Green Tea Swap
Last week I ventured into the wonderful world of turmeric with some lazy turmeric tea recipes inspired by an assortment of recipes found online. This week I wanted to try swapping out my drink of choice at lunch, Lipton Citrus Green Tea. I haven't always liked tea. My first taste of tea was boring iced tea which I still don't like and think tastes like raisin water. The flavor and sugar in iced tea never tastes good to me. For darker teas I need some kind of fruit flavoring for it to be palatable.
Like most unhealthy teens I didn't worry about what I consumed daily. Even though I loathe Pepsi I would buy one every day from the vending machine since this was the only soda available. Like a true Texan my favorite soda is Dr Pepper, forever and always. But even though I loved Dr Pepper, especially Dublin Dr Pepper, it didn't love me back. Guzzling soda and junk food like my friends usually made me sick more often then not. I didn't understand it then. Everyone else is doing this. Why am I the only one getting sick? I've learned my stomach can't handle most fast food delicacies and drinking soda only exacerbated this.
After cutting junk food and soda from my diet something amazing happened. I wasn't getting sick all the time. So outside of extreme circumstances I still abstain from soda and junk food. I mostly kept to my standby, water, which never makes me sick. Then I started branching out into other drinks where I eventually came back to tea. I learned about the different varieties and how most of them have health benefits. Green tea, with the mildest flavor, was the easiest to try and stomach. It never made me sick so I thought it could never steer me wrong.
Like another former beverage choice of mine, Frappuccinos!, I didn't think this was doing much harm since it was supposedly green tea. But the amount of sugar in each bottle is too much for me and not the healthiest. I found a correlation between feeling drowsy in the afternoon and drinking this tea. When your tea has as much sugar as a can of soda it is time to reevaluate. So I decided a swap was in order.
Before I swapped one green tea for another I decided to see how much of an effect this would have on my energy levels after lunch by just drinking water. While it was boring and I almost always ran out of water by the end of the day, I bring a giant tumbler filled with water into the office, the results were enlightening.
I wasn't so addicted to caffeine that I needed a huge jolt in the middle of the day or I would be jonsing for the rest of the day. There are plenty of times I skipped a caffeinated drink and didn't suffer. Even with this knowledge I was a bit shocked at the difference the swap from Lipton Green Tea to water was. I felt much more awake, no after lunch slump, and also didn't have a slick coating of sugary residue on my teeth.
Instead of finding another bottled tea I decided to brew my own since it is super easy and I doubted any bottled teas would have zero sugar. I made my own green tea concoction from the Celestial Seasonings Green Tea and Ginseng, available everywhere, because it looked the most flavorful and closest dupe to what I used to drink. I brewed a single serving the night before and put it in the fridge to chill over night.
I wasn't sure if I would like the taste of this green tea cold but it was so much more flavorful than the Lipton Green Tea. Instead of the usual rush and come down I felt a nice subtle amount of energy, which could also be the placebo effect!
Another problem with drinking Lipton Green Tea during lunch was the bottle contains around a pint of liquid and I quickly need to use the bathroom after consuming the whole thing. I cut my green tea brew to half of this which is enough to quench my thirst without making me run to bathroom right away. Even after I finished the Lipton Green Tea I usually still felt thirsty even though I drank more than enough liquid. Another successful drink swap!
