In Japan, black oolong tea is advertised on a large scale lately as a kind of Chinese tea that lowers blood cholesterol and neutral fat. There is a famous TV commercial on the air frequently saying black oolong tea is designated as a FOSHU (= food for specified health use) and effective for lowering blood pressure.
To lower neutral fat, however, oolong tea is not drunk in China as much as pu-erh tea. Chinese people love and drink pu-erh tea very often. Chinese tea is classified into 6 categories based on the color of leaf: green tea, white tea, yellow tea, blue tea, red tea, and black tea. We usually steam tealeaf in Japan, but they ferment tealeaf in China. The more fermented, the more its color gets darker and finally it turns black, which is called pu-erh tea. Pu-erh tea is Hong Kong’s favorite tea when they eat yam-cha. Only the tea fermented in the soil for more than 5 years is called pu-erh. The older, the more valuable pu-erh tea usually is.
When I went to Beijing last year, I was given very high-grade pu-erh tea from a Chinese I met there. The outer box was 40cm square, covered with gold silk inside, and vacuum packed tealeaf of 20cm in diameter was enshrined there like a holly mountain. It looked expensive without a doubt. Looking back, that was probably fermented for more than 20 years in the soil. A specialist said, “It must cost 100 thousand yen at least,” answering my question. But it was too late to hear that. When I had pu-erh tea with yam-cha in Hong Kong, I was feeling great without getting any heavy stomach feeling. No matter how much yam-cha or Chinese dishes I ate, I had a healthy appetite next morning without gaining weight or getting swollen. Remembering this, I asked one of my staff about the expensive pu-erh tea that was half left, but he said, “Ah?I threw it away?long time ago…” Unfortunately, that pu-erh tea was a pearl cast before swine. I should have known its effectiveness earlier.
Pu-erh tea is served with two pots. One pot has pu-erh tea, and the other has boiled water in it. You keep adding the water into pu-erh tea, so it doesn’t get too strong. Though I haven’t seen actual experimental data about its effect on fat, from what I feel, pu-erh tea emulsifies fat. And also, its polyphenol pigment has strong antioxidative potency. The polyphenol pigment prevents the oil assimilated from blood from oxidizing. The unoxidized extra oil is assimilated by the liver, and then excreted from the bowel as bile. The bile is eventually excreted with the stool.
Also, pu-arh tea seems to prevent constipation. If you compare black oolong tea and pu-erh tea in animal experiment, I think pu-erh tea will win the title. But then, I realized something. I’ve never tasted black oolong tea yet, but in China, oolong tea is usually called “blue tea,” and when it’s fermented more, its name changes to “pu-arh tea,” but not “black oolong tea.” The only difference between them is fermenting time. I suddenly realized, that the marketers of the tea company agreed to name the products “black oolong tea,” because “pu-erh tea” was already famous and didn’t have much novelty. If this is true, the comparison experiment between black oolong and pu-erh mentioned above will be worthless, because, they are the same tea.
