Health site breaks down facts about green tea and what it can do

• To make green tea, the leaves are picked and preserved (usually by steaming or baking) to keep them from undergoing the process of fermentation (or oxidation).
• Oolong tea is exposed to the sun and allowed to partially ferment; black tea is fermented completely.
• Approximately 90 percent of the polyphenols found in green tea are called catechins (KAT-uh-kins).
• EGCG is the most active component in green tea, and is a stronger antioxidant than either vitamin C or E. For this reason, it is the most widely studied green tea compound.
• Epidemiological studies (mostly conducted in Asian populations) have consistently associated green tea consumption with lower incidence of many different cancers.
• A 1989 study in the Japanese Journal of Nutrition reported that in tea-producing regions of Japan (where residents consume green tea in several forms, including gum, candy and desserts) stomach cancer mortality rates are lower than in other regions of Japan.
• One of the first studies to suggest a protective effect of green tea appeared in the journal Cancer Research in 1994.
• In a case-control study conducted at the Shanghai Cancer Institute in China that appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1994, green tea drinkers had a 50 percent reduction in risk for esophageal cancer.
• A study published in 1998 involving Stage I and Stage II breast cancer patients in Japan showed that subjects who drank more than five cups of green tea a day had a lower recurrence rate and longer disease-free period than subjects who drank four or less cups per day.
• A database search of the published scientific literature showed that over 100 separate scientific papers on EGCG's potential anti-cancer benefits have been published in peer-reviewed journals in 2005 alone.