UK Study Says Drinking Black Tea ‘Modestly’ Lowers Risk of Death

A study led by the UK’s National Cancer Institute has found that drinking moderate amounts of the popular European drink, black tea, can “modestly” lower the risk of death.

Rabat – A study led by the UK’s National Cancer Institute has found that drinking moderate amounts of the popular European drink, black tea, can “modestly” lower the risk of death.

The UK-based study investigated half a million tea drinkers, they published their results in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal on August 30, their findings showed that people who consumed two or more cups of black tea per day during the experimental period had a 9% to 13% lower risk of death from any health-related cause compared to their peers who did not drink tea.

The correlation between tea intake and risk of death was not affected by the tea temperature, nor by the addition of milk or sugar, or the individual’s metabolization rate of caffeine, says the researchers.

The study sample involved 498,043 men and women, all aged between 40-69 who participated in this large cohort study named UK Biobank.

The participants were recorded for over 11 years, while the researchers used a database from the UK National Health Service to obtain the mortality records of their participants.

Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo, a professor of preventive medicine at the Autonomous University of Madrid, described the research as a “substantial advance in the field.” However, he said that the study has not confirmed that tea was the sole cause of participants’ low mortality rates.

According to Rodriguez, the results “show that regular consumption of black tea (the most widely consumed tea in Europe) is associated with a modest reduction in total and, especially, cardiovascular disease mortality over 10 years in a middle-aged, mostly white, adult general population.”

The findings echo the conclusions reached by previous studies conducted mainly among Asian populations who mostly drink green tea.

In July, another study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that moderate consumption of (un)sweetened coffee is linked to a lower risk of death. The research argued that people who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups per day were 30% less likely to die during the study’s period which lasted approximately seven years.