| Once a niche item for tea aficionados, matcha has now become a staple at Starbucks and other cafés. Demand has surged to the point that Japan can’t produce enough. At Cha Cha Matcha in New York City, barista Felix Abarca says about 600 customers a day order the drink, looking for a healthy balance between calm and alert. “Matcha gives a better energetic feeling than coffee,” he says. Matcha, made from grinding green tea leaves into a powder, has a bit less caffeine than coffee. Four grams of matcha in an eight-ounce cup has about 176 milligrams of caffeine; the same size cup of coffee can contain up to 200 milligrams. Both matcha and coffee contain antioxidants. An amino acid in matcha called l-theanine creates a more sustained energy boost without coffee’s crash, says Samar Kullab, a Chicago-area registered dietitian nutritionist, which “can be beneficial for athletes.” But matcha is more expensive. It averages $6.25 in the US, compared with an average cup of coffee at $4.98, according to menu insights firm Technomic. The firm says matcha is also $1.42 more per cup than traditional green tea, which is also high in antioxidants. And people drinking matcha with health goals in mind, will have to budget for this for a while. “If there is effect from the antioxidant, at the minimum, it will take a few months for blood pressure and cholesterol to change,” says Teresa Fung, a nutrition professor at Simmons University who also teaches at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “And the change may or may not be big enough to be clinically meaningful.” — Carrington York | 
