Raised in Britain…country “have a cuppa tea”! With huge BUT..they mix the “cuppa” with milk and ‘teaspoonfuls SUGAR‘…which I castigate elsewhere dietary disaster! To me instinctively disaster…but requests for black tea in restaurants usually ignored! Conversion relatively late, but from German/Dutch influence, where I grasped the habit and the real taste of tea! Drink Tea Black! Up to that point I realized I had never actually tasted tea…in retrospect why have all those tea tasters with their fine tuned pallets?! Dr. Michael Greger, whom I admire for his painstaking research, written excellent summary on ‘why not’ to mix milk with black tea. Comes down to our ENDOTHELIUM, the inner lining of blood vessels…important for our every artery. This lining critical, and a factor in metabolic syndrome issues…such as heart, stroke, diabetes, kidney, leaky gut, cancer… and this not exhaustive! Seems endothelial functional decline used to be associated simply with age…BUT that now seriously challenged. Chinese tea drinking study suggests older Chinese retain functionality of twenty year-old! So aging itself not responsible!? To me that provides us real hope!
What is unusual about Chinese…they drink green and black teas neat! The black works just as well as the green BUT only if drunk neat, so Drink Tea Black!
Studies from other countries, such as Britain, therefore not fair for pure black tea! In the Netherlands they do drink their tea black, and results different! Seems addition of milk just shuts down biochemistry for improved endothelial function. Casein and even soy protein seems to have a ‘negative’ nutrient binding effect! They thus destroyed positives that go hand in hand with pure tea drinkers!
The European Society of Cardiology even driven to press released these conclusions, to chagrin of milk drinkers or mixers! The suggestion being to avoid the mix! The 16 person study in question, was in turn ‘questioned’…my wife, and no doubt countless tea drinkers, who love milk or soy, would similarly question! BUT as Dr. Greger pragmatically suggests…What is the downsize to a little milk abstinence? In my own opinion, once you adjust to the taste…pure tea tastes way better anyway! For me it’s all NO BRAINER! I will continue, and really unusual for a Brit, to Drink Tea Black!
