Six Reasons Why You Should Swap Your Morning Coffee for Green Tea
Switching to green tea is worthwhile for a number of reasons. We introduce the six most important advantages of green tea over coffee.
Green tea is healthier than coffee
Green tea has been used as a remedy in its Far Eastern homeland for around 5,000 years. Coffee was brought to the New World by the British in the mid-17th century.
Although there are far more coffee drinkers than tea connoisseurs in the Americas today, green tea is becoming more and more popular due to its remarkable health effects and the special taste experience.
Tea and coffee both contain antioxidants, and of course the active ingredient caffeine, which is highly valued by many for its stimulating effects, but numerous studies have shown that green tea is clearly ahead in terms of medicinal value.
Six reasons for green tea instead of coffee
So if you are considering whether it makes sense to switch from coffee to green tea, you will find the appropriate motivating arguments below:
1. Green tea with antiviral properties
A study from October 2018 showed that the main active ingredient in green tea, EGCG, can act against numerous viruses, including herpes and hepatitis viruses, but also against flu viruses.
The EGCG should be particularly helpful in the early stage of an infection, or, of course, can be used for prevention. The EGCG seems to prevent viruses from penetrating the body’s cells by inactivating certain proteins in the virus’ membrane.
While coffee is generally advised against if you have a cold or flu, green tea is a recommended drink especially in times of increased risk of infection and of course during an infection. Since pure active ingredients or extracts are always used in studies, EGCG or green tea extract can also be used as a dietary supplement.
2. Green tea helps in reducing your caffeine consumption
Caffeine has a stimulating effect on the central nervous system and is considered to be the main reason for consuming tea and coffee. Many people do not tolerate coffee so well because of the caffeine. You become nervous, unfocused and sleepless or suffer from palpitations or palpitations because caffeine accelerates the heartbeat, among other things.
Anyone who reacts this way to coffee could get along better with green tea. This also contains caffeine, in the dry matter even more than in the coffee bean, but ultimately there is much less caffeine in the infusion than in coffee and a more easily digestible one.
The unroasted coffee beans contain around 0.9 to 2.6 percent caffeine (1.3 to 2.0 percent after roasting). In comparison, green tea contains around 3 to 3.5 percent caffeine in dry matter.
The caffeine content generally also depends on the type of coffee or tea in question and can fluctuate between 0.5 percent and 6 percent for green tea.
The reason why a cup of coffee still contains 4 to 8 times more caffeine than a cup of green tea is because much more coffee powder is used for a cup of coffee than tea leaves for a cup of tea.
Compared to coffee, green tea also has the advantage that it contains special tannins (especially catechins), which have the property of binding the caffeine in the tea water.
This means that the caffeine in green tea does not get jerkily through the stomach (as in coffee), but leisurely through the intestines into the blood. In this way, the effects of the caffeine in green tea are significantly weakened.
The low-caffeine preparation of green tea
A maximum of 85 percent of the caffeine in tea can dissolve into the tea water. How much caffeine actually goes into the infusion is determined by the duration of the infusion, the number of infusions and the water temperature.
A study from 2007 showed that the caffeine content in tea water can be significantly limited by moderate brewing times and temperatures and that the generally recommended 2 minutes and 50 ° C to 60 ° C for green tea can be regarded as optimal.
The researchers prepared 3 g of green tea in eight infusions of different lengths and selected three different temperatures: 70 ° C, 85 ° C and 100 ° C. They discovered that caffeine dissolves in water relatively quickly.
In connection with hot water, significant amounts of caffeine were found in the tea within the first 30 seconds. In the first infusion, at a water temperature of 70 ° C, there was a quarter less caffeine in the tea than in 100-degree infusions.
Tea thermometers or kettles with electronic temperature selection are ideal for keeping an eye on the right temperature when preparing tea.
Decaffeinated green tea
If you want to benefit from the health benefits of green tea without consuming caffeine, you can use decaffeinated tea.
State-of-the-art high-pressure processes, in which the caffeine is reduced with the help of carbon dioxide, activated charcoal and silica, ensure that there is no chemical pollution and that the tea’s taste is not impaired.
But there are also decaffeination processes that use chemical solvents or other chemical components. In Europe, tea is primarily decaffeinated using methylene chloride.
However, due to its effects on the central nervous system and organs, methylene chloride is classified as harmful and is suspected of causing cancer, so that residues of this solvent in tea are of course anything but desirable.
For this reason, methylene chloride is also banned as a decaffeinating agent for tea in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Decaffeinated green tea is therefore only recommended if it is free of solvent residues, i.e. has been decaffeinated using the high-pressure process mentioned. Ask your tea dealer accordingly.
