Does Sweetening Tea Ruin Its Healthiness?

With all the flavors and blends that come along with green tea, it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t something out there for everyone. Different herbal combinations can create awesome flavors that can’t be replicated in any other way.

Even with the myriad of tea flavors available, there are still people who can’t stomach a drink without it being sweet enough.

Sweeteners have been around for a long time, and sweetening tea is a practice so common that cafes and restaurants offer sugar to anyone who orders tea.

While you’re still drinking the same green tea as other people, adding something to the blend is bound to change what it does for you. Does sweetening your tea actually ruin the healthiness of green tea?

The Bad of Sweetening Tea

As you could probably expect, adding sugar to your tea is going to have a negative effect on healthiness.

Before you stop drinking tea with sugar in it entirely, just consider what happens when you add sugar to your drink. There’s nothing in sugar that counteracts the health benefits of tea, so no matter how much sugar you add, you’re still going to be getting the same nutrients.

But the amount of sugar you add is where the problem starts. Sugar is linked to tons of health problems, including an increased risk of cancer, diabetes and a higher chance of dying from heart disease.

So, even though green tea is good for fighting cancer, adding sugar to the drink could potentially cause more harm than good.

Naturally, this depends on how much sugar you’re adding to your tea. The numbers get complex, depending on how much tea you drink a day, how much sugar you add, your age, weight, height, gender and how much other sugar you consume daily.

The bottom line is that if you want to get more health benefits than not, you should cut back on the sugar you use – or cut it out entirely.

Interestingly, milk in tea could be even worse than sugar. The proteins found in milk can bind the catechins in tea, making them entirely useless. Not only are you getting the negative health benefits that can come with milk, but you’re losing the benefits of tea.

The Good of Sweetening Tea

Tea drinkers understand that there are multiple ways to sweeten your tea. Some artificial sweeteners, like Stevia, are going to be relatively harmless.

But an interesting additive people should try out is honey – and it’s interesting for what it can do.

Honey is naturally good at helping you keep your weight low, relieve cold symptoms and boost your antioxidants. If you know much about green tea, then you know that these are also all health benefits you can get from tea leaves.

By combining green tea with honey, you could actually be boosting the positive effects of both. That’s pretty great, especially if you’re looking for a quick, tasty remedy for a cold.

Of course, using too much honey or tea could end up being bad for you. Honey still contains fructose, a type of sugar. Too much sugar is never going to be good, no matter how healthy the food item is in smaller doses. Consider using a raw honey with no additives.

To get the most of your sweetened tea, just make sure to cut out a bit of your sweetener. A cup of tea on its own is stuffed with benefits, and you don’t want to counteract those because your sweetener isn’t as healthy as you thought.

If you typically drink green tea with a sweetener, we recommend trying one of our herbal blends. The flavors could be more than enough for you to cut that sweetener out!