Is tea a healthier drink than water?
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet
New research from the UK suggests that tea may be a healthier drink than water. Not only is it full of antioxidants, but, contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t dehydrate. According to Dr Claire Ruxton one of the study leaders:
Studies on caffeine have found very high doses dehydrate and everyone assumes that caffeine-containing beverages dehydrate. But even if you had a really, really strong cup of tea or coffee, which is quite hard to make, you would still have a net gain of fluid.
So tea not only replaces fluids, but it also provides antioxidants that can protect your health long-term:
They found clear evidence that drinking three to four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack.
Some studies suggested tea consumption protected against cancer, although this effect was less clear-cut.
Other health benefits seen included protection against tooth plaque and potentially tooth decay, plus bone strengthening.
Just try not to add too much sugar and . . . still avoid the commercial iced tea products (which are laden with sugar). While tea might be good for you, the extra kilojoules from sugar are not. However, if you keep the sweetener to a minimum, there’s no reason why you can’t carry on enjoying your cups of tea.
22 May, 2007
Comments
Gosh. My mum will be very pleased to hear this Kathryn.
She drinks seemingly endless cups of weak, unsweetened tea each day. I’ve always hassled her about it, telling her to drink more water.
Damn. She’s always right!
The idea that tea is dehydrating has been an exceptionally strong myth. I was taught this at college, plus I’ve heard health experts discuss it on TV and radio, and have read about it in magazines.
In my early days as a practitioner I used to tell clients to be careful of tea. However, the story of tea dehydrating just didn’t match up to my clinical experience. I’ve had clients who have never drunk a glass of water in their life and live on 6 – 10 cups of tea a day. If tea was that dehydrating they would be shrivelled up, very sick people, which just wasn’t the case.
And you can’t fight it, no matter what we might think we know – mother’s are always right!
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Thanks for this info, I always thought tea was dehydrating, now I have no qualms any more about drinking too much of it!
Julie, you’re not the only one who thought tea was dehydrating. I’m very happy to bring good news to the tea drinkers of the world!
Hi Kathryn,
I have also heard that if you drink tea with milk that the milk cuts down the antioxidant content – is this true? Does this mean black tea with no milk is better than milky tea?
Cheers
Hi there Trina. To be honest I don’t know the answer to that question. I read the recent research about milk diminishing the availability of the antioxidants from tea. However, I’ve also seen a number of studies in which milk hasn’t inhibited the antioxidant activity. A lot of this work has only been done in petri dishes, or small groups of humans, so at present the results are inconclusive and more work needs to be done.
It’s hard for me to advise you either way, therefore. I’d probably advise mixing your teas up a bit – having some green tea without milk, some black tea with milk, etc, etc.
[...] Check out another of Kathryn’s articles, Is tea a healthier drink than water? for some interesting information on a recent UK study. [...]
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