How Safe is a Cup of Tea?

People all over the world drink tea. It is a mild beverage which people enjoy in the morning when they start their day, and for years it has had a reputation for being both safe and almost always beneficial, a drink which will give its consumer a lift without dangerous side-efefcts. It was a drink favoured by temperance organisations who saw for more to fear in alcoholic beverages.

Now scientists are suggesting that tea may not be safe as we had previously believed. Tea contains caffeine. and caffeine has been linked to sleeplessness, and to the unpleasant jumpy feeling some people get when stressed. More seriously, there is a link with miscarriages, and pregnant women are advised to reduce their intake of tea until after thier baby is born.

Caffeine is found in tea, but it is larger component of other drinks. Six hundred mg of caffeine is found in six cups of percolated coffee, eight cups of instant coffee and 12 cups of medium strength tea. Chocolate drinks contain about 30 mg of caffeine per glass, so it takes 20 glasses to reach 600 mg.

The camparison demands that we know how strong ‘medium strength’ tea actually is, but medium strength to one person is weak to another. It would, of course, be possible to devise an objective test which prescribed the exact amount of tea in the pot, the time taken for it to brew, and the diffreing efefcts of adding (or not adding) milk or lemon. Most tea drinkers would rightly regard this as a foolish waste of time, and would continue to judge the strength of the tea they drink by its colour. Many people who drink a lot of tea solve the problem by drinking a beverage from which the caffeine has been removed, decaffeinated tea, but others claim that it simply doesn’t taste right. The sensible course is probably one of moderation: continue to enjoy your cup of tea, but don’t enjoy many!

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