Biological and chemical properties of tea

Tea is a unique concentrate of the most valuable taste, dietary and medicinal substances. Not a single drink has such a rich complex of biologically valuable, healing qualities. The therapeutic and prophylactic effect of tea makes it one of the important means of modern medicine. Along with alkaloids (caffeine, theobromine and theophylline), which give the drink a stimulating effect, tea leaves contain biologically valuable substances: tannin, various vitamins, trace elements, essential oils, soluble nitrogenous compounds and all essential amino acids. It contains many different phenolic compounds that give the drink unique healing properties and the current level of knowledge about the composition of tea helps to find objective criteria for determining its quality and move from the categories of subjective organoleptic and aesthetic assessments to a short and dispassionate language of numbers.