Are you following a vegan lifestyle? Naturally, you might be wondering if tea is vegetarian and if it would suit your preferences.
Tea, the product of the Camellia sinensis leaf, is vegetarian and has numerous health benefits when consumed in moderation. If you want to enjoy your tea vegan style, you’ll need to watch out for the extra ingredients that might not fit your lifestyle or diet. The non-vegan ingredients might be gelatin, cochineal, casein, lanolin, and beeswax.
Tea bags might also be an issue for vegetarians, as they contain a percentage of plastic. However, most tea companies have recently improved their tea bags by using biodegradable materials. Nevertheless, you also have the loose-leaf tea option.
Tea is a very popular beverage worldwide, and it comes in different types and flavors. There are traditional, vegan, herbal, and fruit teas. Below, we look at different types of tea in detail to see if they are vegetarian or not.
Different Types of Tea
1. Black Tea
Black tea undergoes lengthy processing, which starts with withering the tea leaves and then oxidizing them completely. They’re then fried and dried till they turn a dark brown color, giving them a rich tannin flavor.
When consumed in its natural form, black tea is vegan-friendly. It has an earthy aroma and a bold, intense flavor that make it a very popular type of tea around the world. However, do keep in mind that packaged black tea might contain some additional ingredients that might make it non-vegan.
Check out: Can You Reheat Tea?
2. White Tea
White tea is produced from the new leaves and buds of the Camellia sinensis plant, but it doesn’t undergo extensive processing like the rest of the teas. They are dried in natural sunlight right after being harvested. It has fruity floral undertones, a mild flavor, and high levels of antioxidants thanks to its drying process.
Though traditional white tea is vegetarian, some of the extra ingredients that most tea companies use while packaging it might not be.
3. Oolong Tea
Though it’s not very common among the masses, oolong tea is quite popular in the tea lover’s community. Oolong tea is processed using a similar process to that of green tea. However, it is semi-oxidized compared to black tea but more so than green tea. The low levels of oxidation are what make oolong tea so versatile and special. Once the tea leaves have been properly processed, you can just steep them in hot water to make your cup of tea.
Some types of oolong tea include Milk Oolong, Big Red Robe, Iron Goddess of Mercy, Ali Shan Oolong, and Phoenix Oolong tea.
4. Green Tea
Green tea only contains Camellia sinensis, which makes it vegetarian in its natural form. It’s one of the most popular types of tea among vegetarians and vegans. To make green tea, the processors reduce the moisture content of tea plant leaves by withering them. The leaves are then steamed at high temperatures until they are dry. This process keeps the green tea leaves from oxidizing and makes them ready to be enjoyed in a hot cup of tea.
Green tea is full of antioxidants and great for your health, and it doesn’t typically go with milk, making it ideal for vegetarians. This tea is also best when taken without any sweeteners or with just a little honey.
Check out: Can You Put Milk in Green Tea?
5. Earl Grey Tea
Earl Grey tea is vegetarian, and it comprises black tea and bergamot essential oil flavoring. Its tea leaves have a light body and a delicate floral and citrus flavor. If you want a little more sweetness with your Earl Grey tea, you can use honey or cane sugar. Also, Earl Grey is way better when taken with lemons instead of milk.
When shopping for packed Earl Grey tea, opt for GMO-free, plant-based, vegan diets, and zero-calorie tea packaging. Also, if you cannot find loose tea leaves, go for non-plastic tea bags.
6. Bubble Tea
Boba tea is a sweet beverage made of milk, flavored tea, and bubbles (boba), which also goes by the name tapioca milk tea. The bubbles in boba tea are mainly made of chewy and delicious tapioca. It can either be served as a hot or cold beverage, depending on the time of day and weather.
It can be made using either green, black, white, herbal, or oolong as the base ingredient. Since boba tea uses all sorts of ingredients, such as sugar and fat, you should go through the ingredients before taking it if you’re on a vegetarian diet.
Due to all the sugar and fat in most boba tea drinks, you could end up taking in up to 500 calories in just a single cup of tea.
7. Herbal Tea
Most of the herbal teas will suit your vegan lifestyle just fine, as they are blends of different herbs, spices, and other plant materials. Your cup of tea will contain some soothing and tasteful herbs that not only offer you great health benefits but also excite your taste buds.
Some of the most popular herbal teas include ginger, lemon balm, chamomile, turmeric, rosehip, and lavender, among many others. Vegetarian herbal tea has natural cane sugar or honey to sweeten it. Steer clear of herbal tea that doesn’t contain natural sugar and coloring.
