Thoughts on Green Tea

I love tea. I grew up on tea. Southern style iced tea. Now unlike most southerners I actually wasn't raised on "Sweet" tea. AKA Sugar Tea. My mother used saccharin. Yes, good old "warning this product has shown to cause cancer in mice" saccharin. And we drank it by the gallon. Remember the little tablets of saccharin you bought in the bottle at the store. I remember we put anywhere to 20-24 per pitcher of tea. So, although I didn't drink sugar tea, I did drink a lot of artificially sweetened tea.

After I moved away to college I actually was able to slowly switch to completely unsweetened tea. But over time I went back to saccharin, although at less than half of Mom's amount per gallon. Now I still make unsweetened tea by the gallon, and I drink it a lot. But I now sweeten individual glasses at the time with Sweet-N-Low. Yes, I know it's still saccharin based but we do what we can. I've tried Equal and Splenda but they both don't taste good to me. Plus Splenda doesn't melt in cold. Truvia is a new purchase for us and although I'm ok with the taste, it still doesn't dissolve in cold very well.

Now, that brings us to Green Tea.

The diet calls for a lot of it,  pretty much a cup with every meal. I like green tea but I do have trouble drinking something hot with every meal even in this cold weather we've been having. We've been trying to brew it using 10-12 green tea bags and pour it up by the pitcher.  Using the coffee maker we make a full pot, pour it into a gallon container and fill the rest with water. I'm not sure if scientifically it has the same effect as a single cup of brewed hot tea but I was hoping maybe we could make it up in volume. A sweeter and a splash of black tea help to cut the bitterness.

Anyone know is the beneficial effects of green tea are the same hot to cold?