligrams of caffeine as opposed to about 100 milligrams in a 2 ounce shot of espresso. (Yes, that's right. Espresso is much less addictive.) However, if, like me, you will not give up that first cup of coffee (or latte in my case), then his advice is to drink a cup of tea as soon after the coffee as practical. At least in this way one gets the benefits of introducing L-theanine into one's body.

This book isn't just about tea but a tea-ful lifestyle, and there certainly are wonderful tips on preparing it. One of them is to first pour hot water into the teapot and swish it around. Then discard the water before putting the tea in and pouring the boiling water into the pot. The reason, Dr. Tea explains, is to give the tea leaf the full benefit of its flavor by not shocking it first with cold and then with hot water. I tried this for the first time yesterday, and I have to admit the tea was stronger and more flavorful. If one does not want the extra caffeine from tea, Dr. Tea explains that the leaves can be re-steeped over again. After the first steeping the tea does not release the same amount of caffeine.

Dr. Tea includes among other information shopping hints, a sample diet, recipes, an exercise plan and the history of tea in the book. All of this will certainly make you a fascinating conversationalist whether at a dinner or tea party. Am I sold on this concept and this diet? You bet I am, but I am also excited and inspired. After just a few days of drinking several pots of tea a day, I have found I am feeling much calmer. Last night I feel asleep about two hours earlier than my normal night owl behavior.

Would I suggest you buy the book? Absolutely! Start reading it in a bookstore and I know you'll come home with at least one copy. I'm buying a copy for each of my kids. Really. I started to tell them about everything Dr. Tea had written, but it's better if they read it for themselves. Who knows, it may not only change their future health but that of their kids. Besides, my husband won't notice or care if the steaks have a new marinade, and I can drink myself into a pleasant dopamine and serotonin haze and lose weight at the same time. I have felt less hungry already and expect in time, based on the research in the book, I'll soon be wearing my belt on a different notch.

There's a lot more one can learn from this book than how to lose weight, just as there is a lot to be learned from the thousands of years people have been drinking tea in the Far East. Honestly, when I started this book I was looking for an easier, softer way to diet. Who isn't? It was amazing that I got so much more out of it.

If you have not been a tea fan, perhaps you need this primer on preparation and the types of tea. There are so many tea choices that the variations are endless. Ofcourse the author shares with the reader the single most important thing about tea. Don't treat it like a medicine. Always drink and cook only with the tea you love. The rest will happen naturally.

So what did my granddaughter and I do today? Why we had a tea party, of course!