Green tea: Current trends and prospects in nutraceutical and pharmaceutical aspects

Tea, which originated in China, has spread to every part of the world and become the most popular beverage, second to water. This review aims to broaden existing knowledge offering insights into the nutritional value of green tea, and its pharmacological effects on humans. Additionally, its nutraceutical and pharmaceutical formulations, patents and market share are introduced. For compilation of this article, the relevant literatures were collected from Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar till June 2021. Among the various forms of tea drinks, green tea has the highest active constituents which exhibit the tremendous health benefits. However, the adverse effects of green tea have been overlooked many times. Green tea is a non-fermented tea with more catechins including epicatechin, epicatechin-3-gallate, epigallocatechin, and epigallocatechin-3-gallate than other forms of tea. Studies on humans exhibit its antihypertensive, anticancer, antibacterial effects etc. Thus, the green tea has been included in functional foods to mitigate changing lifestyle-related diseases. As a result, the world green tea market has grown to fulfil customer demand with various nutraceutical and pharmaceutical products. However, the excess consumption of green tea has demonstrated specific detrimental effects on human health, such as gastrointestinal disturbance, hepatotoxicity, disrupts renal function etc. Green tea has gained popularity among people as functional food having both nutritional and beneficial therapeutic effects leading to the growth of the global green tea market.