Green Tea with Milk: Debunking the Myths and Exploring the Effects

Is Drinking Green Tea with Milk Bad For You? - Green Tea Quiz

Is Drinking Green Tea with Milk a Bad Idea?

More and more people are drinking Japanese green tea in a non-traditional manner, such as by adding milk. Some famous examples are the matcha latte you find at your local Starbucks and a green tea smoothie you may try at home with your blender.

But you may also have heard that drinking tea with milk is a bad idea.

Is it the case with green tea or matcha as well?

If you want to get the maximum health benefit from drinking green tea, having milk with it will decrease the benefits but not eliminate them all.

Facts

One of the main health benefits of green tea is catechin, which is good for your heart, blood flow, and a whole lot more. (Read my full article about catechin here.)

Protein found in milk called caseins makes a chemical reaction with catechin and reduces its health benefits.

Drinking tea with milk reduces the benefit of catechin, which relaxes blood vessels, compared to drinking with water.

It is not BAD for you, the benefit is REDUCED

But please note that the tea combined with milk does not produce chemicals that are bad for your body; this is an often-heard myth. It does not. It reduces the benefit but does not generate a bad chemical.

So what can you do?

One idea is to choose soy milk rather than cow’s milk. Soy milk contains lecithin, which has a different molecular structure than casein, so you will get the full benefits of catechin if you like soy milk.

Since it is not "bad" for you, you may as well enjoy the tea. There are so many other components in tea, such as tannin, gallic acid, and even caffeine (for losing weight), that still act well for you when you drink green tea with milk.

Another option is to choose matcha rather than sencha for tea used with milk. People often use matcha rather than sencha for adding to milk. Since matcha is powdered and contains the full leaf rather than the steeped leaf-like sencha, you get more of the health benefits by drinking the same amount of the tea.

Just don’t forget that matcha tends to have more caffeine than sencha, so if you are drinking at night or limiting your caffeine intake, it may not be a good idea to drink matcha.

In Summary

Milk does decrease the health benefits of green tea, but there are still good elements of tea you get even when adding milk to your green tea. Choose soy milk over cow’s milk and matcha over loose leaf sencha to get maximum benefit. But over all, it is not "BAD" for you if you drink green tea with milk.

Green Tea Quiz - The Video

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