Matcha is having a moment. What are the health benefits of this green tea drink?

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Matcha has experienced a surge in popularity in recent months, leading to reports of global shortages and price increases.

If you haven’t been caught up in the craze, matcha is a powdered version of green tea. On a cafe menu you might see a hot or iced matcha latte, or even a matcha-flavoured cake or pastry. A quick google brings up countless recipes incorporating matcha, both sweet and savoury.

Retailers and cafe owners have suggested the main reasons for matcha’s popularity include its “instagrammable” looks and its purported health benefits.

But what are the health benefits of matcha? Here’s what the evidence says.

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

First, what is matcha?

Matcha is a finely ground powder of green tea leaves, which come from the plant Camellia sinensis. This is the same plant used to make green and black tea. However, the production process differentiates matcha from green and black tea.

For matcha, the tea plant is grown in shade. Once the leaves are harvested, they’re steamed and dried and the stems are removed. Then the leaves are carefully ground at controlled temperatures to form the powder.

The production process for green tea is simpler. The leaves are picked from the unshaded plants, heated and then dried. We then steep the dried leaves in hot water to get tea (whereas with matcha the whole leaf is consumed).

With black tea, after the leaves are picked they’re exposed to air, which leads to oxidation. This makes the leaves black and gives the tea a different flavour.

Hands holding a cup of matcha.
In countries such as Japan, matcha is traditionally whisked with water and served in a stone bowl. Charlotte May/Pexels

A source of phytonutrients

Phytonutrients are chemical compounds found in plants which have a range of benefits for human health. Matcha contains several.

Chlorophyll gives plants such as Camellia sinensis their green colour. There’s some evidence chlorophyll may have health benefits – including anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-obesity effects – due to its antioxidant properties. Antioxidants neutralise free radicals, which are unstable molecules that harm our cells.

Theanine has been shown to improve sleep and reduce stress and anxiety. The only other known dietary source of theanine is mushrooms.

Caffeine is a phytonutrient we know well. Aside from increasing alertness, caffeine has also demonstrated antioxidant effects and some protection against a range of chronic and neurodegenerative diseases. However, too much caffeine can have negative side effects.

Interestingly, shading the plants while growing appears to change the nutritional composition of the leaf and may lead to higher levels of these phytonutrients in matcha compared to green tea.

Another compound worth mentioning is called catechins, of which there are several different types. Matcha powder similarly has more catechins than green tea. They are strong antioxidants, which have been shown to have protective effects against bacteria, viruses, allergies, inflammation and cancer. Catechins are also found in apples, blueberries and strawberries.

What are the actual health benefits?

So we know matcha contains a variety of phytonutrients, but does this translate to noticeable health benefits?

A review published in 2023 identified only five experimental studies that have given matcha to people. These studies gave participants about 2–4g of matcha per day (equivalent to 1–2 teaspoons of matcha powder), compared to a placebo, as either a capsule, in tea or in foods. Matcha decreased stress and anxiety, and improved memory and cognitive function. There was no effect on mood.

A more recent study showed 2g of matcha in older people aged 60 to 85 improved sleep quality. However, in younger people aged 27 to 64 in another study, matcha had little effect on sleep.

A study in people with obesity found no difference in the weight loss observed between the matcha group and the control group. This study did not randomise participants, and people knew which group they had been placed in.

It could be hypothesised that given you consume all of the leaf, and given levels of some phytonutrients may be higher due to the growing conditions, matcha may have more nutritional benefits than green tea. But to my knowledge there has been no direct comparison of health outcomes from green tea compared to matcha.

A matcha latte in a black cup on a brown table.
Matcha has grown in popularity – but evidence for its health benefits is still limited. Usanee/Shutterstock

There’s lots of evidence for green tea

While to date a limited number of studies have looked at matcha, and none compared matcha and green tea, there’s quite a bit of research on the health benefits of drinking green tea.

A systematic review of 21 studies on green tea has shown similar benefits to matcha for improvements in memory, plus evidence for mood improvement.

There’s also evidence green tea provides other health benefits. Systematic reviews have shown green tea leads to weight loss in people with obesity, lower levels of certain types of cholesterol, and reduced blood pressure. Green tea may also lower the risk of certain types of cancer.

So, if you can’t get your hands on matcha at the moment, drinking green tea may be a good way to get your caffeine hit.

Although the evidence on green tea provides us with some hints about the health benefits of matcha, we can’t be certain they would be the same. Nonetheless, if your local coffee shop has a good supply of matcha, there’s nothing to suggest you shouldn’t keep enjoying matcha drinks.

However, it may be best to leave the matcha croissant or cronut for special occasions. When matcha is added to foods with high levels of added sugar, salt and saturated fat, any health benefits that could be attributed to the matcha may be negated.

Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Myofascial Training – by Ester Albini

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Fascia is an oft-forgotten part of the body—if something that is so ubiquitous and varied can be described as a single part. And yet, it arguably is—precisely because it is the connective tissue that holds everything else together, so by its nature, it’s ultimately a one-piece thing.

    This “one-piece thing” is responsible for permitting us movement, and is also responsible for restricting our movement. As such, when it comes to mobility, we can stretch our muscles all day long and it won’t mean a thing if our fascia is stiff. And notably, fascia has a much slower turnover time (in terms of how quickly the body replaces it) than muscle, so fascia is almost always going to be the limiting factor.

    Pilates instructor (with many certifications) Albini gives the reader the tools to loosen up that limiting factor. It’ll take time and consistency (it takes the body around 18 months to fully rebuild fascia, so that’s the timeframe for an ultimate “job done” to then just be maintained), but there are also some results to be enjoyed immediately, by virtue of myofascial release

    In style, the book is half textbook, half workbook. She explains a lot of the anatomy and physiology of fascia (and does so very well). This book is, in this reviewer’s opinion, better than the usual go-to professional guidebook to fascia (i.e., for physiotherapists etc) that costs more than twice the price and is half as clear (the other book’s diagrams are unnecessarily abstract, the photos fuzzy, and the prose tedious). This book, in contrast, has very clear diagrams, hundreds of high-quality color photos, and excellent explanations that are aimed at the layperson, and/but aren’t afraid to get technical either; she just explains the technicalities well too.

    The workbook side of things is a vast array of exercises to do, including for specific issues and to combat various lifestyle problems, as well as to just support general health and more mobility than most people think is possible for them.

    Bottom line: if you’d like better mobility and have been neglecting your fascia (or have been a bit confused by it), this book is going to be your new best friend.

    Click there to check out Myofascial Training, and free your body’s movements!

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  • Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝Is it good to eat farm raised fish?❞

    We’ll answer this as a purely health-related question (and thus not considering economy, ecology, ethics, or taste).

    It’s certainly not as good as wild-caught fish, for several reasons, some more serious than others:

    Farmed fish can have quite a different nutritional profile to wild-caught fish, and also contain more contaminants, including heavy metals.

    For example, farmed fish tend to have much higher fat content for the same amount of protein, but lower levels of minerals and other nutrients. Here are two side-by-side:

    Wild-caught salmon | Farmed salmon

    See also:

    Quantitative analysis of the benefits and risks of consuming farmed and wild salmon

    Additionally, because fish in fish farms tend to be very susceptible to diseases (because of the artificially cramped and overcrowded environment), fish farms tend to make heavy use of antibiotics, which can cause all sorts of problems down the line:

    Extended antibiotic treatment in salmon farms select multiresistant gut bacteria with a high prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes

    So definitely, “let the buyer beware”!

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  • Dandelion Greens vs Collard Greens – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing dandelion greens to collard greens, we picked the dandelion greens.

    Why?

    Collard greens are great—they even beat kale in one of our previous “This or That” articles!—but dandelion greens simply pack more of a nutritional punch:

    In terms of macros, dandelions have slightly more carbs (+3g/100g) for the same protein and fiber, and/but the glycemic index is equal (zero), so those carbs aren’t anything to worry about. Nobody is getting metabolic disease by getting their carbs from dandelion leaves. In short, we’re calling it a tie on macros, though it could nominally swing either way if you have an opinion (one way or the other) about the extra 3g of carbs.

    In the category of vitamins, things are more exciting: dandelion greens have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, C, E, and K, while collard greens have more vitamin B5. An easy and clear win for dandelions.

    Looking at the minerals tells a similar story; dandelion greens have much more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while collard greens have slightly more manganese. Another overwhelming win for dandelions.

    One more category, polyphenols. We’d be here until next week if we listed all the polyphenols that dandelion greens have, but suffice it to say, dandelion greens have a total of 385.55mg/100g polyphenols, while collard greens have a total of 0.08mg/100g polyphenols. Grabbing a calculator, we see that this means dandelions have more than 4819x the polyphenol content that collard greens do.

    So, “eat leafy greens” is great advice, but they are definitely not all created equal!

    Let us take this moment to exhort: if you have any space at home where you can grow dandelions, grow them!

    Not only are they great for pollinators, but also they beat the collard greens that beat kale. And you can have as much as you want, for free, right there.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Collard Greens vs Kale – Which is Healthier?

    Enjoy!

