Tea


A recent article in the medical literature reviewed the scientific studies showing benefits and harms of regular tea drinking. The conclusions of this review were that nothing has been scientifically proven to support either tea consumption or abstinence. Careful examination of this paper was a big surprise after reading the conclusion since almost all the studies showed significantly less cardiovascular disease, cancer and other major diseases among tea regular tea drinkers. There was little controversy about this among those who looked at large groups of tea drinkers. Medical "science" has decided that studies must be performed in a certain way, typically prospective and double blinded, to be conclusive. Since it is impossible to conduct most analyses of nutrition effects in this manner, all nutrition studies are inconclusive. By these standards penicillin has not been shown to be effective against any infections and smoking not shown to cause cancer and other diseases. Ironically, prospective double blinded studies meeting scientific statistical criteria for validity have been shown to be wrong 20-50% of the time when better studies were done at a later time.

Food businesses have made good use of this sort of nonsense by sponsoring studies showing their product healthy or at least harmless and then proclaiming that while their studies are not totally scientifically proven neither are all the others done by top level independent researchers showing harm.

Bottom line is that regular tea drinking is a healthy habit for many reasons BUT regular consumption of very hot tea, or any other beverage, can lead to esophageal cancer; and adding milk destroys most of tea's (and coffee's) nutrient value.

There is a difference in the nutrient value of different forms of tea. In general the youngest, least processed tea is the healthiest. From healthiest to least: white, green, oolong, black. I've not seen a study of coffee versus tea but would guess that coffee is about as healthy as black tea. Herbal teas range from very healthy to dangerous depending on the herb(s).