Which Is Healthier Tea Or Coffee?
The main ingredient of either drink is water and we are advised to drink up to 2 litres of water a day in order to remain properly hydrated, so that’s a plus for both drinks.
Here’s the good news: caffeine has been shown to slightly reduce appetite so that puts tea and coffee up there with the drinks of choice if you are trying to slim down compared to say, energy drinks which sneak in vast quantities of sugar.
Some larger cans containing a staggering 52% of an adult’s daily intake in one can not to mention some nasty chemical additives, so for a healthy diet avoid these where possible.
The winner for weight loss being green tea, drinking it daily could lead to about an inch off your waistline in 12 weeks, because EGCG and caffeine in green tea can help shrink fat cells and makes muscle cells more active.
This is true only when taken without milk or sugar because, yes; caffeine boosts your metabolism but if you’re loading it up with full fat milk and 3 sugars, all you are doing is helping push more calories around your body, quicker.
While tea might be better for burning fat, coffee is the winner when you want to build more muscle.
Coffee tricks the brain into thinking it has more energy, packing more caffeine per drink compared to tea, this makes training at the gym, pushing out more reps or covering a greater distance easier than compared to training without the drink.
However, training or dieting based on caffeine stimulation alone is not a method of success.
An excessive amount of caffeine in the body can produce a stress hormone called Cortisol, when released regularly can be responsible for excessive body fat but it’s not necessarily due to caffeine, as it’s a stress hormone which can be released regularly, as the body produces it as part of the fight or flight response.
A small release of Cortisol actually boosts energy levels, but only if it’s not used on a regular basis.
Many other factors affect weight loss and unfortunately hitting the ‘pure tea’ or ‘pure coffee’ diet is not a quick fix, though in the right circumstances they could assist you alongside a healthy balanced lifestyle and regular exercise.