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    In this week’s health news round up, we cover menopausal disordered eating, air pollution & Alzheimer’s, and cold sore comebacks:

    When the body starts changing…

    Eating disorders are often thought of as a “teenage girl thing”. But in fact, eating disorders in girls/women mostly occur along with “the three Ps”:

    • Puberty
    • Pregnancy
    • Perimenopause & menopause

    In very many cases, it’s likely “my body is changing and I have strong opinions on how it should be”. Those opinions are often reflective of societal norms and pressures, but still, they are earnestly felt also. In the case of pregnancy, the societal pressures and standards are generally lifted while pregnant, but come back immediately postpartum, with an expectation to rebound quickly into the same shape one was in beforehand. And in the case of menopause, this is often concurrent with a sense of loss of identity, and can be quite reactionary against what is generally considered to be the ravages of time.

    Of course, looking after one’s health is great at any age, and certainly there is no reason not to pursue health goals and try to get one’s body the way one wants it. However, it is all-too-easy for people to fall into the trap of taking drastic steps that are not actually that healthy, in the hopes of quick results.

    Further, 13% of women over 50 report current core eating disorder symptoms, and that is almost certain vastly underreported.

    Read in full: Eating disorders don’t just affect teen girls—the risk may also go up around pregnancy and menopause

    Related: Body Image Dissatisfaction/Appreciation Across The Ages From Age 16 To Age 88

    Where there’s smoke…

    It’s been known for a while that air pollution is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease incidence, but exactly how this happens has not been entirely clear, beyond that it involves S-nitrosylation, in which NO-related particles bind to sulfur (S) atoms, forming SNO (and scientists being how they are, the term for the resultant brain effect has been called a SNO-STORM).

    However, researchers have now found that it has to do with how certain toxins in the air (notwithstanding our heading here, they don’t have to be smoke—it can be household chemicals or other things too) cause this resultant SNO to interfere with protein CRTC1, which is critical for forming/maintaining connections between brain cells.

    This is important, because it means that if a drug can be made that selectively blocks S-nitrosylatoin actions affecting CRTC1, it can reverse a lot of Alzheimer’s brain damage (as was found in the laboratory, when testing the theory with CRTC1 proteins that had been genetically engineered to resist S-nitrosylation, which is not something we can do with living human brains yet, but it is “proof of principle” and means funding will likely be forthcoming to find drugs to do the same thing).

    Read in full: Study reveals how air pollution contributes to Alzheimer’s disease

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    The virus that comes back from the cold

    Cold sores are created by the Herpes simplex virus (yes, the same one as for the genital variety), and by adulthood, most of us are either infected (and periodically get cold sores), or else infected (as an asymptomatic carrier). A noteworthy minority, but a minority nevertheless, are immune. Unless you’ve never had physical contact with other humans, it’s highly unlikely you’re not in one of the above three categories.

    For those who do get cold sores, they can seem random in their reoccurrence, but in reality the virus never went away; it was just dormant for a while.

    This much was known already, but scientists have now identified the trigger protein (known as “UL 12.5” to its friends) that acts as an alarm clock for the virus—which may pave the way to a greatly-improved treatment, if a way can be found to safely interfere with that wake-up call:

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    Take care!

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  • What will aged care look like for the next generation? More of the same but higher out-of-pocket costs

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Aged care financing is a vexed problem for the Australian government. It is already underfunded for the quality the community expects, and costs will increase dramatically. There are also significant concerns about the complexity of the system.

    In 2021–22 the federal government spent A$25 billion on aged services for around 1.2 million people aged 65 and over. Around 60% went to residential care (190,000 people) and one-third to home care (one million people).

    The final report from the government’s Aged Care Taskforce, which has been reviewing funding options, estimates the number of people who will need services is likely to grow to more than two million over the next 20 years. Costs are therefore likely to more than double.

    The taskforce has considered what aged care services are reasonable and necessary and made recommendations to the government about how they can be paid for. This includes getting aged care users to pay for more of their care.

    But rather than recommending an alternative financing arrangement that will safeguard Australians’ aged care services into the future, the taskforce largely recommends tidying up existing arrangements and keeping the status quo.

    No Medicare-style levy

    The taskforce rejected the aged care royal commission’s recommendation to introduce a levy to meet aged care cost increases. A 1% levy, similar to the Medicare levy, could have raised around $8 billion a year.

    The taskforce failed to consider the mix of taxation, personal contributions and social insurance which are commonly used to fund aged care systems internationally. The Japanese system, for example, is financed by long-term insurance paid by those aged 40 and over, plus general taxation and a small copayment.

    Instead, the taskforce puts forward a simple, pragmatic argument that older people are becoming wealthier through superannuation, there is a cost of living crisis for younger people and therefore older people should be required to pay more of their aged care costs.

    Separating care from other services

    In deciding what older people should pay more for, the taskforce divided services into care, everyday living and accommodation.

    The taskforce thought the most important services were clinical services (including nursing and allied health) and these should be the main responsibility of government funding. Personal care, including showering and dressing were seen as a middle tier that is likely to attract some co-payment, despite these services often being necessary to maintain independence.

