Primal Thai Iced Tea - Alpha Release

I'm searching for some interesting options to replace my diet soda habit (Pepsi Max how I love thee) and one that occurred to me was Thai Iced Tea. I love that stuff, the familiar light tea taste mixed with intense sweetness combined with creamy coconut milk or cream all poured over a big cup of ice to make it really refreshing. Of course, I always felt guilty having one in the past all that sugar plus the saturated fat in the coconut or cream. I'm not worried about the saturated fat anymore but how can I make the rest of it more Primal and also compatible with Leptin Reset Protocol (LRP - sounds all technical and official)?

Dr K talks about Green Tea all the time and says he drinks it by the gallon and I keep hearing everywhere about the wonders of Green Tea. Here is a relatively recent meta-analysis of 18 studies, 5 of which were on green tea the rest on black tea. It did find a correlation between a reduction in Heart Disease and green tea consumption even at 1 cup per day. As always we must be careful to draw any conclusions from these results as the researchers point out more studies are needed as we don't know what other factors may have altered the results. Green tea drinkers might be more likely to eat vegetables for example or walk barefoot, who knows? What we want to see is a description and proof of the mechanism that results in the health improvement. Despite all that, we don't seem to see negative results from green tea consumption and there are a large number of studies (just search Google scholar) around the beneficial impact of green tea and there are some suggested mechanisms. Perhaps someone who knows more about biochemistry can explain some of the potential mechanisms but the evidence is enough for me to drink it and feel pretty good about it although I'm not expecting it to fix all my problems and walk the dog at the same time.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/93/3/506.short

Green Tea also appeals to me because it has some caffeine but lots of other health benefits but doesn't come with artificial sweeteners. So Green Tea will be the base, next up is the sweetener, artificial sweeteners are out, again the health trend at the moment seems to be Stevia which is an all natural product. My wife and I were at Whole Foods last night and as I stood in the Stevia section I realized I had no clue which was the best option I just knew to avoid Truvia since it has some additives. I ended up picking up Stevia in the Raw for no other reason than it was on sale and seemed to be pretty, well, raw. Since then I've realized I probably should have picked up a liquid Stevia, but you live and learn. Last but not least we need our creamy blob of fat to tie it all together. In this attempt I tried some heavy whipping cream because I had some open but next time I will try coconut milk.

The end result? Pretty damn good. I could drink this stuff, plus I can drink it guilt free. Saying that, I don't think I'd drink a lot of it, maybe once a day or every other day. I'm going to experiment with another concoction made on La Croix water and green tea for my more regular drink.

Here's the recipe:

• Mug of green tea, freshly brewed
• Big cup of ice
• 3 packets of Stevia in the Raw (or whatever Stevia variation you like)
• Quarter of a cup of heavy whipping cream

Stir the Stevia into the still hot tea until it dissolves then pour it over the ice. Gently pour the cream over the top sit back and enjoy.

Stay tuned for the next revision where I'll try coconut milk instead and perhaps a different brand of green tea.