Mount Prospect student presents research at seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event

2017 May 2

Carthage College held the seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event on Friday, April 28, 2017. Celebration of Scholars is a poster exhibition that features original research, scholarship, and creative work completed by Carthage students.

Amanda Ehlert of Mount Prospect presented "A Study of the Antioxidant and Caffeine Content in Tea" at the event.

This is the project's abstract:

"Antioxidants are thought to be beneficial to health because they might reduce the oxidation of free radicals that damage cells. Because tea is believed to have health benefits derived from antioxidants, this study set out to explore the antioxidant content in different types of teas, including white, green, oolong, black, and puer. We also measured the content of caffeine, a widely appreciated psychoactive compound, to determine its relationship to tea type. Since tea contains antioxidants in the form of phenols, we began by examining the phenolic content of 10 different teas using the Folin-Ciocalteu assay. We found that green teas consistently exhibited the highest antioxidant content while black, oolong and puer teas had lower but variable levels. The white teas contained the lowest phenolic content. To explore any possible change in phenolic content in brewed tea over time, teas were prepared and allowed to rest at ambient temperature for periods up to 24 hours. It was expected that phenolic compounds in the teas would be oxidized to form larger polyphenols, therefore decreasing the total antioxidant content over time. Interestingly, we found that these measures did not change across our time points. To determine the major polyphenolic catechin compounds and caffeine content in each tea, samples were analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). These studies allow us to better understand the relationship between tea processing and possible sensory and medicinal attributes."