Green Tea Polyphenols. Nutraceuticals of Modern Life

Abstract

Food is the primary and fundamental requirement for the survival of all living organisms, providing energy, supplying building blocks, and maintaining growth of humans also. It also provides health benefits and protects cellular machinery against deleterious effects of endogenous and exogenous factors that compromise human wellbeing. This the reason why the demand of organic foods, botanical-
derived dietary supplements and health drinks are continuous growing through their traditional channels of natural and health food stores, multinational marketing companies, and e-commerce marketing of mail order and Internet sales. Among all the tea drinking has been a tradition for centuries and remains together with coffee the most widely consumed beverage today. The history of tea drinking dates back more than 4000 years playing an important role in Chinese' social life. A common Chinese saying runs "when we get up in the morning, the first things we should get ready are firewood, rice, edible oil, salt, soy, vinegar and tea”, showing as tea was considered a necessity of life. In ancient times people treated tea only as a medicinal herb and from the Western/Eastern Han Dynasty (206 BC- 220 AD), tea has been planted and formally used as a drink by philosophers and immortals. However, it was in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) that the real Chinese tea culture, including the art, the tea ceremony and a complete expression of cultural philosophy, came into being. In any way, deep penetration into ordinary people's life was the feature of the tea culture of the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911 AD) with the popularization of teahouses, where people of different social strata communicated freely with each other. In conclusion it is interesting to underline that since both food and medicine come from natural plants there is no definite difference between them in the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Thus, dietetic therapy may mean to take food as medicine or to combine food with medicine. Tea drinking has to be considered a healthy food beverage with a drug-like effectiveness.