From the BBC, “How Britain’s taste for tea may have been a life saver”:
Economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.Orange Crate Art is a tea-friendly zone.
Instead, the simple practice of boiling water for tea, in an era before people understood that illness could be caused by water-borne pathogens, may have been enough to keep many from an early grave.
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comments: 4
I read an interesting article about this a few years ago (can't now remember where) arguing that the cities in England and China where tea-drinking was most prevalent were also the ones which were largest and most prosperous. The author suggested (as perhaps Francisca Antman is also doing, without having read her article) that tea-drinking provided an anti-bacterial effect thus helping keep disease incidence lower than elsewhere.
I personally might argue that as well as any potential health benefits, there's a whole psychological boost resulting from the drinking of nice tea (perhaps even indifferent tea?) which also stirs into all this.
Antman points to the Tea and Windows Act of 784, which drastically reduced the tax on tea and led to a great rise in tea drinking. And she saw the drop in mortality in areas with bad water as well as in those with clean water.
I learned this in college in a class on the history of London.
Then maybe the researcher is bringing new (or more) data to it (?).
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