Prompted by my (soon to be ex) office manager, yesterday I kept a tally of how many cups of tea I drank during the course of the day...I don't know if, in a quantum way, by the very act of monitoring my behaviour I altered it in any way (I tried not to, but you never know) but the end result is that, on this occasion at least, I consumed twelve cups (with a spot of milk, no sugar, ta)...
This, slightly surprising figure, caused both he and I to raise our eyebrows a little...but is it actually bad?
From one point of view, no, it's actually quite the contrary - to quote Wikipedia -
"Tea leaves contain more than 700 chemicals, among which the compounds closely related to human health are flavanoides, amino acids, vitamins (C, E and K), caffeine and polysaccharides. Moreover, tea drinking has recently proven to be associated with cell-mediated immune function of the human body. Tea plays an important role in improving beneficial intestinal microflora, as well as providing immunity against intestinal disorders and in protecting cell membranes from oxidative damage. Tea also prevents dental caries due to the presence of fluorine. The role of tea is well established in normalizing blood pressure, lipid depressing activity, prevention of coronary heart diseases and diabetes by reducing the blood-glucose activity. Tea also possesses germicidal and germistatic activities against various gram-positive and gram negative human pathogenic bacteria. Both green and black tea infusions contain a number of antioxidants, mainly catechins that have anti-carcinogenic, anti-mutagenic and anti-tumoric properties".
- however, it does also contain quite a lot of caffeine...50mg per cup in fact...which means I am dosing (although spread out over 9-ish hours) on roughly 600mg of caffeine per day...this *seems* like a lot to me, even though (medically) there is "very little risk of harm" (see the note above the chart) - and (in my defence) - I barely touch a drop of tea outside the office (I go every week night and all weekend long without so much as a sniff, with no ill effects at all)...
But it's given me pause...What do you think? Is twelve cups of tea a day too much?
RogueCrypt
2 days ago
4 comments:
You can never have enough tea mate, the British Empire was built on it (is that PC, who cares?)It probably would kill you but not before your 150 years old. Work is only an irritation that fills in time between tea breaks so put your feet up and have a cuppa.
My in-laws are scarily obsessed with tea. I mean, I love a cup of tea but they think you're weird if you don't drink a cup every half an hour! ;) They'd love you! Hahaha.
I think I average about 4 or 5 a day. I like to have one after a meal and then one or two in the evening :)
pleased to hear you drink as much tea as your boss.. how does this compare with coffee... and how many hot cups do you consume??? also i note that you binge drink on tea during the week and abstain at weekends.. surely that must be good for you... stella at home ... translated into units you are probably normal... don't worry about statistics... just enjoy and be british...
Nope, not a single cup of coffee, ever, it's always tea...and I'm glad I'm not being too odd... ;)
Post a Comment