It is regularly in the newspaper with fat headlines: drinking tea is healthy. Tea is said to be good for the heart and memory, against cancer and diabetes, and to keep you young. Too good to be all true?
Black tea
To start with the good news for tea lovers: some fat headlines are true. For example, there is considerable evidence that tea lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. Drinking several cups of black tea a day has about 30 percent less chance of calcification of the arteries, researchers from Utrecht University concluded. They studied the eating habits of 37,000 Dutch people whom they followed for thirteen years. There is no explanation yet. Is it the caffeine (which is not only found in coffee, but also in tea)? Or is it the antioxidants?
Diabetes
Let’s go on: tea also has a beneficial effect on diabetes. Drinking three or more cups of tea a day reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by 40 percent, the same university reported in 2009 after another large-scale study. Australian researchers consider it a modest 25 percent less chance, but that is still a significant effect.
It’s probably the antioxidants that do it. These protect against harmful substances in, for example, smoke, sunlight and food. Green tea contains more antioxidants than black tea. Antioxidants are also particularly common in vegetables, fruit and whole grains. And in coffee – which is why these studies show that coffee also protects against diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
But this is where the good news show ends. Cancer, memory problems, menopausal symptoms, weight loss, wrinkles and stress? Whether tea helps against all these ailments is under investigation, and those studies sometimes make the headlines. But for all these diseases and disorders, one positive test is far too little. More research is needed, preferably like this: give one group of people tea and another group of people don’t, and then see what the difference is in health. Until then, it remains true that one fat newspaper cup of tea does not make a miracle cure.
The healthy tea drinker
The fact that tea drinkers have a lower risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease is most likely not due to tea alone. They fall into the higher educated category and these people simply exercise more, drink less alcohol, smoke less and are less likely to be overweight. These are all factors that strongly reduce the risk of diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Although researchers try not to factor these healthy habits into their tea studies, it is difficult to attribute the beneficial effects from research to tea alone.
In other words, is your lifestyle similar to that of the tea drinker? Then you’re fine, even if you don’t drink tea. Do you also combine those healthy habits with an ample consumption of fruit and vegetables? Then you don’t need tea at all to protect your health.
Black, white, green or herbal?
For black tea, the leaves of the tea bush are exposed to light and moisture. Oxidation creates the black color and strong taste, and the antioxidant content decreases somewhat. Green tea does not oxidize and contains more antioxidants than black tea. White tea is made from the leaves of young tea buds and also contains more antioxidants than black tea.
Herbal tea is not actually tea, because it is not made from the tea plant, but from herbs, flowers and spices. Traditionally, all kinds of medicinal values have been attributed to herbal teas, but these have hardly been scientifically proven.
Sources):
- Plus Magazine
