Dave Parker
Green tea has many advantages over coffee. Switching to green tea is therefore worthwhile for many reasons. We present the top six 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 – tea only made its way to Europe in 1610.
Although there are far more coffee drinkers than tea lovers in Europe today, green tea is becoming increasingly popular due to its noteworthy health effects and special taste experience.
While tea and coffee both contain antioxidants and of course the active ingredient caffeine, which many people appreciate for its stimulating effects, numerous studies have shown that green tea clearly has the edge when it comes to 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 and if you don’t like green tea but still want to benefit from its healing active ingredients, then green tea extract is a good choice, which also has one has a significantly higher active ingredient content that cannot be absorbed with tea alone (unless you drink 5 to 10 cups a day).
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 influenza viruses.
Especially in the early stages of an infection, the EGCG should be helpful or, of course, be used for prevention. Because the EGCG seems to prevent viruses from penetrating the body cells by inactivating certain proteins in the membrane of the viruses.
While coffee is generally not recommended when you have a cold or flu, green tea is a recommended drink especially in times of increased risk of infection and of course also 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.
Reasons 2. Green tea helps reduce your caffeine consumption
Caffeine has a stimulating effect on the central nervous system and is considered the main reason for consuming tea and coffee. Many people do not tolerate coffee well because of the caffeine. You become nervous, unfocused, and insomniac or suffer from palpitations or tachycardia because caffeine, among other things, accelerates the heartbeat.
Anyone who reacts in this way to coffee might get along better with green tea. Although this also contains caffeine, in the dry matter even more than in the coffee bean, there is ultimately much less caffeine in the infusion than in coffee, and a better-tolerated one at that.
The unroasted coffee beans contain about 0.9 to 2.6 percent caffeine (after roasting 1.3 to 2.0 percent). In comparison, green tea contains about 3 to 3.5 percent caffeine on a dry basis.
However, the caffeine content generally also depends on the respective type of coffee or tea and can vary between 0.5 percent and 6 percent for green tea.
The reason a cup of coffee still contains 4 to 8 times more caffeine than a cup of green tea is that a cup of coffee uses far more coffee powder than tea leaves do a cup of tea.
Compared to coffee, green tea also offers the advantage that it contains special tannins (especially catechins), which have the property of binding the caffeine in the tea water.
As a result, the caffeine in green tea does not get into the blood suddenly via the stomach (like with coffee), but slowly through the intestines. In this way, the effect of caffeine in green tea is significantly weakened.
The low-caffeine preparation of green tea
A maximum of 85 percent of the caffeine in tea can dissolve in the tea water. However, 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 steeping times and steeping 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 chose three different temperatures: 70°C, 85°C, and 100°C. They came to the realization that caffeine dissolves relatively quickly in the water.
In connection with hot water, significant amounts of caffeine were found in the tea in 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 infusions at 100 degrees.
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-promoting effects 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 taste of the tea 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 effect on the central nervous system and the organs, methylene chloride is classified as harmful to health and is suspected of causing cancer, so the residues of this solvent in the tea are of course anything but desirable.
For this reason, methylene chloride is also banned as a tea decaffeination 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. it has been decaffeinated using the high-pressure process mentioned. Check with your tea retailer accordingly.
If there is any uncertainty in this regard, it is better to refer to varieties with a lower caffeine content, e.g. B. Karigane, Genmaicha, or Bancha, and pay attention to the correct preparation.
Reasons 3. Green tea is better tolerated than coffee
However, the power of green tea is not just about 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 in particular 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 mostly irrelevant. According to studies, however, it is by no means just the individual ingredients and their quantity that are important, but also the interaction and combination 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 by the amino acid L-theanine, which calms the nervous system and improves the ability to concentrate.
Reasons 4. Green tea protects 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 the teeth.
The catechins in green tea, in particular the epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), contribute to the prevention of caries (e.g. in the case of oral cancer) by inhibiting certain enzymes of caries-causing bacteria.
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 considered 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.
Is cheap green tea contaminated with fluoride?
British researchers and a team of scientists from the University of Derby independently determined that the fluoride content in the inexpensive tea blends from conventional cultivation is very high, namely at 75 to 120 percent of the recommended daily maximum amount.
A whopping 6 mg of fluoride was found in one liter of such cheap supermarket tea.
It should be borne in mind that the German Federal Office for Risk Assessment recommends a maximum daily dose of 0.05 mg per kilo of body weight. A person weighing 70 kilograms should therefore not consume more than 3.5 mg of fluoride per day.
With one liter of green tea, however, he would already be consuming almost twice his maximum daily dose.
But now the question arises as to how such a high fluoride content in green tea can come about. Tea plants accumulate fluoride as they grow, resulting in older leaves containing much more fluoride than young ones.
In older tea leaves, the ingredients are not as well balanced, they also sometimes contain lower amounts of caffeine, L-theanine, and catechins.
Only the young shoots are used to produce high-quality green tea, while older tea leaves are processed into particularly inexpensive tea with higher fluoride content.
Since cheap teas can also be contaminated with pesticides, it is generally advisable to avoid green teas in the lower quality segment and instead rely on varieties from controlled organic cultivation. According to test reports from the German Stiftung Warentest, organic teas are in the “green zone”.
Read here how you can use green tea as a side-effect-free and highly effective mouthwash: Green tea: The ideal mouthwash
Reasons 5. Green tea helps with weight loss
Green tea is also considered a slimming agent. In this regard, more than 40 studies were conducted 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 metabolism, increases energy consumption, and inhibits certain enzymes.
The best green teas for weight loss include Sencha, Gyokuro, and Bancha, although variety should be important. Three cups of green tea per day are recommended for weight loss purposes.
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. Matcha is made by grinding green tea (usually 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 it is also called the “espresso effect”. Unlike a strong coffee, however, 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 espresso.
When preparing Matcha tea, 1 to 2 g of the powder is placed in a Matcha bowl, poured over 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, stimulates the metabolism. But also here please always pay attention to high organic quality.
Reasons 6. Green tea strengthens the heart
There are some studies showing that too much coffee can damage the heart. Green tea is different: In 2013, cardiologists from Heidelberg University Hospital published the results of their study 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 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 eleven-year “Ohsaki study” carried out in Japan.
The subjects included 40,530 adults between the ages of 40 and 79 who drank at least five cups of green tea per day. The death rate fell by 12 percent for male test participants and by 23 percent for female test participants.
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 are taking iron supplements, then you should be careful with both green tea and coffee, as both beverages can inhibit iron absorption. Read more about it here: Green Tea and Iron: A Bad Combination.
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