decaffinated green tea

Factual Questions
1

I have heard about many health benefits of drinking green
tea. Among these, I have heard it contains antioxidants.
(My tea box says it contains the antioxidant “EGCG”, which
they claim is one of the most potent known antioxidants,
and that it is only found in green tea leaves.)
I have also heard that caffeine is bad for you. So my
question is how many of the good properties of green tea
would decaffinated green tea retain? Pay particular
attention to the antioxidants, although I would be
interested in details on all of the supposed health
benefits.

Also with respect to nondecaffinated green tea,
how much should one drink to optimize the overall good
properties (taking the raw good properites and
subtracting off the bad properties of caffeine would give
you what I mean by overall good properties)?

2

What I’ve heard is that decaf tea has the same benefits as regular tea. The important thing seems to be that it’s fresh brewed.

The number I hear tossed around is four cups of green tea a day. The truth is, no one really knows yet. There hasn’t been enough research yet.

This site has a lot of info:
http://www.teaandhealth.com/news/news.htm

It’s the Lipton site, so of course they’re biased. But it reprints articles from Reuters news service about tea research. Who thought we’d ever be hearing about “tea research” on the news?

Under “Tea and a Healthy Lifestyle” they mention that regular and decaf tea provide the same benefits.

Also, caffeine in moderate amounts probably isn’t bad for you. You shouldn’t drink it if you have blood pressure problems (high OR low), or if it makes you feel jittery or edgy. But most people have no trouble with caffeine at all.