Nature Medicine | Spoonful of Medicine

Milk sours tea benefits

So I’m a big tea drinker. And like most tea drinkers from India (and Britain), I like my tea strong and sweet and with plenty of milk. And I’ve always thought how great it was that with every cup, I was also becoming healthier. Tea is supposed to have antioxidants and help prevent heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Imagine my dismay when German researchers announced yesterday in the European Heart Journal that adding milk to tea completely wipes out those benefits.

Black tea, such as Darjeeling, on its own relaxes the arteries and helps blood flow, perhaps by producing nitric oxide. But when the same tea has 10% skimmed milk, those effects apaprently disappear. The scientists say this could be because milk proteins block the production of nitric oxide. This may explain why British tea drinkers don’t show the same benefits as East Asian ones, who tend to drink green tea without milk.

The study doesn’t seem definitive to me—it still needs to be confirmed by other groups—so I think I’m just going to hope, as I sip this milky tea, that it’s not so black and white as that.

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    Natalie Kay said:

    What about liquid coffeemate? Does this have the same effect as milk? I hope not