10 Reasons You Should Drink More Tea – As If You Needed an Excuse
Britain hardly needs persuading to put the kettle on. Tea is what we make when we’re cold, tired, celebrating, procrastinating, catching up with a friend or dealing with a minor domestic crisis. Sometimes the mere suggestion of “shall I put the kettle on?” seems to improve matters.
But our national obsession may have more going for it than simply making a miserable Tuesday afternoon considerably more bearable.
Tea contains naturally occurring plant compounds that have attracted a great deal of scientific interest, while choosing an unsweetened brew can be a simple way to increase your fluid intake without reaching for sugary drinks. Then there’s the ritual itself: a few minutes away from a screen with something hot in your favourite mug.
There are, however, plenty of exaggerated claims about the benefits of drinking tea. It isn’t a detox, it won’t magically make you lose weight and no particular variety is going to transform your health overnight.
What it can be is a genuinely enjoyable part of a healthy lifestyle.
So, if you were looking for justification for putting the kettle on again, here are ten very good reasons.
1. Tea Is Packed With Interesting Plant Compounds
Tea starts with a plant: Camellia sinensis. Black, green, white and oolong teas all come from it, with differences in harvesting and processing producing the remarkably different drinks we know.
Tea naturally contains a group of plant compounds called polyphenols, including flavonoids. You’ll often see these casually referred to as “antioxidants”, although what they actually do within the human body is considerably more complicated than some wellness marketing would have you believe.
It’s one reason scientists continue to be interested in tea.
Large reviews of existing research have found associations between tea drinking and several favourable health outcomes, although association doesn’t prove that tea itself caused them. Tea drinkers may differ from non-tea drinkers in plenty of other ways.
In other words: fascinating, promising and worthy of research — but perhaps don’t start filling the bath with Earl Grey just yet.
2. Your Cup of Tea Counts Towards Your Daily Fluid Intake
Here’s one tea myth we can happily retire: drinking normal amounts of tea doesn’t somehow cancel out the water you’ve just consumed.
Tea is predominantly water.
Although traditional tea contains caffeine, caffeinated drinks can still contribute towards your overall fluid intake.
That makes your morning brew, afternoon cuppa and pot of tea with lunch part of your daily hydration rather than something that needs to be “undone” with an equivalent glass of water afterwards.
Obviously, water remains an excellent drink. But if drinking plain water all day feels rather joyless, tea provides another option.
3. Tea May Be Good News for Your Heart
This is one of the more interesting areas of tea research — although it’s important not to confuse an association with a prescription.
Studies examining tea consumption have found links between regular black and green tea drinking and cardiovascular health. An umbrella review examining existing research concluded that tea consumption appeared to have more favourable than harmful associations across numerous health outcomes.
Other large reviews of population studies have found an association between increasing tea consumption and lower cardiovascular disease and mortality risks.
Clinical evidence isn’t quite so neat. Trials investigating effects on things such as cholesterol and blood pressure have produced mixed results, and researchers have repeatedly called for better long-term studies.
So we certainly can’t say that a cup of tea prevents heart disease.
What we can say is that tea is an interesting part of the wider research into diet and cardiovascular health — and one of the easier dietary habits to enjoy.
4. It Can Give You a Gentler Alternative to Coffee
Coffee is wonderful. This isn’t an intervention.
But if your third enormous coffee of the morning leaves you feeling as though you can hear colours, swapping one of them for tea might be worth considering.
Both black and green tea contain caffeine, but the amount in your cup depends on the tea, quantity used and brewing method.
For people who enjoy a caffeine boost but don’t necessarily want another coffee, tea provides an easy alternative.
And if you’re trying to reduce caffeine further, there’s an enormous world beyond traditional tea. Rooibos and many herbal infusions are naturally caffeine-free.
You don’t have to join Team Tea or Team Coffee. This is not secondary school. You’re allowed both.
5. Unsweetened Tea Is a Very Simple Alternative to Sugary Drinks
Not every healthy habit needs to involve a powder costing £38 and a subscription.
Plain brewed tea contains very few calories before you start adding milk, sugar, syrup, cream or anything else to it.
That makes unsweetened tea a useful alternative if you’re trying to reduce your consumption of sugary soft drinks.
And “unsweetened tea” doesn’t have to mean a miserable mug of something resembling pond water.
Try Earl Grey with lemon, peppermint tea, fragrant green tea, ginger infusions, fruit teas or iced tea made at home without heaps of added sugar.
The important distinction is what goes into your tea.
Three heavily sweetened mugs don’t suddenly become health food because they started life as tea leaves.
6. There Is an Entire World Beyond English Breakfast
If “tea” means builder’s tea to you, you’ve barely scratched the surface.
Black, green, white and oolong tea all originate from the same species of plant, yet differences in how the leaves are grown, harvested and processed create dramatically different flavours.
Even within black tea, an Assam can taste completely different to a Darjeeling or Earl Grey.
Then there are drinks we commonly call tea but which aren’t technically tea at all. Peppermint, chamomile, ginger and rooibos are herbal infusions or tisanes because they aren’t produced from Camellia sinensis.
Does this distinction matter when you’re standing in your kitchen in your dressing gown?
Not remotely.
But it does mean that declaring “I don’t like tea” is a little like saying you don’t like sandwiches. There are rather a lot left to try.
7. Green Tea Deserves Some of Its Healthy Reputation – Just Not All of It
Green tea has become the golden child of the wellness world.
