# Retrospecting the Antioxidant Activity of Japanese Match Green Tea-Lack of Enthusiasm?
###### Abstract  
Matcha tea is a traditional Japanese tea that is said to possess ten times higher bioactive components and polyphenols than that of conventional green teas. Matcha is remotely popular among the global community and meagerly researched and infamous among the scientific population. It is the powdered form of green tea leaves that are directly suspended in hot water and drunk without filtration. Matcha is said to be one of the richest antioxidant sources naturally available. This review summarizes the available research publications related to matcha and compares the research accomplishments of green tea and matcha researchers. The fact that green tea is backed up by 35,000 publications while matcha has merely 54 publications to its credit is highlighted in this review for the first time. The future of matcha for tapping its enormous antioxidant activity and health potentials remains connected to the volume of scientific awareness and enhanced research attention in this area. If green tea has so much to offer towards human health and welfare, there is certainly room for more benefits from matcha, which is yet to be disclosed. As public awareness cannot be won without scientific approval, this review seeks that this gap may be bridged using essential knowledge gained from matcha applications and allied research.  
Keywords:polyphenols; antioxidant activity; green tea; matcha tea; catechins; health benefits +
Footnote †: journal:epigallocatechin gallate has been established. This is owing to the fact that green tea extract contains various other antioxidant constituents that act as enhancers and stabilizers [10,11].  
Tea is divided into four categories based on their respective fermentation levels (Figure 2): white tea, green tea, oolong tea, and black tea [12]. White tea is obtained from young tea leaves and buds that are dried. Green tea is from mature leaves that are dried. Oolong tea is obtained from partially fermented mature tea leaves and black tea from fully fermented leaves [13,14]. Matcha is actually a variant of green tea differing in its growth condition and its post-harvest preparation. It is Japanese in origin [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. The origin of both matcha and regular green tea is from _Camellia sinensis_. However, matcha requires different growth conditions than that of green tea. In case of matcha tea, the tea plants are grown protected from sunlight for about 20-30 days prior to harvest. The shade triggers a spike in chlorophyll levels, rendering the leaves dark green and possessing increased amino acids. Post-harvesting, the stem and veins of the leaves are removed and stone-ground into a fine, bright green powder known as matcha. The green tea is prepared using this powdered green tea, without straining [21]. Because the whole leaf powder is ingested, matcha is even higher in some substances, such as caffeine and antioxidants, than green tea.  
Figure 1: Overview of the health benefits of green tea.  
This review briefly discusses the well-documented antioxidant property of green tea. More importantly, matcha tea, which is reported to be more promising than green tea and holding more potential benefits than green tea, has been reviewed. The fact that matcha tea has no public nor scientific awareness has been pointed out in this review. While green tea research has been supported by thousands of researchers, the fact that there are only a handful of reports and research work published on matcha tea has been highlighted, and the need for scientific attention in this direction has been emphasized in this review. Figure 2 shows the diverse processing types of tea.