High surface area of the tea leaves means they can adsorb toxic metals released by the boiling water.
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Brewing tea removes lead from water
- Thread starter JournalBot
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I love studies that upend our approach to things. We've spent decades investigating all the things present in tea that might explain its benefits, when the explanation might instead lie in what's absent from the prepared tea.
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I used to brew sun tea. Longer times at lower temperatures improves flavor, to my taste. Then I read about germs contaminating sun tea, and shortened brew time to three minutes. Maybe compromise on one hour?
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Also fancier teas (whole leaf for instance) with specific brew times don't get nearly the benefit of boiling a bag of Lipton for 5 minutes.
More of an interesting data point than something super applicable though - you're not going to convince people who are used to good tea to switch to "bad" tea based on low (though measurable) reduction of heavy metals. Perhaps a policy push for people with crappy water systems to drink more tea though?
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I drink a lot of green tea, myself. My typical steeping time ranges from 8 minutes to more than an hour (depending on how distracted and hydrated I am). I'm not overly concerned about toxic heavy metals, though, but it's nice to know that my already filtered tap water (thanks Britta!) might have less of them thanks to longer brewing times.
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This is the bit that stood out to me:
I'll have to be more intentional about the type of tea bags I get. I do know that I've been really annoyed at the silk tea bags I've used from time to time; they let the powdered leaves leak through and don't seem to adsorb a thing. As a result, you end up drinking the particulates that DO adsorb stuff.
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I thought about that process too a long time ago and like you liked the taste. However, now I see it similarly to the "five seconds rule" (picking up food from floor being "clean" so long it does not lie for more than five seconds) which is of course not true. So I prepare tea the traditional way and let it cool down naturally. Perhaps using a high quality paper filter would remove some of the unwanted flavours (Sometimes I use Chemex paper for brewing tea instead of coffee)?
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Not a tea drinker, but how do you find out what the tea bag is made of, since that’s one of the determining factors in the absorption of metals?
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David Mayer
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I wonder if this also applies to coffee, without similar research on coffee the evidence in favor of tea over coffee provided here is very weak.
I think this is a very likely part of the explanation, another contributing factor may be the boiling process rendering pathogens inert, I wonder if that has been explored. I wonder if there are also potentially harmful chemicals in drinking water that break down when boiled.
I recently learnt that iced tea can be steeped either cold or hot, I've been cold steeping my tea sometimes, it tastes very different, I've been meaning to try cold steeping and then heating it to see what happens.
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You could probably convince people to switch tea bags though. Did the study also investigate infusers? I'd be interested to know how a tea ball or other infuser affects this process.
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Do I want to remove lead, or do I want to avoid the microplastics in the cheap tea bag? Decisions, decisions.
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No it's animals that take a crap on the tea leaves and it dries out and gets mixed in with the process. When you using boiling water it usually kills the germs. Sun Tea generally doesn't warm the water to sterilization temperatures.
Anyways this article is about the leaves absorbing lead and assuming you're not ingesting the leaves. Which in the end it doesn't matter. Because if there is lead in the water. You'd be drinking it regardless.
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In briefly researching tea bags (after reading this article), I'm finding a lot about some tea bags releasing microplastics into the tea. So there's that to consider as well if you're looking for a healthy cup of tea.
Edit: I just re-read the part where it mentions nylon bags containing microplastics. I missed that in the first reading.
Edit: I just re-read the part where it mentions nylon bags containing microplastics. I missed that in the first reading.
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Turns out it wasn't rebellion, they were trying to clean the harbor of its heavy metals.
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Without researching the subject, I imagine that the issue is that the tea brews at a temperature that doesn't destroy or inhibit the growth of bacteria. Anything under 130°F/55°C will allow bacteria to grow, and as the temperature drops further, growth is accelerated. That's why when you're sous viding beef, for instance, if you're going for a blue rare cook, you should only leave the meat in the bath for 1-2 hours, and be sure to thoroughly sear the outside to kill off any hangers-on.
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I have my coffee made from lead free drinking water. Seems a healthier way to go about it than boiling tea and hoping you got the lead out that way.
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yup, that whole industrial revolution thing that started in england and moved to western europe, they never did a thing
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Yeah, I believe those are mostly the pyramid-shaped tea bags. At least, all of those that I've seen are made from some sort of plastic, and all the others I've seen looked like some sort of variant on paper.
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Yeah, doing this with coffee would be interesting. As well as with a carbon filter, which I suspect would do an even better job. Take home lesson - filtering water can remove impurities.
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The Islamic Golden Age was pretty sweet but tea fueled the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution.
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It works just as well, if not better, to just do it cold in the fridge overnight. The little bit of heat from the sun doesn’t add much in my experience. I particularly like to brew sencha that way, but I haven’t found one yet that isn’t good.
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I would guess based on the findings in the tea trial that we’d see cold brew coffee do best, then drip coffee, and least effective would be espresso or a moka pot.
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I wonver
I was thinking the exact same thing. I mean when you think about how coffee is brewed in many cases it would make sense that it would act like a filter. I wonder if both coffee and tea are not really intrinsically good for you, they just filter out bad things from other parts of the economy.
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I think the least effective would be Turkish/Greek coffee, instant coffee, and matcha tea powder where the grounds/powder is consumed (in order of effectiveness). Even if the heavy metals are adsorbed, I'd imagine they'd at least partially leech out during digestion. At least with Turkish/Greek coffee, most of the grounds remain as sediment after consumption, even if a not insignificant amount is consumed.
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I had wondered about this about drip coffee in the past so I researched it and foudn that yes, drip coffee does indeed filter out heavy metals such as lead during the brewing process.
Here is an article from Wired about it!
https://www.wired.com/2000/02/coffee-is-your-friend/
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