Tokyo Blog: Oolong Tea Eats Fat from Inside

Nothing makes a girl feel larger than shopping in an Japanese department store. I swear their XL's are the same size as our XS's. And their XS's? Total girls 6X's. The song "I'm Big in Japan" is starting to have new meaning to me. The active lifestyle and very healthy diet over  here certainly has much to do with the svelte statures of the Japanese. But, they also have a few daily diet secrets that they stick by--and one of them is Oolong tea. They drink this Chinese tea because they think the Chinese are very skinny (gee, I can't WAIT to go shopping there), and believe that Oolong tea eats away "internal" fat. At first I just liked the idea (sipping it now), but then I did a little internet research and found that there may be threads of truth to their theory -- Oolong tea contains large amounts of polyphenols, which are good for you all around. I did find a few study citations on tea websites, one from the International Journal on Obesity3, saying that Oolong tea inhibits intestinal absorption of fat. But those sites may be just a little biased. Till I have time for further research, I'll sip my Oolong tea with meals, and bite my pride as I buy that totally fabulous XL shirt.