Tea and coffee are the two mega-drinks that have come to define the caffeinated beverage world.
While energy drinks and sodas are always popular, tea and coffee have centuries of influence on our culture. Coffee alone makes up a $100,000,000,000+ business worldwide, and it’s clear we’re not giving up our tea and coffee fix any time soon.
We’re comparing tea and coffee—what they do, what they’re for, and the important differences between these two hot drink titans. By the end, we’ll be figuring out just how the two interact and what role they should play in your life.
Coffee
Coffee is the caffeinated beverage.
There’s no way around the popular benefits of coffee—it’s the most popular legal stimulant out there and it helps hundreds of millions of people through their day. It’s an energy-boosting, tiredness-fighting caffeinated drink that has become an integral part of our culture.
Caffeine, the main compound in coffee, offers a range of benefits all by itself:
- Combats tiredness
- Improves fatigue-resistance
- Boosts metabolism
- Improves mental and physical performance
These are the driving forces behind the coffee craze we’ve been on for 200 years.
Coffee as a Performance-Booster
Coffee and its pronounced caffeine content don't just fight tiredness but also improve how your mind works.
Mental performance increases when caffeinated—especially in response to the rapid-onset and 6-hour energy of a brewed coffee, e.g. When compared to tea, the doses in coffee are generally higher and offer a more significant, direct effect in tired or demanding mental tasks.
This also extends to exercise and physical performance—coffee’s rapid uptake and effects make it a great pre-workout. Caffeine in coffee can improve endurance, increase time to fatigue, and, when taken at higher levels, raise power and strength output.
These results come from the amount of caffeine in coffee, the speed of its effect, and the longevity of the results. Combined with carbohydrates specifically, caffeine provides an even greater increase in physical and mental performance.
Coffee: The Downsides
Coffee does come with some negative side-effects that are less pronounced—or non-existent—in tea, however.
First, the anxiety associated with chronic caffeine intake without things like L-theanine (found in tea) is all stress. It’s a way of cranking up your adrenaline and reducing tiredness signaling, but this comes with a cost: being tenser and less relaxed.
Due to the increased caffeine content and the tiredness-buffering role coffee plays, you can quickly adapt to its effects. While tea’s good qualities don't all revolve around fighting fatigue, coffee can become less useful very quickly as tolerance to caffeine builds. You will eventually need to take time off to re-sensitize.
Finally, you need to watch coffee intake due to its effects on digestive health. For many people, coffee intake raises the risk of cramping, digestive distress, poor movements, and even acid reflux. If these are familiar, you should be looking at more tea and less coffee.
Tea
Tea is an underrated caffeinated beverage that has slightly different functions in day-to-day life.
It’s a more complicated nutrient matrix and combines caffeine with a range of other active ingredients. Tea leaves themselves contain significant amounts of caffeine but also release less due to the brewing process—you don’t eat the leaves (hopefully).
The Healthy Compounds of Green Tea
One of the defining differences between tea and coffee is that tea contains a wider range of active compounds.
Coffee is mostly just caffeine for most purposes, while tea is always a mixture of various active ingredients affecting the brain and body. These are the main focus for tea as a different type of caffeinated drink to coffee.
Theanine
Theanine in tea is a perfect synergist with caffeine where it improves the benefits—wakefulness and mental performance—while reducing side effects. The combination of caffeine and theanine provides cleaner, more precise energy compared to coffee.
This also contributes to the winding-down and protective effects of tea. It helps you better manage your caffeine throughout the day and can buffer against the negative effects of over-consuming caffeine from coffee.
GABA
GABA is a form of relaxation-promoting neurotransmitter found in tea. It’s an active part of the relaxing effects of tea, as well as a contributor to post-exercise hormonal health.
GABA struggles to get into your brain but maintaining steady bloodstream levels can be a great way of supporting relaxation. It also increases the production of human growth hormone after resistance exercise, making a tea habit a great way to build muscle and support overall recovery.
EGCG
EGCG is the most potent of the catechins in tea, where it has a range of benefits. It’s a potent antioxidant, supporting cell health, especially in protecting brain cells against degeneration.
EGCG also helps with the mobilization of body fat for energy, as a key compound in the production of catecholamines. These are key to oxidizing fat for use as fuel, and EGCG has been shown to improve fat oxidation and make you more efficient at burning fat.
It even has a role in protecting the heart and reducing the overall risk of cardiac events. Not bad for an afternoon cup of green tea!
The Role of Tea: A Gentler Alternative?
The important thing to remember is that tea is more of a gentle caffeine experience and suits afternoon use. It has a reduced impact on sleep quality and fragmentation compared to coffee and has direct benefits that coffee lacks.
While coffee will get you amped up on those cold, lazy mornings, tea is going to be a great complement to your afternoon. It’s great for staying focused while you wind down and helps you build better sleep habits without the same anxiety of coffee and other caffeine sources!
The Different Contexts For Use
What matters most is that coffee and tea have different use-cases.
If you want to get the best from these two drinks, you should put them to work where they’re strongest: coffee in the morning, tea in the evenings.
Crucially, coffee is more of a morning drink and tea is more of an afternoon drink. Coffee can reduce tiredness, but it will also interrupt sleep quality and quantity if consumed too close to bedtime.
If you split your consumption of coffee and tea around mid-day, you’re likely to be more energetic and rested naturally. Better sleep quality at night means you won't need a ton of caffeine in the morning, reducing your chances of developing a tolerance or feeling that inevitable mid-afternoon crash.
This caffeine-consumption structure plays to the strengths of both coffee and tea while minimizing the negative effects of caffeine on sleep quality.
It’s also a great way to structure your day towards productivity when necessary and relaxation and recovery when you can. This helps improve performance and energy levels sustainably over time.
Coffee and tea shouldn’t be usurping the role that good sleep and recovery habits have on your day-to-day energy levels.
Coffee is for hyping you up and getting you moving, while tea is for maintaining focus without adding more anxiety and stress during a challenging day.
In Summary…
Tea and coffee both contain caffeine but that doesn’t make them interchangeable.
Having different focuses and appropriate for different times of day and night, coffee and tea should play different roles in our lives.
They’re both great beverages to leverage for a better day, but the way you use them will determine just how much they bring to your life. You should work on improving habits with both and ensuring that—whatever you prefer—you’re using tea and coffee responsibly for your lifestyle.
References
- Caffeine may reduce sleep quality and quantity: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2016.01.006
- Coffee, independently of caffeine, reduces diabetes risk: https://doi.org/10.2337/dc13-1203
- Natural caffeine in-matrix and health: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tem.2014.07.003
- Tea catechins modulate energy metabolism: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007114509371779
- Organic caffeine-catechin synergies improve energy expenditure: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00862.x
- Coffee and tea both improve BMI on average: https://doi.org/10.1159/000322915
- Coffee and Caffeine Anhydrous both improve repeated bout performance and reduce the impact of fatigue: https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2015.1085097
- Caffeine can improve cognitive performance: https://doi.org/10.3233/jad-2010-091315
