Not worse than green
Black tea helps to lose weight, scientists say
The use of black tea was associated with weight loss and improvement of the intestinal microflora, scientists say in an article published in the European Journal of Nutrition.
"We have long known that the polyphenols contained in green tea have a stronger effect on the body than similar substances in black tea, as they penetrate into human tissues and blood. It turned out that black tea can act on the intestinal microflora, which in itself can improve people's health and reduce their weight," said Susan Henning from the University of California at Los Angeles (in a press release Black tea may help with weight loss, too – VM).
In recent years, scientists have become seriously interested in the health benefits that the use of green tea entails. As observations of the life of volunteers and animal experiments have shown, green tea really has many useful properties that prolong life: it reduces the likelihood of rupture of artery walls, normalizes glucose metabolism and improves heart function.
Henning and her colleagues checked whether black tea has similar properties. To do this, they conducted experiments on mice that were prescribed various diets with high or low concentrations of sugar and fat.
In all feeds there were more calories than required for the normal life of mice, thanks to which the rodents quickly gained excess weight. After that, the researchers divided the mice into several groups and began adding extracts of green and black tea to the feed of some of them.
To their great surprise, black tea turned out to be no less useful for rodents than green tea – literally four weeks later, the weight of the mice returned to normal, reaching the same indicators as their relatives from the control group who ate low-calorie food.
Such results were unexpected, because polyphenols and other potentially useful substances contained in black tea, in principle, cannot penetrate through the intestinal walls and get into the blood. Comparing the differences in the work of the body of mice receiving black tea and other rodents, Henning's team came to the conclusion that weight loss and other positive changes were associated with drastic changes in the composition of the microflora.
As it turned out, the active substances of black tea stimulated the growth of some beneficial bacteria and suppressed microbes that usually live in the intestines of obese people and rodents. All this helped the mice to lose weight, improve metabolism and get other advantages.
Such conclusions, as scientists note, speak in favor of the fact that similar effects can be achieved for the human body – if you consume a lot of black tea without getting carried away with sweets and sugar.
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