Coffee Vs. Tea - Making the Switch

I am a longtime coffee drinker, and a former 3 cups per day addict. Always black. No sugar or cream. No Starbucks or anything fancy, but I do love to brew Dunkin Donuts coffee, as I think it tastes the best. I even switched from a coffee machine to a single, plastic cone brewer to get a better and more clean taste.

Recently, though, I switched from coffee to tea for my mid-morning pick-me-up, and I’m happy to report, I like it much better.

Though raw tea leaves have more caffeine than coffee, when brewed, coffee ends up with about 2-3 times the caffeine content. So why did I switch to tea, and how did I do it? (The key is gradually.)

First, I stopped having an afternoon cup of coffee. I had been getting into the routine of having a cup when I woke up, a cup when I got to work, and a mid-afternoon cup to get me through the rest of the day. By the time quitting time rolled around, I was exhausted. But by the time I got home from work, I was awake again, and would stay up too late at night.

This fed a vicious cycle of caffeine addiction and exhaustion, and became sort of a “chicken and the egg” argument. I couldn’t tell what came first, my exhaustion or the coffee.

After quitting my afternoon cup by not drinking any after noon, I was down to two per day. The morning wake-up cup was more of an ingrained lizard brain habit at this point, so I looked for ways to replace the 10 am cup, and decided on tea bags.

Most of the tea I drink now is green, which has about the lowest caffeine content of teas available (except for white tea), especially as compared to black tea. But what I found when I switched surprised me. When I first switched to tea, I could immediately tell the difference from coffee. Though it supposedly had less caffeine, I could feel it more at first, almost as if I had been drinking decaf coffee for years. It was as if my body was reacting to a different type of caffeine, in a new and different way.

After a few days the immediate caffeine buzz was replaced by a longer lasting sense of alertness, something that coffee had been failing to give me. With coffee, I felt tired almost immediately after drinking it.

According to Men’s Health, studies have shown that regular tea drinkers have lower body fat, lower cholesterol, and improved blood pressure readings than non tea-drinkers. Tea has also been shown to be a good way to control or suppress appetite, which can have a big role in healthy eating.

While there are plenty of studies saying good things about tea, and good things about coffee, what you ultimately choose is based on your personal preference. Are you tired of the coffee rut? Are you tired of feeling tired all day, then alert all night? Are you looking to wean yourself off caffeine altogether?

If the above are questions you have been pondering, switching to tea could be a useful exercise in improving your life.

While I have not made the step to get rid of caffeine altogether, I am weighing the idea of switching my morning cup of coffee to tea, as well. This would save me time in the morning, as I would not have to wait for the filter to finish letting the hot water drip through the grounds. I can simply drop a bag in a cup of hot water, then proceed to get along with my morning routine.