Everyone knows that tea is good for you. It has lots of antioxidants, and antioxidants help in controlling free radicals in the body. I don't really know how different people drink their tea, some drink ice tea, some green tea, some sweet tea. I grew up in England for a while and most people drink their tea with milk and sugar. This is common to a lot of cultures including Indian culture. The tea is boiled and served with milk and sugar and sometimes the milk is boiled in with the tea. My parents have a cup of tea with milk almost five times a day, I thought they would be getting so many antioxidants...but I was wrong.
Something interesting we talked about in class today was how milk was good for you but too much wasn't; I read that people who drink milk in their tea barely get any of the tea's antioxidants. Milk has proteins called caseins which interact with flavonoids in tea called catechin. The flavonoids, which contain antioxidants, and which also help fight heart disease etc, don't have the same benefits as before. Another invivo study conducted in Italy found that tea antioxidant's activity was completely inhibited when milk was added.
Here are a few of the links that I looked at
<http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_43581.html>
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8617188&dopt=Citation>
So if you are drinking tea for health benefits do not drink it with milk. My parents still don't believe me though.
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5 comments:
I think it is funny that your parents don't believe you, but am not surprised. Today's society is very skeptical of news from both the media and the government.
Plus, we tend to believe what we want to believe. It's human nature. :)
I never drink tea with milk so I guess I am receiving the maximum antioxidant benefits :). I’m surprised your parents do not believe you. Perhaps they are so used to drinking tea with milk they don’t want to believe you?
I really enjoy your entry. Putting tea in milk may be popular in Asian countries such as India but in southeastern countries such as China, Vietnam and etc we don't put milk in tea at all. We would drink hot tea while we eat to help with digestion. Also I am lactose-intolerant so I can only drink the lactose free milk but it tastes really horrible. I suppose putting milk in tea is a cultural acquired taste because the first time I tried to take a sip of milk with tea it tasted very funny to me.
I forgot to add that most Asian dishes and drinks do not contain milk for an important reason. More than 90% of all Asian are lactose intolerant so adding any form of diary products would make us feel really sick.
Wow...more than 90% of Asians are lactose intolerant? Does that include Oriental peoples or Asians in general. I don't think I know a single person of Indian origin to be lactose intolerant. Anyway, I've heard this about milk interacting with the antioxidants in tea. Personally, I think tea tastes better without any milk.
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