I’m a coffee addict; Sara loves tea. Even though our beverage choices differ, we both come out ahead when it comes to our health, according to new Dutch research.
Researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands studied more than 37,000 people for 13 years and found that tea and coffee drinkers both reaped major benefits: those who consumed three to six cups of tea a day had a 36 percent reduction in their risk of heart disease, while those who sipped two to four cups of coffee a day reduced their risk of heart disease by 20 percent.
Equally great? Researchers discovered that you can drink four to six cups of either beverage without increasing your risk of stroke or death from any cause. Translation: short of overdoing it on caffeine, there’s really no downside to getting your fix. The study authors even found that moderate coffee consumption reduced the risk of death from all causes.
One tidbit from this study I found particularly interesting was that although coffee and tea are both healthy choices, coffee drinkers tend to have less healthy lifestyles than tea drinkers; they’re more likely to smoke and eat worse food. Which means that maybe I should consider switching my morning joe for English breakfast from time to time.
–Camille
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Camille
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This is interesting, but I wonder whether they looked at what people take with their tea or coffee. Personally, I love tea; however, I really don’t enjoy it without some sugar (I will blame it on being raised in Texas–we love our sweet tea!). I would drink it every day, but as I am trying to cut down on the added sugar in my diet, I view it as more of a treat. This leaves me wondering whether the benefits of drinking tea outweigh the problems associated with added sugar.