mythbusters

I read something yesterday that completely blew my mind. Well not completely, I had an inkling that something wasn't right when my morning cup of Darjeeling didn't have quite the punch that my highly shaded Tamaryokucha had. Yet, I was confused. Common wisdom held that black tea had the most caffeine and green tea had significantly less and white tea had none. I mean it felt right ... but was it the truth? If you don't already do so, you should read Cha Dao, if not in general, then at least for the most recent post by Nigel Melican. He explores the relationship between tea and caffeine and makes no small splash with regards to the above disinformation. If you don't want to read it (shame on you) I will summarize and quote the major points below:

• De-caffeinating tea by brewing it for 30 seconds and tossing out the brew is utter nonsense. This rather anecdotal statement is put into great doubt by a few studies which Mr. Melican describes in greater detail in his post.


• (quoting post) Three scientifically verifiable facts are:
  1. Caffeine level varies naturally in types of tea and levels in one type may overlap with another type
  2. Black and green tea manufactured from leaf from the same bushes on the same day will have virtually the same caffeine levels (within +/- 0.3%)
  3. For a given bush, the finer the plucking standard, the higher the caffeine level
  


• (quoting post) Actual caffeine level in tea is highest:
  • when the tea is derived from buds and young first leaf tips (thus white tea has a high caffeine level)
  • when the bush is assamica type rather than sinensis (can be 33% higher caffeine, thus African black tea tends to be higher than China black tea)
  • when the bush is clonal VP rather than seedling (can be 100% higher caffeine, thus new plantings in Africa are higher than old seedling plantings in Asia),
  • when the plant is given a lot of nitrogen fertilizer (as in Japan), and
  • during fast growing seasons.


• shaded (to increase chlorophyll levels) teas have more caffeine

From now on we should all endeavor to dispel this myth. Lest we have legions of people bouncing around because we told them "white tea has no caffeine*."


*At the very least there is probably still more caffeine (by no small amount) in coffee than in tea (brewed regularly [... and not matcha?]). So above statement is purely for humorous emphasis.