Black tea is a calorie-free beverage that can help lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. These benefits may come from tea’s theaflavin antioxidants, which can also help prevent certain types of cancer.
Tea is traditionally made with milk and sugar, which increases its caloric content. However, for a variety of reasons, black tea can contribute to weight loss as long as you drink it unsweetened. Although this makes it an inexpensive yet an effective weight loss drink, unsweetened black tea can be hard on the palate.
But, do you know how you can get the maximum health benefits of black tea? Adding a sweetener or milk may pamper your taste buds, but the best advantages can be obtained when you replace the common ingredients- milk and sugar- with lemon.
Lemon essence can help you absorb the tea’s nutrition completely. A squeeze of lemon juice adds flavor to the tea, without making you consume calories that derail your weight loss efforts.
Here are the top 5 reasons to add lemon to your black tea.
1. Lemon will Get You Vitamin C
Vitamin C has ascorbic acid, which is an antioxidant that keeps diabetes and heart diseases at bay by fighting the free radicals.
2. Lemon is a Great Source of Nutrition
Lemon also includes magnesium, thiamine, potassium, folate and many other essential vitamins and minerals. Thus, adding lemon to your black tea increases the nutritional effect. When you consume this combination every day, you are giving a lot of reasons to your body to cheer.
3. Lemon Helps the Antioxidants to Stay Longer in Black Tea
Adding lemon to black tea not just supplies additional antioxidants in your body, it also increases their power to stay longer in the black tea. The antioxidants known as theaflavins are present in black tea that provide great protection to your body against several health problems such as kidney stones, artery hardening, heart attacks and Parkinson’s disease. Thus, the health benefits of consuming black tea with lemon are much more than adding a milk and sweetener to it.
4. Add Lemon, Not Milk
Common additions to tea such as milk and sugar can block the potential health benefits of black tea. Milk binds with the antioxidants found in black tea, which prevents them from being absorbed. Lemon makes milk sour, which makes you avoid adding milk to your tea when adding lemon to it.
5. Lemon helps Reduce Calories
We know that black tea is a zero calorie drink. However, it does not remain a calorie-less drink when you add sugar, sweetener or milk into it. Rather, you make it a high-calorie drink before the consumption. On the other hand, lemon has natural sugar content and a citrus flavor that adds up to the taste without increasing the calorie content.
Thus, adding lemon to your black tea is the best choice for a healthy lifestyle.