Tea Calories vs. Tea Caffeine: Which One is More Important to Pay Attention to?

image by : pexels.com

Perhaps, during the research you conduct to find out about things to support your weight loss program, you stumble upon a piece of information regarding correlation between tea calories and diet regime. Those sources of information may strongly urge you to only drink water, coffee, and tea but you might not find anything else to support that suggestion. The information you found is not wrong, by the way. Water has zero calories and zero caffeine.

Coffee and tea, on the other side, both have low calories. An 8-oz cup contains 2 tea calories, so does coffee in the same serving amount. Caffeine is good for your body but only at certain level.  But when it comes to caffeine level, tea wins the round. Consumption of caffeine beyond acceptable limit may give you side effects that are counterproductive. Caffeine gives you an instant boost of energy and coffee has it in abundance. Combined with coffee’s natural calorie level, caffeine works as your go-to secret weapon to wake your body up so it’s ready for the day.

At the other side of the spectrum are tea calories. Tea and coffee share roughly the same amount of calories but caffeine in tea is much, much lower than that of coffee. As caloric level of tea and coffee is more or less equal, attention should be directed to their caffeine content ratios. Caffeine’s presence in tea was first revealed back in 1827. The compound was referred to as theine until it was discovered that theine and caffeine were actually identical. As caffeine in coffee was the first to be discovered, he name “theine” was dropped and till this very day is called caffeine. You might wonder, if both tea and coffee have caffeine and their caffeine is identical with one another, why does the experience feel different? When you take a sip off a cup of coffee, the effects are felt within minutes. Tea, on the other hand, is barely palpable on its caffeine effects. There are three reasons for this:

1.     An average cup of tea contains significantly less caffeine, especially when you brew either white or green tea at lower temperature and shorter time.

2.     The amino acid L-theanine (which only exists in tea) works toward promoting relaxation and reducing stress. The amino acid works alongside caffeine to keep your body relax without losing alertness, all at the same time.

3.     Tea contains tons of antioxidants. These antioxidants, in turn, slow down the process of caffeine absorption within your body. As a result, chemical in the system increases more in a lot gentler way and you can stay alerted without have to deal with a crash after the caffeine is removed from the system—a typical condition commonly observed in coffee.