    The task force recommended the costs for everyday living (such as food and utilities) and accommodation expenses (such as rent) should increasingly be a personal responsibility.

    Aged care resident eats dinner from a tray
    Aged care users will pay more of their share for cooking and cleaning.
    Lizelle Lotter/Shutterstock

    Making the system fairer

    The taskforce thought it was unfair people in residential care were making substantial contributions for their everyday living expenses (about 25%) and those receiving home care weren’t (about 5%). This is, in part, because home care has always had a muddled set of rules about user co-payments.

    But the taskforce provided no analysis of accommodation costs (such as utilities and maintenance) people meet at home compared with residential care.

    To address the inefficiencies of upfront daily fees for packages, the taskforce recommends means testing co-payments for home care packages and basing them on the actual level of service users receive for everyday support (for food, cleaning, and so on) and to a lesser extent for support to maintain independence.

    It is unclear whether clinical and personal care costs and user contributions will be treated the same for residential and home care.

    Making residential aged care sustainable

    The taskforce was concerned residential care operators were losing $4 per resident day on “hotel” (accommodation services) and everyday living costs.

    The taskforce recommends means tested user contributions for room services and everyday living costs be increased.

    It also recommends that wealthier older people be given more choice by allowing them to pay more (per resident day) for better amenities. This would allow providers to fully meet the cost of these services.

    Effectively, this means daily living charges for residents are too low and inflexible and that fees would go up, although the taskforce was clear that low-income residents should be protected.

    Moving from buying to renting rooms

    Currently older people who need residential care have a choice of making a refundable up-front payment for their room or to pay rent to offset the loans providers take out to build facilities. Providers raise capital to build aged care facilities through equity or loan financing.

    However, the taskforce did not consider the overall efficiency of the private capital market for financing aged care or alternative solutions.

    Instead, it recommended capital contributions be streamlined and simplified by phasing out up-front payments and focusing on rental contributions. This echoes the royal commission, which found rent to be a more efficient and less risky method of financing capital for aged care in private capital markets.

    It’s likely that in a decade or so, once the new home care arrangements are in place, there will be proportionally fewer older people in residential aged care. Those who do go are likely to be more disabled and have greater care needs. And those with more money will pay more for their accommodation and everyday living arrangements. But they may have more choice too.

    Although the federal government has ruled out an aged care levy and changes to assets test on the family home, it has yet to respond to the majority of the recommendations. But given the aged care minister chaired the taskforce, it’s likely to provide a good indication of current thinking.The Conversation

    Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Planning Ahead For Better Sleep

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    Sleep: 6 Dimensions And 24 Hours!

    A woman with dark hair, planning ahead for better sleep, against a white background.

    This is Dr. Lisa Matricciani, a sleep specialist from the University of South Australia, where she teaches in the School of Health Sciences.

    What does she want us to know?

    Healthy sleep begins before breakfast

    The perfect bedtime routine is all well and good, but we need to begin much earlier in the day, Dr. Matricciani advises.

    Specifically, moderate to vigorous activity early in the day plays a big part.

    Before breakfast is best, but even midday/afternoon exercise is associated with better sleep at night.

    Read more: Daytime Physical Activity is Key to Unlocking Better Sleep

    Plan your time well to sleep—but watch out!

    Dr. Matricciani’s research has also found that while it’s important to plan around getting a good night’s sleep (including planning when this will happen), allocating too much time for sleep results in more restless sleep:

    ❝Allocating more time to sleep was associated with earlier sleep onsets, later sleep offsets, less efficient and more consistent sleep patterns for both children and adults.❞

    ~ Dr. Lisa Matricciani et al.

    Read more: Time use and dimensions of healthy sleep: A cross-sectional study of Australian children and adults

    (this was very large study involving 1,168 children and 1.360 adults, mostly women)

    What counts as good sleep quality? Is it just efficiency?

    It is not! Although that’s one part of it. You may remember our previous main feature:

    The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

    Dr. Matricciani agrees:

    ❝Everyone knows that sleep is important. But when we think about sleep, we mainly focus on how many hours of sleep we get, when we should also be looking at our sleep experience as a whole❞

    ~ Dr. Lisa Matricciani

    Read more: Trouble sleeping? You could be at risk of type 2 diabetes

    That’s not a cheery headline, but here’s her paper about it:

    Multidimensional Sleep and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes: Examining Self-Report and Objective Dimensions of Sleep

    And no, we don’t get a free pass on getting less sleep / less good quality sleep as we get older (alas):

    Why You Probably Need More Sleep

    So, time to get planning for the best sleep!

    Enjoy videos?

    Here’s how 7News Australia broke the news of Dr. Matricciani’s more recent work:

    !

    Rest well!

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