A search for green tea can return beverage research, oral extract products and topical preparations. Grouping all three under one ingredient heading makes a source file less useful because the format and route are part of what the document describes.
NCCIH identifies green tea with Camellia sinensis and discusses extracts and a specific topical preparation separately. The shared plant origin does not remove those distinctions.
Use format as a first sorting field
| Record type | Detail to retain |
|---|---|
| Beverage | The preparation described in the research |
| Oral extract | The named extract, composition details and any other ingredients |
| Topical preparation | The identified preparation and route |
Keep these labels beside the source title so a shortened search result does not hide the difference. If a paper’s abstract leaves the preparation unclear, record that gap until the methods description resolves it.
Compare descriptions before transferring a citation
A supplement record should retain its own ingredient statement. A beverage paper cannot provide missing extract specifications, and a topical document cannot establish the composition of an oral capsule.
For multi-ingredient products, retain the rest of the formula rather than treating the green-tea component as the whole intervention. This allows a later reviewer to see whether the cited paper examined the same described material.
The practical result is a source list organized around identifiable preparations. No specific paper was attached to a product here, and no benefit or treatment conclusion follows from the classification.
Source: NCCIH Green Tea, read 22 October 2026; updated February 2025.
Related document and label guides: Guides.
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