Wellness Wednesday

Black Tea Gives Researchers a Good "Gut Feeling" About Weight Loss

UCLA researchers have found a link between black tea and the promotion of weight loss due to the changing of microflora in the gut.

Tea is great for either getting your day started with a boost of caffeine, or even for relaxing after a long day or week. The variety of teas available for the previously mentioned purposes, or even for casual or social outing purposes makes it an ideal candidate for researching which blends have the best health benefits. Researchers at UCLA studied both black and green tea blends (both very popular healthy tea blends) to see how it changed the ratio of intestinal bacteria. Prior to this study, it had already been proven that green tea contains polyphenols that are absorbed by the small intestine and alter metabolism by stimulating the growth of gut bacterium that form short-chain fatty acids.to increase weight loss. Black tea, however, contains polyphenols that are too large to be absorbed by the small intestine and therefore does not affect metabolism in the same way that green tea does.

To test whether or not black tea also affect metabolism in a similar way to green tea, and to compare the differences in their effects, the researchers divided lab mice into four diet groups: low-fat, high-sugar; high-fat, high-sugar; high-fat, high-sugar, green tea extract; high-fat, high-sugar, black tea extract. After four weeks the researchers reweighed the mice and found that the mice who had been given the green or black tea extract had the same level of weight as the mice who had been fed the low-fat diet. The mice with the black tea also showed lower amounts of the bacteria associated with obesity, and an increase of bacteria Pseudobutyribrio which is related to lean body mass. So the next time you drink tea, just remember it could be helping you lose weight!