Nerada Organic, Fair Trade Green Tea

I have always been a tea person (if you didn’t see my crazy tea haul from last time… still working on the reviews on those…) and many of you would probably have heard the many different benefits of Green Tea.

Here’s a list of some of its amazing benefits — benefits that you may not have been aware of. Some of these benefits are still being debated, so please do your own research if you want to use green tea for medicinal purposes.

1. Weight Loss. Green tea increases the metabolism. The polyphenol found in green tea works to intensify levels of fat oxidation and the rate at which your body turns food into calories.
2. Diabetes. Green tea apparently helps regulate glucose levels slowing the rise of blood sugar after eating. This can prevent high insulin spikes and resulting fat storage.
3. Heart Disease. Scientists think, green tea works on the lining of blood vessels, helping keep them stay relaxed and better able to withstand changes in blood pressure. It may also protect against the formation of clots, which are the primary cause of heart attacks.
4. Esophageal Cancer. It can reduce the risk of esophageal cancer, but it is also widely thought to kill cancer cells in general without damaging the healthy tissue around them.
5. Cholesterol. Green tea reduces bad cholesterol in the blood and improves the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol.
6. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It is said to delay the deterioration caused by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Studies carried out on mice showed that green tea protected brain cells from dying and restored damaged brain cells.
7. Tooth Decay. Studies suggests that the chemical antioxidant “catechin” in tea can destroy bacteria and viruses that cause throat infections, dental caries and other dental conditions
8. Blood Pressure. Regular consumption of green tea is thought to reduce the risk of high blood pressure.
9. Depression. Theanine is an amino acid naturally found in tea leaves. It is this substance that is thought to provide a relaxing and tranquilizing effect and be a great benefit to tea drinkers.
10. Anti-viral and Anti-bacterial. Tea catechins are strong antibacterial and antiviral agents which make them effective for treating everything from influenza to cancer. In some studies green tea has been shown to inhibit the spread of many diseases.
11. Skincare. Green tea can apparently also help with wrinkles and the signs of aging, This is because of their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. Both animal and human studies have demonstrated that green tea applied topically can reduce sun damage.

Source:http://chinesefood.about.com/library/weekly/aa011400a.htm

Pretty great huh? I’ve also heard that drinking green tea could decrease your chance of getting cancer in general due to its antioxidant properties. Say whaaaat?

The other day, I saw a box of Organic, Fair Trade Green Tea by Nerada on sale at my local supermarket for $3 for 50 tea bags! I didn’t hesitate to grab it.

I had my first cup of it today and I would like to do a quick review of this.

Nerada Fair Trade, Organic Green Tea

Scent: 4/5 — I love the smell of the teabags straight out of the box! Though it’s not as fragrant as jasmine tea but I wouldn’t mind if my room smelt like that. It smells slightly sweet but still “plain” and fresh. Sorry if I suck at describing things.

Taste: 4/5 — I wouldn’t classify this as having a strong taste or anything. I quite like it, though I still prefer a jasmine and slightly sweetened tea but hey for all those health benefits, I’d drink this any day – it was quite pleasant tasting anyway.

Packaging: 2/5 — As you can see, it came in a green box and for $3, I was not surprised that the tea bags weren’t individually packaged. However, I was a little disappointed with how flimsy the bags were. I actually made a couple of cups today for my parents (might as well, while I was at it…). ONE, I accidentally dropped the paper handle of one of the tea bags into the boiling water and when I pulled it out, it fell off the string. Now, this was not the first time I’ve done this (I’m pretty clumsy) and none of the other ones have fallen off like this, so I was a little sad to see this. TWO, I was gently ripping off the paper handle off the bag on the 2nd tea bag and it ripped the top of the tea bag. Now I thought that the tea were going to float out of the bags everywhere so I had to dunk the tea bags carefully – none came out in the end.

Colour: 3/5 — Average. It’s not as green as a few other green teas I’ve had but it’s not ugly either.

More Comments: As an added bonus to all the health benefits listed above, this tea is cheap, organic AND fair trade! Plus, as suggested by BubzBeauty and MichellePhan on youtube, you can make a facemasks and scrubs with the used teabags!

I hope you found this haul/review useful and if you have tried this tea before, do comment below and share what you think about this tea!

Lots of Smiles,

Sita

Kale Chips

Seasoned Kale in the dehydrator along with other veggies my mum is dehydrating.

Recently I found a fitness website called Blogilates. It is getting rather popular on youtube right now with many success stories, healthy recipes, etc posted on their website.

While browsing around the “recipes” section, I found this recipe for Kale Chips and Cassey (the owner and host of Blogilates) said that it tastes like Doritos! And it’s KALE! A super-food  I hear there’s heaps of benefits from eating kale – some a little unbelievable. But if you want you can do a quick search on google or read this.

