 The same leaves of the same plant are used to make white, green, oolong, and black tea. The primary difference is how they're processed, with white being the least processed, and black being the most. In one of the videos I made a few years ago, I talked about how the tea with the most antioxidant power was green tea, unless you added lemon, in which case white tea pulls ahead. But what about going a step further and testing their respective abilities to prevent DNA damage? Some studies have shown that the degree of protection against DNA damage from tea appeared to be related to the extent of processing, since green tea was generally more effective than black tea. This suggests the possibility that higher anti-mutagenic or anti-carcinogenic activity might be expected from teas that have undergone the least amount of processing. So they compare the anti-mutagenic activity of white tea in comparison with green tea. Bacteria, just like every other living creature, uses the same DNA that we do. So one common test to see if something is carcinogenic is to drip it on salmonella growing in a petri dish and see if it causes DNA mutations. And to test if something protects DNA, you add it along with the carcinogen and see if there are fewer mutations. The carcinogen they picked for this test was a doozy. 2-metho-1-methyl-6-phenolamidazole-4-5-b-prinadine-a heterocyclic amine found mostly in grilled, fried, and broiled chicken, added with green tea or white tea to see what would happen. Here's with the green tea. By dripping on green tea, you could drop the number of DNA mutations caused by the carcinogen by more than a half. But here's the white. Appeared to completely. 100% block the DNA damage, and the longer you brew it, the better. This is against another cooked meat carcinogen. You'll often see a recommendation to only brew white tea one or two minutes. But if you go out to five, you can get significantly more DNA protection.