With the new year here, many are onto new health crazes and kicks in order to try to change up their eating habits and lifestyle. For those that enjoy a nice, hot drink in the morning, or after a meal, the go-to for a lot of people, even when they are new to healthy living, is to grab a cup of tea. Throughout the world, tea is one of the most popular drinks, especially for those that don’t want the high caffeine levels of coffee. There are a lot of teas that are popular around the entire world, such as black teas, green teas, or slightly more obscure pu-erh; however, there are regional teas, like the Yerba Mate drink, that haven’t gotten the large reach of those teas yet.

Yerba Mate Tea

One tea that doesn’t have a huge reach outside of its native region is the Yerba Mate drink. Even countries that have an extensive range of teas, such as the US or UK, often have people that have never heard of Yerba Mate, even though it is the number one health drink in South America. Yerba Mate has its core popularity in the countries of Argentina and Paraguay, and it is a wonderful herbal tea that is unique, with many medicinal properties that have been used in local traditional medicines for centuries.

Yerba Mate drink is a medicinal tea that is brewed from the twigs and leaves of the tree Ilex paraguarensis. It has been used by indigenous peoples for centuries. In the past, it was used as a way to energize the body and mind, and to increase mental alertness and acuity, but it also has many other properties. Yerba Mate has in it a combination of xanthine alkaloid and caffeine; however, its caffeine level is not that of coffee, so it is still good for caffeine sensitive people.

Positive Health Attributes

As part of its medicinal properties, Yerba Mate is traditionally used to treat gastrointestinal disorders (by increasing the flow of bile) as well as to prevent the growth of bad bacteria that cause bad breath. Yerba Mate drink contains 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, 11 polyphenols, and it is high in antioxidants, giving it a wide range of good health properties. In addition to its energy and gastrointestinal properties, it can also stimulate the nervous system to help break down carbohydrates and burn more calories, making exercise routines more effective.

Preparation is Everything

The most unique part of the Yerba Mate drink is the way that it is prepared and presented. When you think of a tea, you think of a teapot and a teacup, brewing the tea in the pot, then pouring it into the cup to drink. However, the Mate part of Yerba Mate stands for gourd, which means that the Yerba Mate is prepared and drunk from a gourd. The gourd can be made from any hard-shelled fruit, and you drink from it using a bombilla, or metal straw. Gourds can also be made from wood, which won’t require a curing time and can be used right away.

If using a fruit gourd, it must be cured by pouring in some Yerba Mate and filling it with water, then letting it sit for a day or two to allow the water to penetrate the gourd and absorb some of the Yerba Mate flavor. After this, the gourd is cleaned with boiling water, then left out to dry for another day or two in a window, or any other dry conditioned area. The benefit to using a gourd is the fact that it will help reduce some of the bitterness of the Yerba Mate drink, and the curing process ensures that the Yerba Mate flavor itself isn’t altered.

For the actual drinking of Yerba Mate, you take your gourd and fill it three-fourths with the Yerba Mate drink herb, then add in hot water until the herbs are fully covered. Let it sit for a few minutes to allow the Yerba Mate to absorb the water, then add more hot water to keep it in a liquid state. Do this until you have the taste profile you prefer, then bind the bombilla into the wet herbs to filter it. Now, you can drink it with a straw to your heart’s content. If at any time you want the flavor to be weakened, just add more hot water for more infusion. You can also choose to purchase Yerba Mate drink in a tea bag form.