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Can black tea boost weight loss
ShareBlack tea is loved by the vast majority around the world and when it comes to healthy benefits, black tea has often been overshadowed by green tea. Green tea has been hailed in may studies for its ability to boost weight loss.
There have been recent studies however, suggesting that black tea should not be disregarded for boosting weight loss; and it may be just as effective as green tea for losing the excess weight. However, it just works in a different way.
Susanne Henning, author of the Centre for Human Nutrition at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently reported their findings in the European Journal of Nutrition. The purpose of the study was to determine whether ‘decaffeinated green tea (GT) and black tea (BT) polyphenols inhibit weight gain in mice fed an obesogenic diet. Since the intestinal microflora is an important contributor to obesity, it was the objective of this study to determine whether the intestinal microflora plays a role in the anti-obesogenic effect of GT and BT’.
Both black tea and green tea contain polyphenols. Polyphenols from green tea are small enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream and body tissues. However, black tea molecules are too large to be absorbed in this way. Instead, they remain in the intestine, where they boost the growth of "friendly" gut bacteria and form metabolites that help to control liver energy metabolism.
As Henning explains, ‘Our new findings suggest that black tea, through a specific mechanism through the gut microbiome, may also contribute to good health and weight loss in humans.’ She goes on to say ‘The results suggest that both green and black teas are prebiotics, substances that induce the growth of good microorganisms that contribute to a person's well-being.’
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