Tea trumps coffee for non-cardivascular mortality

September 2, 2014

Green tea (credit: (Fig.: By Kanko from Nagasaki, Japan)


The study included 131,401 people aged 18 to 95 years who had a health check up at the Paris IPC Preventive Medicine Center between January 2001 and December 2008. During a mean 3–5 years follow-up, there were 95 deaths from CV and 632 deaths from non-CV causes.

The researchers found that coffee drinkers had a higher CV risk profile than non-drinkers, particularly for smokers. The percentage of current smokers was 17% for non-drinkers compared with 31% in those who drank 1 to 4 cups per day and 57% in those who drank more than 4 cups per day.

Non-coffee drinkers were more physically active, with 45% having a good level of physical activity compared to 41% of the heavy coffee drinkers. Professor Danchin said: “This is highly significant in our large population.”

Tea was associated with lower blood pressure than coffee, with a 4–5 mmHg decrease in SBP and 3 mmHg decrease in DBP in the heavy tea drinkers, compared to non-drinkers, when adjusted for age.

“Overall we tend to have a higher risk profile for coffee drinkers and a lower risk profile for tea drinkers,” hse said. “We also found big differences with gender. Men tend to drink coffee much more than women, while women tend to drink more tea than men.”