Cut your caffeine intake!

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND INHALE DEEPLY the scent of a juicy, summer peach, ready to burst. Or apple cobbler as the aroma curls out of the oven on a snowy Saturday evening. Now imagine the same experience, available year-round, coming from a cup of tea. Sip it. Love it. Luxuriate in it. And know that nowadays tea sipping can not only delight the senses, but it just might be good for your health as well.

It's true. New research shows that regular consumption of tea (the world's favorite beverage, next to water) has been linked to lower risk of both heart disease and cancer.

And these days, flavored teas come in an abundance of lip-smacking varieties like ginger-peach, passion fruit, apple-cinnamon, vanilla-almond and peppermint. You can drink it hot, iced and with sugar or lemon. It's flexible enough to suit every taste. Plus, it's cheap and easy to make.

When we talk about tea here, we mean one of three kinds: green, oolong or black (most Americans drink black). All three come from the leaves of one plant-the tea bush Camellia sinensis. Flavored black is simply black tea that has been mixed with ingredients like dried flower petals or oils (Earl Grey, a black tea with oil of bergamot, is probably the best known). Notice that we didn't say herbal. That's because an herbal tea, by definition, does not contain any true "tea" leaves. All three teas boast rich amounts of naturally occurring compounds called flavonoids. Scientists believe it may be these compounds that could account for the lower risk of cancer and heart disease among tea drinkers. In part, flavonoids work as antioxidants-substances that protect cells from troublemaking particles called free radicals. They also may discourage blood from forming dangerous dots that bring on heart attacks and strokes.

Prevention, May 96