If there is any uncertainty in this regard, it is better to focus on varieties with a lower caffeine content, e.g. B. Karigane, Genmaicha or Bancha are used and attention is paid to the correct preparation.
3. Green tea is better tolerated than coffee
The potency of green tea is by no means just about the caffeine. According to the current state of science, green tea contains 200 to 250 important secondary plant substances and 360 to 400 essential oils.
In addition to caffeine, the valuable active substances in green tea include polyphenols (catechins, flavanols), fatty acids, polysaccharides, proteins, trace elements, vitamins, amino acids, essential oils, chlorophyll and numerous secondary plant substances.
The amounts of vitamins, fatty acids or trace elements contained in the infusion are very small and usually not relevant. According to studies, however, it is by no means just a matter of the individual ingredients and their amount, but also of the interaction and combination effects of the same.
In addition to caffeine, green tea contains two other stimulants: theobromine and theophylline. Since the effect of all three alkaloids is in strong synergistic interaction with the other ingredients, they are much more tolerable than is the case with coffee.
In addition, the stimulating effects of green tea can be balanced out by the amino acid L-theanine, which calms the nervous system and improves the ability to concentrate.
4. Green tea protects the teeth
Another reason to drink green tea instead of coffee is for dental health. Unlike black tea and coffee, regular consumption of green tea hardly stains teeth.
The catechins in green tea, especially epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), help prevent tooth decay (e.g. in the case of oral cancer) by inhibiting certain enzymes from bacteria that cause caries.
In addition, the tea leaves contain natural fluoride compounds: the fluoride content here is between 40 and 334 mg / kg of tea leaves — the average is 118 mg/kg.
Green tea can therefore be regarded as a natural source of fluoride, but only if it is a high-quality organic green tea, because other green teas can also contain far too much fluoride.
5. Green tea helps you lose weight
Green tea is also considered a slimming agent. In this regard, more than 40 studies were carried out between 2000 and 2013 alone. In more than three quarters of the studies, a positive influence of the active ingredients on body weight could be determined.
The combination of caffeine/catechins in green tea is sometimes referred to, which has a reducing effect on fat digestion and fat absorption in the stomach and intestines.
In addition, green tea stimulates the metabolism, increases energy expenditure and inhibits certain enzymes.
The best green teas for losing weight include Sencha, Gyokuro and Bancha, although emphasis should be placed on variety. For weight loss purposes, three cups of green tea per day is recommended.
You can find more information about losing weight with green tea here: Lose weight with green tea or here: Tips for losing weight
Matcha increases fat burning
If green tea powder (e.g. matcha and benifuuki) is taken 3 to 4 times a week, fat burning can be increased additionally. Matcha is made by grinding green tea (mostly the tencha and gykuro teas) into the finest powder.
Matcha has a particularly invigorating effect on the body due to its high caffeine content, which is why we also speak of the “espresso effect”. Unlike strong coffee, matcha has a relaxing effect at the same time and helps you lose weight in a healthy way. 1 to 1.5 teaspoons of matcha correspond to the amount of caffeine in an espresso.
When preparing matcha tea, 1 to 2 g of the powder are put into a matcha bowl, poured with 60 to 100 ml of hot water (maximum 80 ° C) and whipped with a bamboo whisk (Cha-sen) until foamy.
Benifuuki is a type of green tea that is now also available as a powdered tea. It is characterized by the high proportion of certain catechins and bitter substances and for this reason gets the metabolism going. But here, too, please always pay attention to high organic quality.
6. Green tea strengthens the heart
There are some studies that show that too much coffee can damage the heart. Green tea is different: in 2013, cardiologists from Heidelberg University Hospital published their study results on the therapeutic effects of green tea in the journal Clinical Research in Cardiology.
During the investigation, the researchers found that the daily consumption of two liters of green tea can prevent further heart damage in the case of hereditary and age-related forms of the incurable disease amyloidosis, in which heart failure occurs due to malformed proteins.
But there are many other studies that show that green tea has a positive effect on the heart — one of the best known is the “Ohsaki Study” carried out in Japan and running for eleven years.
The subjects included 40,530 adults between the ages of 40 and 79 who drank at least five cups of green tea per day. In the male test participants, the death rate fell by 12 percent, in the female by 23 percent.
Green tea instead of coffee
Green tea has enormous health benefits, so switching from coffee to green tea is worthwhile for several reasons.
However, if you are iron deficient and/or take iron supplements, then you should be careful with both green tea and coffee, as both drinks can inhibit iron absorption.
