Surely you’ve heard about tea in England or tea at five o’clock. As the name suggests, this is a common aspect in English culture and consists of ingesting black tea with milk punctually at 5 pm. Mixing between drinks is similar to our custom of adding milk to coffee. But is this practice healthy?Black tea has many properties and if consumed in a balanced way can bring numerous health benefits to consumers. For this reason, it becomes an object of study for scientists. In one of these surveys, professionals tried to validate the effects that tea has without and with the addition of milk. And the results go against the technique used in England and spread around the world.

Benefits of Black Tea

Two substances define black tea well, they are: theaflavins and tearubugins. Both are fundamental in the most important effect that this drink has on the body, that is, to reduce the fat absorbed during digestion. This action triggers others, such as lowering the level of bad cholesterol in the blood.

With this, the tea is also indicated to prevent obesity, reduce the amount of adipose tissue and attenuate the fat content present in the liver. In this way, the drink is ideal for those who want to lose weight or keep their weight stable. In addition to taking care of the health of the heart, the organs of digestion and consequently the whole body.

Scientifically proven beneficial actions

All these effects and properties mentioned above have been studied and scientifically proven. Researchers used lab rats to get the concrete answers. The animals were fed a fatty diet, but at the same time received daily doses of black tea extract.

In this situation, at the end of the tests, the mice were neither obese nor had high cholesterol. Other factors that decreased were adipose tissue and fat in organs such as the liver.

But, how does milk interfere with the tea’s qualities?

So you think, if black tea has many benefits and milk is also a good source of nutrients, putting the two together will have a cup of positive effects on my health. Right? No, totally at odds with reality. Even though these two products are beneficial to humans, the combination of the two cancels out each other’s properties.

Some studies prove that substances present in cow’s milk can neutralize the effects that black tea causes in the body. The explanation for this is purely chemical, as the meeting of milk proteins with tea compounds neutralizes the action of both sides.

There is also an observation regarding the milk used, this is because the skimmed milk is the least recommended, since it causes the most neutralization. The whole and semi-skimmed are the most suitable, as they interfere less in the compounds of the other drink. The ideal is to consume the tea without milk, but if you can’t because of the strong taste, choose to add a little semi-skimmed tea.