How exactly is diet (iced too) tea good for you?

[Delirious]

I seem to be really fond of diet lipton peach iced tea...

So what are the real benefits of drinking this anti-oxident tea?
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[Loon]

I didn't know there was any benefits from drinking tea. I drink sweet Ice tea, from lipton, but in the bags you boil.

 

[Mark T]

I guess it's because anti-oxidants can help prevent cancer. Not sure how but that's what I have always been told.

 

[Sage]

I don’t know what’s good about tea (I don’t drink any), but I am somewhat familiar with how antioxidants work. In a nutshell (in a super-super nutshell – it’s quite a bit more involved than this), antioxidants resist the oxidation of molecular compounds. Oxidation (again, in a nutshell) means losing electrons. In the process of oxidizing a compound, you can create what’s called a free radical, which is an atom or molecule with an unpaired electron. Because of this unpaired electron, it is extremely reactive – this can be good, but it can also be very bad if, say, it were to affect DNA and cause a mutation.

So that’s the gist of it. Don’t get the impression though that free radicals are all bad and antioxidants are all good. Everything is necessary for certain things.

 

[Zrow]

So basically Sage, antioxidants are good. Or bad! Free radicals are bad... unless they're good.

Vague much?

 

[niky]

There's some research that says the anti-oxidant fad (yes, it's a fad) is just way overblown.

I don't really follow all of this. I go the common-sense route... eat what you want, but not too much. It'll all be sorted out in the end...