Teapot 'is the healthiest option'

Tea made in a pot is healthier than simply dunking teabags in a mug, experts have declared.

The traditional way of making tea in a pot is healthier than dunking a bag in a cup, according to scientists.

Studied have been done before where they have found antioxidants in tea could help protect against cancer and heart disease. Now Scientists in Aberdeen have shown that a cup only gets the maximum amount of these chemicals when the tea is given proper time to brew.

Also, they found adding milk to a cup of tea had no effect on its cancer fighting properties.

The scientists tested levels of polyphenols, which are the antioxidants that occur naturally in the tea plant, in the blood of volunteers who drank black tea brewed for up to 10 minutes. They found that volunteers who drank tea that had been brewed for five minutes had blood antioxidant levels which were 60% higher than those who consumed a one minute infusion of hot tea.

Within an hour of drinking the five minute infusion, the level of antioxidants in the volunteer’s bloodstream rose to 45%. Brewing longer than 5 minutes yielded no extra health benefits. That is the optimum time. Within an hour of drinking the five-minute infusion, the level of antioxidants in volunteers' bloodstreams rose by up to 45%. Adding milk doesn’t influence the findings.

Professor Garry Duthie of the Rowett Research Institute said: "We found that if you let your tea infuse for about five minutes you would get the maximum amount of these chemicals.

He also said that if you let it brew for a longer time, it doesn’t necessarily equate to higher anti oxidant levels, it stays the same. It didn’t really make any difference if it was tea bags or tea leaves; longer brew time doesn’t influence them both.

Read this article, how to make tea the perfect tea, the British way. That way also helps get more antioxidants out of a tea than a simple tea immersion method.

I use tea bags and some time tea leaves, but I immerse the tea bags for more than 5 minutes, sometimes I leave it in the cup that I drink. Apparently it is not the ideal method. But one reason might be that in teabags, the tea leaves must have been harvested a long time ago and they may not be as fresh as the loose tea leaves. So if you want a good healthy tea, then let it brew in tea leaves for a 5 minute minimum.

Ref: BBC