Some of that reputation is justified. Green tea contains polyphenols including catechins and has been extensively investigated for its possible relationship with cardiovascular and metabolic health.
But green tea isn’t medicine and it isn’t a fat-melting shortcut.
Research into tea and health remains complex, and findings from observational studies don’t automatically prove cause and effect. Research involving concentrated green tea supplements also shouldn’t be treated as though it’s identical to drinking an ordinary cup of tea.
So by all means drink green tea because you enjoy it and because it can form part of a balanced diet.
Just don’t expect it to undo Friday night’s takeaway by Saturday morning.
8. Making Tea Forces You to Stop for Five Minutes
Not every benefit of drinking tea needs to happen at a cellular level.
Sometimes the benefit is simply this: you stopped.
You walked away from the laptop. You put the kettle on. You waited. You made something. You sat down.
A cup of tea naturally creates a small break in the day.
That’s something we’ve become surprisingly bad at doing without simultaneously checking emails, scrolling through social media or completing another task.
Tea isn’t a treatment for stress, anxiety or burnout, and we shouldn’t pretend that it is. But building small pauses into a busy day can be pleasurable in its own right.
Make the tea.
Then — radical suggestion incoming — drink it without doing anything else for five minutes.
9. You Can Find a Tea for Almost Any Time of Day
One of tea’s great advantages is variety.
Want something robust first thing in the morning? Assam or English Breakfast.
Fancy something lighter in the afternoon? Green or white tea.
Want the ceremony of a hot drink in the evening without another hit of caffeine? Try rooibos or a caffeine-free herbal infusion.
That makes tea an easy ritual to adapt throughout the day rather than one single drink repeated endlessly.
Which Tea Should You Try?
| If you want… | Try… |
|---|---|
| A strong morning brew | English Breakfast or Assam |
| Something fragrant | Earl Grey |
| A lighter traditional tea | Darjeeling |
| Something fresh and delicate | Green tea |
| Something cooling | Peppermint infusion |
| Something warming | Ginger infusion |
| Something floral | Chamomile infusion |
| A caffeine-free evening drink | Rooibos |
| Something refreshing served cold | Green tea with lemon |
| To explore something completely different | Oolong |
And don’t assume you have to like every tea you’re told is “good for you”.
Life is too short to repeatedly drink something you hate.
10. Tea Is One of Life’s Most Affordable Little Luxuries
This might be our favourite reason.
Luxury doesn’t always have to involve an expensive hotel, tasting menu or something arriving in a box tied with ribbon.
Sometimes it’s using the beautiful teapot that’s been sitting in the cupboard for six years because you’ve been “saving it for best”.
Buy a tea you’ve never tried. Use the ridiculous cup. Get the teapot out. Add a slice of lemon. Make a proper pot when somebody comes over rather than handing them a mug with a tea bag still floating around in it.
For comparatively little money, making tea can become a small daily ritual rather than simply another means of consuming caffeine.
And frankly, we’re very much in favour of finding more of those.
Is Green Tea Healthier Than Black Tea?
Not necessarily.
Green and black tea come from the same plant but are processed differently, which changes their chemical composition and flavour.
Green tea is particularly associated with catechins, while black tea contains different polyphenols created during oxidation.
Both have been extensively studied, and research has found potentially favourable associations for both.
Rather than worrying about which one wins the imaginary healthiest-tea competition, choose one you actually enjoy drinking.
A cupboard full of virtuous green tea that you can’t stand isn’t doing anyone much good.
Does Tea Really Hydrate You?
Yes, tea can contribute to your daily fluid intake.
The idea that every caffeinated drink automatically dehydrates you is an oversimplification. Caffeine can have a mild diuretic effect, particularly at higher doses, but the water contained in ordinary cups of tea still contributes towards hydration.
If you’re particularly sensitive to caffeine, however, it makes sense to watch how much caffeinated tea you drink and when you drink it.
There are plenty of caffeine-free alternatives if you simply enjoy the ritual of a hot drink.
How Much Tea Should You Drink?
There isn’t one universally perfect number of cups.
How much is appropriate depends partly on the tea you’re drinking, its caffeine content, what else you consume and your individual sensitivity to caffeine.
Remember that caffeine doesn’t only come from tea. Coffee, cola, energy drinks, chocolate and some medicines can contribute to your daily intake too.
If tea starts interfering with your sleep, making you jittery or causing other unwanted effects, that’s a fairly compelling reason to cut back or switch some cups for caffeine-free alternatives.
Pregnant women and people with particular health conditions may also need to be more careful about caffeine intake and should follow appropriate medical guidance.
More isn’t automatically better.
So, Is Tea Actually Good for You?
Tea can absolutely have a place in a healthy diet.
Black, green, white and oolong teas contain naturally occurring plant compounds that continue to be investigated for their potential health effects. Research has found promising associations between regular tea consumption and some health outcomes, particularly cardiovascular health, but that doesn’t make tea a preventative treatment or miracle drink.
Perhaps we don’t need to turn every enjoyable thing into a wellness hack anyway.
Drink tea because you like it. Try different varieties. Go easy on the sugar if you’re drinking several cups a day. Think about caffeine if you’re struggling to sleep. And enjoy the fact that something so simple can provide a perfectly legitimate excuse to disappear into the kitchen for ten minutes.
As if any of us needed another reason to put the kettle on.
