Tea: To add milk or not add milk - that is the question
I'm a purist when it comes to tea. I don't need sweetener and I don't need milk. But I've noticed other people like to add one or both. I've seen it reported recently that the casein and similar proteins in milk may bind to the tea flavonoids (phytochemicals) thereby make them less active in the body.
Well I did some searching around to try and answer the question - to add milk
to tea, or not to add tea - that is the question.
I couldn't find anything definitive one way of the other so I asked well-known researcher Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., from Tufts University's Antioxidant Research Laboratory. According to Dr. Blumberg the evidence is "mixed" with some studies showing an inhibition of absorption and others (the majority of the available reports) showing none. He believes there isn't a consensus on the issue. I believe that, since I spent an hour trying to hunt down some solid information on this and ended up more confused than when I started.
If you want to play it safe than you could drink milk an hour after you drink your tea. The reason I say "an hour" is because a Dutch study noted that tea flavonoids are absorbed from the gut and that there was a significant increase in antioxidants circulating in the blood in their study participants about 1 hour after tea was consumed. [Journal of Nutrition October 2003, 133:3285S-3292S, Rietveld A., et al. "Antioxidant Effects of Tea: Evidence from Human Clinical Trials"]
~~Elaine
Related Topics: Drinking Black Tea May Soothe Stress, How Does Green Tea Help Your Health?
Technorati Tags: tea, antioxidants, milk
Well I did some searching around to try and answer the question - to add milk
to tea, or not to add tea - that is the question.
I couldn't find anything definitive one way of the other so I asked well-known researcher Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., from Tufts University's Antioxidant Research Laboratory. According to Dr. Blumberg the evidence is "mixed" with some studies showing an inhibition of absorption and others (the majority of the available reports) showing none. He believes there isn't a consensus on the issue. I believe that, since I spent an hour trying to hunt down some solid information on this and ended up more confused than when I started.
If you want to play it safe than you could drink milk an hour after you drink your tea. The reason I say "an hour" is because a Dutch study noted that tea flavonoids are absorbed from the gut and that there was a significant increase in antioxidants circulating in the blood in their study participants about 1 hour after tea was consumed. [Journal of Nutrition October 2003, 133:3285S-3292S, Rietveld A., et al. "Antioxidant Effects of Tea: Evidence from Human Clinical Trials"]
~~Elaine
Related Topics: Drinking Black Tea May Soothe Stress, How Does Green Tea Help Your Health?
Technorati Tags: tea, antioxidants, milk
Labels: nutrition
4 Comments:
i love green tea pure but black tea with milk ussually. fav black tea would be keemun black tea from www.teacuppa.com
The research that I have seen indicates that the Brits do not get the same measure of protection from tea that non-Brits get from drinking straight tea. The assumption was that adding milk somehow neutralized the anti-oxidents, etc.
My usual breakfast is tea and a bowl of cereal with skim milk. Can't help wondering if I'm undoing the tea benifits I thought I was getting.
I like the Tea Drops Flowering Teas from
www.tealaden.com they have great loose tea
also.
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