I gave up eating deep friend around 5 years ago but I still gave in when it comes to potato chips and Doritos until about a year ago. If this recipe is a success, not only can I eat this healthy snack, but I can also share this with my family and promote a healthier diet. So I have high hopes!

Since my family and I were going to go travel for 2 weeks, we had to “clean out” our fridge – meaning buy nothing new and eat what’s there. We still had a bag of kale left and didn’t know what to do with them since that was our first time seeing and buying Kale. So I decided to make kale chips.

Dehydrate at 145 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours…

I followed Cassey’s recipe except for the fact that we didn’t have any sunflower seeds nor cashews as suggested by the source recipe – we only had peanuts, so we used that instead. After dehydrating them for about 4 hours (we left it a little longer since we were out of the house for a couple of hours to do some last minute shopping for travel) they came out about half the size and super crispy! I think that’s what we’re going for?

The Finished Product

The taste? Um… a little weird… Mine didn’t turn out to taste like Doritos, possibly because we used peanuts. But hey, still edible and pretty yummy.

One thing I found weird in the recipe was that on Cassey’s blog, it says if I use the oven to bake it for 5 minutes, toss then bake for another 5 but on the source recipe that Cassey mentioned, it says to bake for 3-4 hours. What a huge difference! Let me know if any of you tried baking them.

Nutritional Yeast

I also had a really hard time trying to figure out what “Nutritional Yeast” was. There was so many warnings saying that it’s different from a brewers’ yeast. I almost used bakers yeast (which I did find very weird) since I thought this was the same thing. Luckily I searched around a bit more and found out that it is definitely not bakers yeast. I searched around some more and found out that there are a few alternative names to “Nutritional Yeast” – Savoury Yeast Flakes is what it’s called here in Australia. Unluckily, my local supermarket didn’t carry it. So I had to go on an adventure to go to a pharmacy (out of all places) at a suburb nearby and got a 200gr packet for AU$14.95 – which is like WHAAAA?? why you so expensive??? 😦

If you are in Perth, Western Australia and looking for nutritional yeast and you are not in a hurry, I definitely suggest to try order them online. I think I saw a 500gr packet for just under $20 and a 200gr packet for about $11. But I was in a hurry, so I bought mine at Pharmacy 777 in Cottesloe.

Anyway, I hope you like my little review of this recipe. It was definitely an adventure trying to find “Nutritional Yeast”. I hope it was useful know how I did mine and maybe (just maybe) inspire you to go eat healthier alternatives to over-processed foods.

Have you tried making Kale Chips? How was yours?

 

Lots of Smiles,

Sita.

Way back to exercising (1): my injuries

Right now, I have 2 injured knees and I am trying to get back into exercising again. I want to exercise to keep my body weight balanced and to maintain a healthy life. You  know, better than being a couch potato. This post will contain the story of my 2 injuries.

The Knee

I used to dance A LOT. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always idolised ballerinas. When I was 4 years old, mum put me in to a ballet school and started a pre-primary class with a ballet school which follows the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) syllabus and grading system (known world wide). By the time I was 13 or 14 years old, I was dancing more than 10 hours a week. Add the compulsory school “Physical Education” periods (sports), and Tae Kwon Do classes I started when I was 14, I was doing 15 hours of exercises/week.

When I was 16, I injured myself. The story is very lame and silly. I jumped (while doing a jumping Tae Kwon Do kick) and landed funny on my leg, ripping a ligament on the right knee (ACL). I of course would still LOVE to continue with Ballet and Tae Kwon Do so we decided to do the ACL reconstruction surgery.

Unfortunately, the next year was my final year at school. My knee was not getting as strong as I would like it to be before I started a few classes again so I decided to take a break that year.

Knee Cartilage

First year of uni came and I started dancing again – for fun. I went to a few beginner classes (because I don’t know how much I could do) and did a few performances for my residential college. I did the same in 2nd year and had planned to do the same in third year. However, during one of the quality checks of one of the performances in third year, I, again, did a jump during one of my dance pieces, fell and hurt my knee yet again. But this time, it was the cartilage on my left knee. Lets just say, A LOT of money went into physiotherapist fees.

It’s been a year since then and my left knee is still weak and I am terrified to hurt it again when I jump on it. However, I am determined to slowly get back into dancing and exercising again like I used to. Don’t worry, I put extra attention into my knees and don’t do anything that would make them feel like they’d be hurt again.

What am I doing right now? I am following a Yoga app on my phone and X-Box 360 + Kinnect fitness games. I will do reviews on things I come across. Though keep in mind of my needs – slowly getting back into exercise with emphasis on keeping my knee un-injured.

That is all for today and I hope you can benefit from this new series on my blog! Don’t forget to follow my blog, favourite this post and give me feedback!

Lots of Smiles,

Sita