English Breakfast Tea Inhibits Anthrax

We tea drinkers all know that tea is better for you than coffee, right? Now we have another study to back this up.

Seems that the results of a study to “determine if English Breakfast tea was more effective than a commercially available American medium roast coffee at killing anthrax” have been published. That last was a quote from one of the researchers, Professor Les Baillie from the Welsh School of Pharmacy at Cardiff University. He worked with Doctor Theresa Gallagher of the Biodefense Institute at the Medical Biotechnology Center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. That’s a mouthful.

If it wasn’t for the caliber of the people working on this, I would have thought it a joke comparing coffee against tea for effectiveness against anthrax. However, the results of the study were published in the March 2008 issue of the journal of the Society for Applied Microbiology, Microbiologist.

Just in case you missed it above, the study found that English Breakfast tea has the ability to inhibit the activity of anthrax. It has also been found to inhibit the Botulinum toxin. I double checked it and that is indeed botulism as I thought.

Only problem is that you can’t add that cream or milk to the tea. The cream has the affect of inhibiting the tea’s ability to inhibit the anthrax.

So now the wonderful compounds in tea appear to have antibacterial properties as well. Yet another reason to keep drinking your tea. Wonder if there will be a study to see if green tea does better than English Breakfast tea at inhibiting anthrax. However, the next time you hear that anthrax is on the loose, be sure to grab that tea and start drinking.

Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/12/scitea112.xml

Cardiff University (2008, March 16). Cup Of Black Tea Could Defend Against Anthrax Threat, Research Suggests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 21, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/03/080312100045.htm