10 Reasons why Tea is simply better than Coffee

It’s an age-old question: What’s better for you, coffee or tea? A lot of people believe they should cut down on their caffeine intake. The common belief is that caffeinated beverages in general will dehydrate you. It’s not true.

“Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water,” says Carrie Ruxton, a public health nutritionist at Kings College in London. “Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it’s got two things going for it…even if you had a really, really strong cup of tea or coffee, which is quite hard to make, you would still have a net gain of fluid [i.e. your body retains more than it excretes]. Also, a cup of tea contains fluoride, which is good for the teeth.” 

Black tea, green tea, white tea and oolong tea are made from camellia sinensis tea leaves (as opposed to herbal tea, which is not technically tea, and is generally not caffeinated), and contain substances known as flavonoids, which many studies have linked to healthful benefits. Chinese emperor Shennong wrote about the benefits of tea as far back as 2737 BCE. A United Kingdom nutritional study linked tea consumption to lesser instances of heart disease and some cancers.

Here are 10 reasons why tea is better than coffee.

1. Tea is fantastic at hydrating the body and replenishing your fluid intake. Even though you get the same from coffee, tea has the added benefit of generally being just pure H2O with that added great flavour. Meaning that when it’s a ridiculously hot summers day, it’s much more beneficial to sip on a huge cup of tea (hot or cold) as it replaces any fluids you’ve lost throughout the day while sweating. Tea hydrates your skin quicker.

2. Tea has been shown in studies to help reduce the chances of developing certain kinds of cancers and tumours. Even though scientific evidence still seems to be unsure about the greatness that is tea, the fact that tea has been linked to improving your health since legendary Chinese emperor Shennong wrote about it almost five thousand years in an almanac surely means something.

3. Tea will keep you going for longer. It’s been said that tea has less caffeine than coffee when given in the same amount of servings, this isn’t actually true. Tea has the same amount of caffeine as coffee, and while both are stimulants, coffee has a much bigger depressing effect (not making you sad but reducing your energy levels) than tea, meaning that while both tea and coffee will give you a bigger rush of caffeine, with coffee, the high will also last shorter and drop quicker. If you’re want something to keep you active and going through the whole work day, tea is just simply the better choice.

4. It’s easier than making coffee. A perhaps a very churlish point but one worth noting: in our modern times it’s just a simple process to make a quick cup of tea where coffee takes time and energy. Place teabag in a cup of hot water, remove after a few minutes, and you’re done. Admittedly the era of instant coffee makes coffee much easier to brew too, but in our world of gourmet coffees, it does seem much easier to drop a teabag into a mug of hot water and have some instant relief.

5. There are a ton of antioxidants in tea, much more than you’re likely to get in coffee. Antioxidants are fantastic for keeping your body ticking over and looking and feeling fantastic, hence why a lot of companies have jumped aboard the bandwagon of sticking antioxidants into products. In short, antioxidants keep you looking fresh, feeling great and tea has an abundance of them.

6. Tea can help you shed some unwanted pounds. Relatively recent research (try saying that five times really quickly) has indicated that green tea might be a great drink for our weight watchers out there. It might be down to the fact that green tea helps kick start your metabolism or simply that tea is a better substitute as a practically calorie-free drink as opposed to downing soft drinks to quench your thirst. Plus you can’t really add much to tea to give it extra calories. Check out your nearest coffee house next time and see how many options there are that can be ultra-fattening to put on top of your coffee.

7. Tea is also pretty good for your teeth. Of course only when it’s managed in comparison to coffee. Drink too much tea, and we’re talking a lot here, and you’re getting too much fluoride in there. Drink a reasonable amount and you’re fine and unlike coffee, you don’t have the unwarranted side effect of discolouration when it comes to drinking a lot of your favourite cup of coffee.

8. It can also protect your bones. An Australian study recently found that people who drank tea on a regular basis had stronger bones and actually were less likely to develop osteoporosis thanks to the high levels of tea Catechin. Catechin is a flavan-3-ol, a type of natural phenol and antioxidant. In addition, another study a few years earlier found that drinking tea helped promote healthy bone formation. While I recommend not drinking too much (that well-publicised story about a woman who developed skeletal fluorosis after consuming 150 bags of tea a day rings true), having a cup of tea can be beneficial to keeping your bones strong.

9. Tea can help reduce stress. An advantage we can all use from time to time…while the physical cause behind this remains unknown or murky at best, it’s a well-known fact that tea is used cross-culturally as a bonding tool as well as refreshment, which goes some way to explaining why some cultures have tea so deeply ingrained as part of their customs (e.g. the British). Tea, or rather specifically, green tea has also been found to work as an anti-depressant, meaning that taking a cup next time you’re feeling a little low might just help boost your mood.

10. Last but certainly not least: tea can help strengthen your immune system. While it probably won’t help out a huge amount while you’re battling a bout of intense flu (apart from the benefits of just drinking something and helping to flush the bug out of your system), drinking tea can really help set up and improve your immune system for next time. It’s kind of like setting up security software on your computer – it might not help you when you’ve just been infected and installed it, but it should really help you the next time something mean and nasty appears on the horizon.

A great idea would be to add some lemon juice or honey into your cup of tea, it just tastes better. Why? Because Tea is simply just better!