Coffee vs. Tea

While this blog is dedicated to tea and tea service, there is that brother from another mother out there infiltrating our cups: coffee! While tea is generally considered the healthier alternative, is this necessarily true? Tea is almost 3000 years older than coffee; does age trump youthfulness here? Let's find out!

There are two major 'ingredients' usually associated with tea and coffee: caffeine, and antioxidants. While many people automatically assume caffeine to be a bad thing, this is not the case! If you need a pick me up for alertness, caffeine is your drug of choice. Caffeine also used to be a go-to relief for sufferers of asthma. So long as these beverages are reasonably consumed (a max of four 8 oz. cups a day, and that's being generous) then one has nothing to worry about. And antioxidants have been shown to reduce inflammation of blood vessels, and to reduce the likelihood of cancer.

Now, which beverage has more or less of these things! In order of most to least amount of caffeine, it goes: coffee (~150mg/cup), black tea, green tea (~55mg/cup), and white tea. In order of most to least amount of antioxidants, it goes: white tea, green tea, black tea, and coffee (fancy that!)

Because there is such a thing as too much caffeine, because coffee has little support to its health benefits, and because there really isn't such a thing as too much antioxidant, I would say that tea is the healthier choice. But again - so long as it is consumed within reason - I would really recommend you just drink whatever you prefer!

Thank you ABC News and and Diffen for some of the above info!