Want more polyphenols? Ditch the tea and spike the cheese

By 2. maart 2016Blog, Health, Taste

Yes, that is the news from a paper that has been accepted for publication in the journal Food and Function.

According to the paper, polyphenols, such as those found in green tea, when mixed with milk proteins become more bio-available, i.e. they are more readily taken up by your body. Also polyphenols taste bitter but when mixed with milk this is dramatically reduced.

In the paper, the researchers spiked milk with green tea extract and then made cheese from the milk. This in itself is nothing new, it has been done before, but then they put the cheese through an artificial digestion to measure what would be taken up by the body. They compared this to the digestion of a control cheese with the green tea extract added separately.

They found that the polyphenols from the tea spiked cheese where released slower in the gastrointestinal environment which decreased the degradation and enhanced the antioxidant activity compared to the control.

So there you go,  they also mentioned that the tea extract did have an effect on the hardness of the cheese. But what I want to know is, does it taste any good?

Click here to read more.