How to Prepare Vegetarian Tea
Though there are many ways of preparing tea depending on the type and weather, you can prepare most teas similarly to traditional tea. It’s effective for black, green, oolong, herbal, fruity, or even white tea. There are a few steps, which include:
- Boil fresh water
- Pour enough hot water into your cup
- Take your tea leaves (loose or tea bag) and place them in your cup and let it steep. Here are using any tea leaves that you enjoy most. The taste and amount of caffeine in your tea will be proportional to the duration you steep your tea.
- Finally, sieve out all the tea leaves and enjoy your cup of tea.
If your vegetarian lifestyle doesn’t allow you to drink tea with dairy products but you still want to take your tea with some, there are several milk alternatives that are vegan-friendly that you can go for. They include rice milk, coconut milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk, sugar-free soy milk, and soy milk.
Health Benefits of Vegetarian Tea
Other than being a delicious beverage, tea also has a good number of health benefits
thanks to the caffeine, nutrients, and antioxidants found in different types of tea. The content of caffeine in tea depends on how long you steep the tea.
If you want to enjoy your tea without all the caffeine, you can opt for green, black, or oolong teas, as they contain the least amounts of caffeine. Below are some of the health benefits of drinking tea.
Improves Your Heart Health
Tea, specifically black and green tea, is great for your heart’s health. They contain flavonoids, which are compounds that dampen inflammation. Inflammations affect the ability of the heart to pump blood, which leads to shortness of breath, arrhythmia, and chest pains.
Tea also helps improve the functioning of your blood vessels and lower cholesterol. This makes it very essential for the proper functioning of your cardiovascular system. To enjoy these benefits, you need to drink a cup of tea every other day or so.
Helps in Managing Weight
Tea can help you lose and manage your body weight. This is thanks to flavonoids known as catechins that help boost your metabolism by improving the process of breaking down fats in your body. Also, since most teas contain caffeine, the extra energy they pack causes your body to burn more calories, making it the ideal beverage for weight loss.
To reap the best benefits of tea, you should stick with vegan or vegetarian options. Drinking packaged tea that contains processed sugars can be more harmful to your weight loss goals. Research shows that green tea has quick weight loss benefits, especially when taken in the appropriate quantity.
Improves Focus
To improve your alertness and focus, L-theanine (an amino acid) and caffeine increase the alpha activity of your brain. Studies show that a combination of these two compounds has great effects due to how L-theanine reacts with the brain.
Though coffee also has caffeine, black tea is better since it has just the right amount for a stable energy boost. All you need to make your cup is black tea leaves (either loose or in a tea bag) and boiled water.
High Level of Antioxidants
A good number of vegetarian teas contain high levels of antioxidants, which have many health benefits. Of all the teas, green tea has the highest levels of antioxidants-even higher than vegetables such as spinach, kale, and Brussels sprouts.
Antioxidants are great as they help boost your immunity, improve skin health, stimulate metabolism, enhance mood, and increase your energy levels, among other things. To enjoy maximum benefits, avoid taking green tea with processed sweeteners and colors. They also help lower the risk of chronic illnesses such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Potential Cancer Inhibitor
Studies show that chemicals such as EGCG, EGC, ECG EC, thearubigins, and theaflavins found in green and black tea can inhibit the growth of tumor cells and induce apoptosis. Though you don’t cure your disease, you can halt its development and any other associated risks. However, research into the cancer health benefits provided by tea is still far from over. Scientists are still researching it to understand and back up the benefits shared by most consumers of tea beverages.
White tea is also effective when it comes to fighting various types of cancer thanks to its high levels of antioxidants. It also has a low amount of caffeine, which makes it an ideal choice for people avoiding caffeine.
Keeps Your Gut Healthy
Green tea is the best tea when it comes to improving your gut health. It achieves this by increasing the population of healthy bacteria in your gut. Green tea is rich in polyphenols, which are digestive compounds that help improve digestion. We find these compounds in the tea plant.
Improved digestion and a healthy population in your gut are two important gateways to a plethora of health benefits. Green tea also has microbes that can suppress Th2 immune cells, which are responsible for how your body reacts to allergens.
Reduces Blood Sugar Levels
Your blood sugar levels depend on how well your insulin works. There’s proof that black tea has properties that enhance how insulin works in your body. This is thanks to its compounds, like thearubigins and theaflavins. Black tea also has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.
The other type of tea that helps with the regulation of your blood sugar levels is oolong tea. It has high levels of polyphenols, which help decrease type 2 diabetes, lower inflammation, and stunt cancer growth.
Conclusion
Vegan tea can be a great addition to your vegetarian diet, but you have to ensure that it only contains natural and healthy ingredients. Keep an eye out for animal-derived ingredients such as gelatin, especially when going for tea bags. You should even avoid dairy milk when possible.
Whether you’re a vegetarian or not, you should consider making tea a part of your beverage intake as it has a lot of health benefits, from helping with weight loss, and improving the cardiovascular process, to improving focus and alertness.