Last Updated on 05/09/2020 by Desmond
Do you have a sweet tooth, yet worry about getting fat? Monk fruit tea, a popular herbal tea, comes from Asia, may satisfy what you need, and with many incidental health benefits.
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What Is Monk Fruit Tea
Siraitia grosvenorii is a kind of Cucurbitaceae that originated in Guangxi Province, China, and monk fruit is the fruit of it, also known as Luo Han Guo(a Buddha). It harvests in autumn every year. Due to the monk fruit shell is fragile, and it got a short shelf date, almost the fruit sold on the market have been dried process. The plant has a high demand for the growth environment, so the plantations are few. Unless you live near, you are hard to buy fresh monk fruit.
The dried monk fruit can be used as a drug and food, typically sold in the Chinese Medicine pharmacy. Except make tea, people also cook soup with it. Monk fruit is rich in sweet ingredients, even can be used to making sweetening agents replace the saccharose.
Most of the herbal tea got a strange herbaceous taste; that’s why people difficult to accept. But monk fruit tea tastes pleasant, even kids would fall in love with it. More surprise is, monk fruit has been consuming for hundreds of years, but none any side effects found, even pregnant women and children can take it. That means you can also try it reassured.
What Is Monk Fruit Tea Good For
As a natural herbal beverage, monk fruit tea not only tastes excellent but with many health benefits to the human body.
Relieve Sore Throat
When we talk about the benefits of monk fruit tea, the sore throat relief effect is the first thing we think of. In every Asian family, once people got a sore throat, they like to take a cup of monk fruit tea, and the symptom would be transference cure soon. It was the best choice in many folk remedies.
To the profession such as teachers and singers who needs to speak a long time, monk fruit tea is the best long-term consumption beverage for them. It can moisturize the dry and scratchy throat, and repair the damaged vocal cords. To chronic pharyngitis patients, it can also relieve the discomfort of the disease.
Related Reading: 9 Best Herbal Tea For Sore Throat Relieve.
Balance Blood Sugar
Monk fruit contains a sweetener called mogroside; the sweetness is 250-300 times than saccharose. It is the primary source of sweet taste, and most benefits also come from it. Mogroside would not switch to glucose, so it would not increase the blood sugar.
There was a study suggested, mogroside also can induce insulin secretion without any carbohydrate intake. That may help make the blood sugar balance and reduce the rate of diabetic complications at the same time. What good news to diabetes patients!
But when we are going to buy the monk fruit-related products, take a look at the ingredient list, whether there is carbohydrate content. Some manufacturers may add sugar to the tea bags to make the flavor in a more popular style.
Cough
Monk fruit also contains D-mannitol, which is a type of sugar alcohol and easily soluble in water; the sweetness is about 0.55~0.65 times than saccharose. D-mannitol can help with cough, and it is one of the ingredients of various cough syrup.
Monk fruit tea is the best choice in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) on a sore throat and cough treatment. When you are on a cough, the lung would get a hot and dry feeling, and cause phlegm. The TCM thought monk fruit belongs to cool herbs, which has a good effect on curing the heat disease. Chinese believed that Luo Han Guo has stop cough, moisturize lung, and eliminating phlegm benefits. In modern medicine opinion, they think it may profit from the anti-inflammatory effects of antioxidants in the monk fruit.
Anti-inflammatory
Scientists found that the mogroside even shows an excellent antioxidant activity, which takes a noticeable inhibiting effect on DNA injury, and scavenging radicals effectively.
This antioxidant contained in monk fruit tea also plays a role in anti-inflammatory, helps reduce the inflammation, and prevents some related degenerative disease. Maybe help with anti-aging too.
Potential Anti-cancer Effect
A study on mogroside suggested that it can inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells in vitro effectively, has the potential to prevent the development of colorectal cancer and laryngeal cancer. Plus the oxidation property, take the monk fruit tea into your diet list may reduce the rate of getting cancer.
Weight Loss
Carbohydrate is the biggest reason for obesity. However, sweet teeth can not resist them. Fortunately, monk fruit tea, this nonsugar, zero calories drink would not absorb by the human body and lead to getting fat. Even it tastes sweeter than saccharose, no doubt is the best beverage to the dessert lovers. The artificial sweetener made from mogroside become more and more popular in recent years.
Worth to know, in the Chinese Medicine theory, monk fruit tea also has a laxative benefit. But the study suggested that it was not working by improving the intestinal tract movement but by lubricant it.
Personally, monk fruit tea is one of my favorite herbal teas, and I often have it. Maybe just my case, every time after I drink monk fruit tea, I got an astringent on my tongue, and my appetite was lowing. Even though I am not fat(I Am Big Boned?) but that symptom seems not bad.
Monk Fruit Tea Buying Guide
If you wanna make a cup of monk fruit tea, the simplest way is to brew with a teabag. When you are going to buy monk fruit teabags, you should take a look at the ingredients list to check whether it contains sugar or not. In most case, it is sugar and caffeine-free, but some producer adds some additives to make it taste better, it may offset the benefits a lot.
And the most common way is brewing with the dried monk fruit. In Asia, the dried fruit typically sold in the pharmacy; you can also buy it in the mall or on the internet. When picking, something you should know about:
Color
The shell color of the monk fruit, which been baked usually shows brown; the product processing by the lastest freeze-drying technology shows green-yellow. If the shell color is too dark, that means it might be over-baking, lost most of the nutrient facts, and taste bitter. Besides, the high-quality monk fruit tea infusion shows a gold color.
Worth to know, Luo Han Guo has a low yield(surprise that didn’t lead to a high price). It’s one of the most famous Chinese medicine, many pharmaceutical factories use them to extract medicinal ingredients. Some bad merchants purchased the residues and repacked for sale. These residues monk fruit looks dark, with a strong medicine taste, and an incomplete shell. Never pick them for consuming.
Fuzz
The dry monk fruit surface is full of tiny fuzz. But when the products been over-baked, after the secondary process, or long time storage, these fuzz were gone. It’s an easy point to judge the quality, but you should distinguish the natural fuzz and the mold clearly, and don’t confuse them.
Shake It
Pick up a monk fruit and shake it, feeling whether a waggle inside. If there, that means the quality is terrible. And estimate its weight, the heavier usually is the better.
How To Prepare Monk Fruit Tea
Easy Homemade Monk Fruit Tea
Materials
- 1/4 Monk Fruit
- 500 ml Water 80℃
Instructions
- Pick out the pulp from the dried monk fruit
- Break off the pulp into particles, also you can put the whole fruit into a teapot
- Add 500ML warm water, cover and steep for 5-8 mins
Notes
- The water temperature should not be too hot, or it will destroy the nutrition facts.
- Brew with monk fruit only tastes good enough. But if you can, try to combine with dried longan and red dates will taste better, and get more benefits.
REFERENCES
Non-Nutritive Sweeteners and Their Implications on the Development of Metabolic Syndrome
Health outcomes of non-nutritive sweeteners: analysis of the research landscape
The antioxidant activities of natural sweeteners, mogrosides, from fruits of Siraitia grosvenori.
