Tea
A joint Scots and French study published in the journal Food Chemistry has concluded that drinking tea can have an amazing preventative effect on fatty deposits in arteries – reducing fatty build-ups by up to 96% - if you are a hamster. The researchers from the University of Glasgow, and the University of Montpellier fed hamsters a high-fat diet for 12 weeks. Some were given the human equivalent of one cup of black or green tea or fruit as well
University of Glasgow professor Alan Crozier, who was one of the researchers, believes humans may also benefit from the findings.
"The amount they were given is about the equivalent to a human having a glass of fruit juice or a mug of tea a day - the dose is not massive: it is a nutritionally relevant dose," Crozier was quoted as saying in the Scotsman newspaper. "The hamsters were on a high-fat diet and you get signs of heart disease with the fatty streaks in the arteries after 12 weeks. One group was given just a high-fat diet and none of the juices and the teas. The results showed that in this group more than 20% of the artery wall was covered with fatty streaks. If you feed them the high-fat diet and a juice or tea, then there is a reduction in the fatty deposits, particularly so with the raspberry juice and green tea. But the others were very effective as well," Crozier said.