Zhou Jian Zhong remembers spending his two months salary to buy a teapot in China.

This was 10 years ago and he still believes that it was a good investment. Jian Zhong, who is the head of the CSUS library reference department, still orders tea from his homeland of China.

His favorite is a pressed green tea called Long Jing. He drinks tea as part of a Chinese tradition, and believes that there is a logical reason why some traditions are carried on and why some die.

After water, more people drink tea than any other beverage in the world. Experts believe that chemicals founds in tea protect the body against cancer, dental cavities, bad cholesterol and much more.

Toni Scruggs, an English student at Sac State, drinks tea before singing. “I drink green tea to warm my vocal cord,” she said.

Another student, Khoi Pham, who studies International business at Sac State, said that while living in Vietnam, tea was a mainstay.

“My grandparents drank five to six pots of tea a day and I did the same. I heard that drinking tea reduces sicknesses and is good for the diet” said Pham.

Tea comes from the leaves of an evergreen plant called Camellia Sinensis. In Asia, people have been drinking tea for more than 2,000 years. There are three major types of tea: Green tea, Black tea and Oolong tea.

All of these teas come from the leaves of the same plant, but they are treated differently after plucking. Each year, 72 percent of the tea is consumed as black tea, 23 percent is consumed as green tea and 4 percent is consumed as Oolong tea.

The “magic power” of tea lies on its chemistry. All types of tea contain five major chemicals. There are Polyphenols, Caffeine, Amino acids, Vitamin C and inorganic elements. Polyphenols in the tea are believed to prevent cancer.

One quarter of the world population will develop cancer during their lifetime and 80 percent of them will die from it. Tea can help to reduce this number.

“The anti-oxidant property of Polyphenols in tea helps the body to protect itself from chemical carcinogens. These carcinogenic chemicals can react with your DNA and produce cancerous cells. But the tea antioxidants prevent the DNA from being altered. Basically when there are antioxidants in the body, the carcinogenic chemicals attack them. By doing so, the cells DNA can be rescued” said Mary McCarthy Hintz, a Biochemist from Sac State.

According to Hintz, the human body also has a mechanism to get rid of these antioxidants on a daily basis so the body can be protected from the carcinogenic chemicals. So the human body needs a daily supply of these antioxidants.

The slight bitter taste of tea is attributed to Polyphenols. Hintz believes that drinking one cup of Green tea or two cups of Black or Oolong tea can be very beneficial for the body. She emphasized that, antioxidants have short lives when they enter the body, so the body needs antioxidants on a daily basis.

She also emphasized that old tea is not beneficial because all the antioxidants, over a period of time, will combine with oxygen and be destroyed.

Tea Polyphenols also protect teeth from dental cavities. Dental cavities are produced by Streptococci bacterium. This bacterium synthesizes sugar and produce acids that destroy teeth enamel. Tea Polyphenols are believed to reduce the effect of these bacteria. Also Fluorine found in the tea also makes teeth more resistant to bacteria.

These Polyphenols are also believed to absorb bad cholesterol in the digestive system. By doing so, it decreases the amount of cholesterol in the blood stream helping to reduce the incidents of coronary diseases.

A study of 1,306 men in Japan shows that those men who drank four or more cups of tea per day had a much lower cholesterol level than those men who reported drinking 0-2 cups of tea per day.

A 12 years study of 9,857 men in Norway, shows that the larger the consumption of black tea, the lower the amount of cholesterol and systolic blood pressure. Another study in Israel found that tea drinkers have lower negative health related habits such as smoking or drinking than coffee drinkers. So have you got your tea today?