In this article, we’re going to try to answer the age-old question: Why is coffee better than tea? We know it’s true (although we might be a little bit biased) and most other people know it’s true, but we’d like to make a solid case for it here, so that anyone having this argument with their friends can come to this article for all of the information they need to lay the argument to rest. So read on to learn once and for all why coffee is way better than tea!
Does coffee have more health benefits than tea?
The answer is a sort of non-conclusive yes! As there are so many studies into the health benefits of both coffee and tea (some of them with contradictory findings), it’s tricky to give the absolute answer to this. However, coffee’s benefits do seem to outweigh tea’s benefits. The main benefit to drinking tea seems to be that it has tonnes of antioxidants, which can help reduce your chances of developing cancer. However, coffee is also a rich source of antioxidants. In fact, there are more antioxidants in coffee than in tea, it’s just that you can probably drink more tea than coffee in a day without getting the caffeine jitters! Coffee has also been proven to help fight depression, help prevent and fight Alzheimer’s and some other forms of dementia, reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and it has been strongly linked to preventing the development of cirrhosis of the liver (scaring), which can progress into liver disease.
Coffee beverages are also more caffeinated than tea, so they provide more of the health benefits associated with caffeine, such as making it easier to breathe by relaxing your airways (perfect for asthmatics), improved memory (perfect for students and office workers), and constricting the blood vessels in your brain, helping to alleviate headaches and migraines!
Is coffee more flavoursome than tea?
The quick answer is yes. Even without a scientific study most people (tea and coffee drinkers) will agree that coffee has a stronger flavour. Even tea drinkers rave about the beautiful smell of coffee. Well, as you might know, smell is a huge component of flavour (actually, all sense of flavour comes from your nose, and taste comes from your tongue), so tea drinkers are really admitting that coffee is the superior beverage, whether they mean to or not! Perhaps you prefer softer, more subtle flavours, so tea is the right drink for you. But for the rest of us, we want big, bold, exciting flavours, and it’s difficult to think of a drink that even comes close to coffee in this regard!
Does coffee or tea offer a greater variety of beverages to choose from?
Tea provides a great variety of choice, as you can choose between Assam, Earl Grey, green, jasmine, mint, camomile, camomile and mint, ginger, lemon, lemon and ginger — and the list goes on forever. So if you want a wide range of flavours, then tea perhaps trumps coffee, but only because it cheats and adds other ingredients (lemon, ginger, mint, etc.). Coffee, on the other hand, along with steamed milk, comes in a rich variety of flavours and textures without adding a million other flavours. Some of the most popular varieties of coffee include:
Espresso
Choose an espresso in the morning (or any time, really!), for a quick, powerful blast of unadulterated coffee.
Cappuccino
The ultimate morning drink, cappuccino has roughly equal parts milk to espresso, with a lot of foam on top to keep it warm while you read the morning paper! The ratio of espresso to milk to foam should be 1:1:1. Some people say they like really milky cappuccinos, but really they like lattes…
Latte
This is a comforting, warming drink, perfect for wintertime. A good latte should have one or two shots of espresso, milk steamed to around 60–65°C, with a little bit of foam on top. The ratio of espresso to milk to foam should be 1:2:1, or even 2:5:1.
Flat White
This has become incredibly popular in recent years. A flat white has two shots of espresso, velvety steamed milk (somewhere between foam and milk) mixed through the coffee, with no discernible layer between the coffee and the milk. It should be a medium-sized drink (bigger than an espresso or macchiato but smaller than a cappuccino or latte). The ratio of espresso to milk should be about 1:2.
There are also too many different other espresso beverages to describe here, such as:
Americano, Cubano, crema,
Zorro, doppio, Romano,
Guillermo, Ristretto, antoccino,
breve, bombón, cortado,
espressino, Galão, gommosa,
macchiato, and Viennese melange.
And we’ve not even gotten into the other different ways of brewing coffee, such as: cafetiere/French press, filtered coffee, percolated, Turkish coffee, cold brew or vacuum coffee! Not to mention the incredible range of coffee machines available that make brewing coffee and cleaning up afterwards as easy as possible. Our range of rental coffee machines is perfect for offices, as they provide a wide selection of types of coffee and the clean-up is minimal! Each method of brewing coffee produces a different tasting beverage. So if variation is what you want, we say that coffee wins over tea, despite tea’s many different flavours (that all taste roughly similar anyway, let’s face it!).