Following the introduction of Chitosan in my previous post, this time I wanna raise another popular health key term in Japan: Catechin (or pronounced as Kai-te-kin in Japanese). You can see catechin being included in so many tea drinks in the convenience stores, accompanied with a claim that they could help you burn your body fat. What is up with this health trend? And how does this catechin really work?
The brand you might probably see the most is called “Healthya” or pronounced as “he-ru-chia” in Japanese. (pictured above) The products that are quite popular right now among young working people (with quite high health awareness) is the green and blue drinks above. They include 540 mg of catechin in one bottle, to be consumed one bottle a day. If consumed consecutively for many months, it will help you create a body with high metabolism rate, thus, burning fat easily. check out its website for more details here: http://www.kao.co.jp/healthya/catechin/
You need to know here that drinking a bottle after an unhealthy meal doesn’t cancel that meal, make it healthier, or block the fat from entering your body. Drinking catechin should be seen as an accumulated effort in constructing a new inner body system that would be easier to burn fat. It’s actually a long-term effort. According to a research, you will start seeing result after at least 3 months of DAILY consumption.
So what is catechin?
It is a type of natural phenol and antioxidant, a part of the chemical family of flavonoids, a term that might be frequent with which can be found in soy products, cocoa, or red wine for example. (Wikipedia) Among its many types of catechins, only one of them is said to have this effect: Epicatechin gallate (ECg) (let’s call it “Gallete-type catechin”). How it helps reduce fat in your boday? To make it simple to understand: When fat is consumed through food, it would be absorbed in small intestine, where the digestive enzyme called Lipase breaks down the fat particles so they can be absorbed. Gallete-type catechin blocks the action of lipase, thus, lessens fat to be absorbed into the body. On the other hand, when cholesterol is consumed, it would be incorporated into small particles called micelles produced by bile that’s released from the gall bladder. These micelles would in turn be absorbed into the body in the small intestine. Gallete-type catechin would extract the cholesterol from these micelles, thus lessen the cholesterol level to be absorbed into the body.
(Find out more here: http://www.itoen.co.jp/catechin/gallate/)
I would suggest you try the blue healthya bottle above!! It includes 540 mg of catechins, which is approximately about 8 cups of green tea (because after comparing the products, this product seems to contain the highest amount of catechins). I know that it might not be possible for us to keep making green tea and drinking it the whole day. So for that, you can take this drink instead if you wanna try. It would taste quite bitter but that’s because it contains catechin. The down side of this is probable the cost: it’s sold at 194 yen per bottle. (which is, to be fair, the average price for all “healthy” tea drinks nowadays after tax increase T__T)
tokyofinder 