Tea and Wine

In the Food Report From the Road thread, a reader named Marsha asks:

Hi Dana,
Very sorry to hear about your God Mother!
I have always been a fan of yours and love your cookbooks. I have just today found your new blogs. I was a subscriber of your lowcarbezine and loved that too! I have not had time to read all of your blog but am finding that you talk alot about making a tea and drinking wine! Can you elaborate for me? Does this help with losing weight?
Marsha

I'm sorry to say that neither tea nor wine seem to help me lose weight. I drink them because I like them, and because they are lower carb and more healthful than most of the alternatives.

I've been telling this story for years: Back when I was doing massage in the Chicago suburbs, at a place that, in retrospect, I refer to as The Assholistic Health Care Center*, my veggie-organic colleagues would scold me for my constant consumption of tea. "Tea is bad for you! It has caffeine! It has tannic acid! You should drink herb tea!" they would say.

"No!" I would reply, "Tea is my friend! Tea would not hurt me! My Aunt Grace wouldn't have given me tea if it were bad for me! And besides, why are the leaves of every other freakin' plant on the planet considered "herbs," but the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis are not?" And I'd brew a fresh cup.

Well, I'd had this conversation several times when I saw the story in the Chicago Tribune: Scientists had determined that tea contained the most potent botanical antioxidants yet discovered. Slowed the aging process, they said, and prevented cancer, and kept your teeth from rotting. I quite literally held up the newspaper and danced around the office, sing-songing "Hah-hah-hah-HAH-ha! Hah-hah-hah-HAH-hah!" (Yes, I do have a childish streak. Why do you ask?)

So I drink tea. Lots and lots of tea (she says, having made a fresh pot between the last paragraph and this.) Hot tea in the winter, both hot and iced in the summer. It has no calories, no carbs, no artificial chemicals. Unlike diet soda (or sugared soda, for that matter,) it's not a source of phosphorus, which is hard on bones. And anyway, I loathe soda. All soda. It's nasty. Tea is also cheap-cheap-cheap, unless you insist on buying fancy boutique tea. I don't.

I brew my tea in a thermal carafe, so it stays hot until the last cup. I use two bags per pot. Generally I do a pot with two caffeinated bags first thing in the day, and after that go with half-caf -- one caffeinated bag, one decaf. Keep in mind that my carafe holds at least four big cups of tea, so this isn't super strong tea to start with; I don't get the jitters, though I do stop drinking caffeine at 6 or 6:30 each evening.

I generally make my iced tea with instant. Not iced tea mix, just plain instant tea, that has nothing in it but... well, tea. I drink so much that if I brewed tea from bags for my iced tea, I'd need a ridiculous amount of space in my fridge for jugs of iced tea. Just as with the brewed tea, I keep both regular and decaf instant tea in the house, and mix it according to my desire for caffeine at the moment -- generally more decaf and less caffeine as the day wears on.

Both hot and iced, I drink my tea plain and black, no sweeter, lemon, or milk, just tea. No reason not to add those things if you like them, I just don't.

Why don't I drink the trendier green or white teas? Several reasons, the biggest of which is I simply prefer black tea. Too, I have tried adding a pot or two of green tea to my day, and find the stuff gives me heart burn if I drink more than a cup or so. I haven't tried white tea; it's pricey; but I'd be happy to try it if it were offered.

FYI, green, white, and black tea all come from the same plant, the Camellia Sinensis, it's just that the black tea has been fermented, giving it the characteristic dark color and stronger flavor. Black tea apparently has lower levels of antioxidants than green or white tea, but I drink so much of the stuff it still has to make a substantial contribution to my total antioxidant intake.

What about weight loss? There have been about a billion ads on the internet in recent years suggesting that the tea antioxidant EGCG can cause weight loss. This may be true to a modest degree, but if EGCG were a really powerful weight loss drug I would have vanished years ago. Keep in mind that I have both gained and lost weight, in fairly considerable quantities, all while maintaining a remarkably high daily tea intake. However, I suppose it's possible that if you ditched other beverages, especially soda, for tea, you'd drop a few pounds. Just don't expect miracles.

Heard of "woo-long" or "wu-long" tea, touted as a weight loss miracle? It's just a trade name for oolong tea, a semi-fermented tea that has been around for centuries. Don't pay through the nose for "weight loss tea;" you can buy oolong at any store that stocks gourmet teas. I like the stuff, but generally don't unlimber my wallet to pay for it. (Be aware that other "slimming teas" often are herbal teas with both laxatives and diuretics in them. Read labels!)

Does all of this mean I have something against coffee? Yes; I simply don't like it. That is to say, I've never acquired a taste for hot coffee, whether black, with cream, with sweetener, or with both. I tried in high school, because it seemed sophisticated, but I drank about two cups and gave up. I do like coffee as a flavoring in desserts and such, which means I'd probably like all the super-sugary coffee drinks that are now popular, but of course I've never even considered trying 'em.

That said, coffee, too, has antioxidants in it. If you like it, feel free to enjoy a cup or two, though you know I'm not going to recommend caramel macchiatos or the like.

What about wine? Again, I just like the stuff, dry reds in particular. The really dry wines That Nice Boy I Married and I prefer (we like wines you could light a match on) have very little carb, maybe 1-2 grams per serving, and of course they, too, are a source of antioxidants. There is some controversy about the health benefits of alcohol, but I've read enough to be convinced that at the very worst, moderate drinking isn't hurting me, and it's probably helping. (I read one heart disease researcher who said -- and I'm paraphrasing from memory, here -- "Three decades and billions of dollars spent on research, and the best advice we've come up with so far is, 'Have another drink.'")

Before going low carb, my preferred tipple was beer, and I still drink the occasional light beer, especially with hot food. However, I'm more and more convinced that there are reasons beyond carb count to avoid grains and grain products, and of course beer is a grain product. I am now far more likely to drink wine. (I'm also a big fan of tequila, but drink it only occasionally.)

Unfortunately, alcohol, no matter how low carb (and spirits are carb-free) is hard on the waistline. Why? Because like carbohydrates, your body will burn alcohol preferentially. In other words, when you drink your body has to burn off all the alcohol before it returns to burning fat for fuel. To quote a med journal article I once read, "Alcohol profoundly inhibits lipolysis" -- in other words, it stops fat burning dead. Be aware.

For years I could get away with a drink or two in the evenings and still lose or maintain my weight, but menopause is creeping up on me. I now skip the wine more evenings than not, and find it helps in keeping my weight down. Bums me out, but that's just the way it is. I drink a lot of La Croix sparkling water in the evenings.

One final note: All of this tea and red wine does rather dire things to the color of my teeth. I need to bleach 'em pretty often. Thank heaven for all the good home bleaching kits out nowadays.

So there you go. I hope this information helps.

* Assholistic:adj -- Given to the offensive and/or insensitive overuse of New Age jargon and/or philosophy. Tell me you haven't needed that word. You're welcome.