How Lemon Quintuples Tea's Antioxidant Power

How can you get a whole lot more antioxidant benefit out of your green tea?  Just add lemon!

Purdue University research found that adding either citrus juice or vitamin C (found in all-natural True Citrus!) to green tea increases the amount of antioxidants available for the body to absorb.

These good-for-you antioxidants, called “catechins” are linked to fighting cancer, heart problems, cardiovascular diseases, high cholesterol levels, and more.  However, these catechins are unstable in the intestines, and less than 20 percent typically remain after digestion.

But lemon juice added to tea increased the catechin levels after digestion by more than five times. With the lemon juice, 80 percent of tea's catechins remained. And the absorbic acid, or Vitamin C, added to ready-to-drink tea products increased the recovered levels of the two most abundant antioxidants by six times and thirteen times.

Following lemon, in terms of stabilizing antioxidants, were orange, lime and grapefruit juices.

The study’s author, Purdue associate professor Mario Ferruzzi, said both vitamin C and citrus juices interact with catechins to prevent degradation in the intestines.  "If you want more out of your green tea, add some citrus juice to your cup after brewing or pick a ready-to-drink product formulated with ascorbic acid," Ferruzzi said.

True Lemon contains ascorbic acid from natural lemons, and provides 25% of the U.S. RDA of Vitamin C.  So make it a habit to sprinkle a packet of True Lemon, True Lime or True Orange into your green tea for a long-lasting antioxidant boost!

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