Yes, you read that right. Tea is bad for you.
Or, at least regular black tea is, with its high levels of tannin, which, incidentally, is what gives the tea its color.
Of course, it isn’t that simple. See, tannin is a poison that plants produce to kill bugs that would attack it. Tea is very high in tannin levels, as are redwoods. Now, this is very good for the redwoods, helping them fight off disease, rot and insects. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the human body, which is not designed to handle tannin.
Now, tea leaves keep quite a good hold on their tannin, which is excellent news. It means that you won’t get tannin in your tea if you stop it from brewing after five minutes. And that green tea won’t give up its tannin at all, on account of the leaves being sealed up within themselves.
That is the good news. Now about what I said that the story with tannin isn’t so simple.
Now, the human body is, as I have said, not meant to handle tannin. However, this does not necessarily mean that tannin is bad for you.
What tannin does to the human body is to wash it out, cleaning it out of all of the vitamins and minerals that it is holding at that point in time. In some scenarios, that is actually a good thing. Of course, it usually isn’t.
A bit of tannin also isn’t quite enough to hurt you, you need the tea to brew for a good half hour before enough tannin seeps into your drink to do damage.
This, of course, is what you need to worry about if you drink tea. If you don’t want to drink tea, there is a better alternative with all of the advantages and none of the drawbacks:
Tomato soup. It’s a hot liquid that kills the toxins that you want the tea to wash out.
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