She won’t drink it any other way!
She says it makes the tea creamier and more delicious.
Depending on your particular culture and taste, adding cow’s milk or soy milk to your tea may be common or unusual.
But that tiny, seemingly insignificant decision may impact your health more than you might think.
You may recall that a 2007 study found that using cow’s milk in black tea may cancel out some of the tea’s key health benefits, and another study—this one from 2012—now shows that adding cow’s milk or soy milk to green tea may also have a negative effect on health.
If you’re a tea drinker, pay close attention…
BAD MOOS
The earlier study that tackled this topic looked specifically at the effect of cow’s milk on black tea. In case you’re fuzzy on the findings, I’ll refresh your memory.
Researchers found that drinking black tea—without milk—significantly increased the ability of the subjects’ arteries to accommodate changes in blood flow. But this effect was not seen at all in either the control group (that drank boiled water) or the tea-with-milk group. In other words, drinking the tea with milk completely prevented the subjects from getting this particular cardiovascular benefit from the tea.
How come? Tea contains catechins, compounds that help blood vessels relax. Milk, however, contains proteins known as caseins that can inhibit this benefit of tea, probably by combining with the catechins. This is true of all types of cow’s milk, regardless of the fat content. Talk about udder disappointment!
WHAT ABOUT SOY MILK? AND GREEN TEA?
Another more recent study was performed, by a separate set of scientists, to see whether soy milk would blunt key health benefits of green tea. Unfortunately, it did! Those researchers found that when subjects drank green tea with soy milk or with cow’s milk, both types of milk reduced the bioavailability of certain catechins, compared with drinking the green tea with no milk (the control). When bioavailability is reduced, the body can’t absorb as many of the beneficial compounds.
MILKING IT
I’m not a huge tea drinker, but as someone who can’t fully operate without at least one cup of coffee each morning, I wondered whether the same problem might occur among coffee drinkers who add cow’s milk or soy milk to the beverage—are they negating benefits, too? Coffee doesn’t contain catechins, but it does contain antioxidants and has been associated with reduced risk for heart disease, heart failure and stroke in prior studies. Luckily, there’s no scientific evidence so far that adding either sort of milk to coffee negates any benefits.
At any rate, I’m going to share this disheartening news with my “proper” British friend. Will she stop having milk in her tea? I don’t know (old habits die hard, right?). And what about you—if you’ve been taking your tea with milk, will you stop?
Source: Mario Lorenz, PhD, senior scientist, department of cardiology and angiology, Charité Medical University, Berlin, Germany.
Publication Daily Health News
Original publication date November 19, 2012
