Is it harmful to drink tea or coffee with food? Scientists and experts think otherwise

Is it okay to wash down food? How does it affect health?

Let’s find out together with nutritionists.

Nutritionists still can not come to a consensus on whether it is harmful to drink food. Some argue that liquid during meals interferes with the assimilation of important substances in the body. But then why does a business lunch include a drink in addition to the main course? Many people are confused by this.

medical practitioner, nutritionist, Freedom International Group’s COFFEECELL brand specialist.

It’s okay for healthy people to wash down their food. It should not be done only by those who have reduced acidity of gastric juice.

nutritionist, founder of GetVegetable.com, a nutrition delivery service.

Eighty percent of people do this – and none of them complain about health problems.

There’s a rule of thumb that says eight glasses of any liquid a day is the norm: water, juices, coffee, tea and even soups. There is no research to support the harm of chugging food. It is, rather, just a popular myth. If you do not have gastritis, ulcer, do not suffer from heartburn or other diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, coffee or tea during or after meals will not cause any harm. On the contrary, it is more harmful to refuse liquids at the moment when you are thirsty.

Drinking water with food should not be only those who have reduced acidity of gastric juice. People with high or normal acidity can, especially if the food is dry and hard to swallow.

Do tea and coffee interfere with the absorption of important substances?

With the fact whether you can drink food, sorted out. But what about coffee and tea? Some argue that the caffeine they contain interferes with the absorption of valuable substances. Scientists have long been concerned about this issue. As far back as the 1980s, there were scientific studies on the relationship between caffeine and nutrients. One of them – on the interaction of vitamin C and caffeine – showed that the use of this vitamin does not affect the removal of caffeine from the body. That said, the concentration of vitamin C itself changes over time in different body environments (plasma, whole blood, white blood cells). But this is a normal process that occurs with the consumption of food, notes the nutritionist. And with other substances, what is the situation?

Elena Truskova: In 2002, another study came out about the effect of coffee on possible calcium deficiency. In the experiment, scientists came up with an interesting idea that frequent coffee consumption is most often associated with low calcium intake. But no evidence that caffeine has any negative effect on bone health or causes calcium deficiency was presented in the paper.

Another paper, which came out in 2008, evaluated how B vitamin deficiencies were related to coffee consumption. The results showed that coffee excreted only excess vitamin intake with urine, the nutritionist notes.

A similar study, but with a more structured approach, was conducted recently, in 2020. Again, scientists found no correlation between body weight, coffee consumption and beneficial substances. In people with normal weight levels of leptin, vitamin B12 or folic acid did not change in any way. So, as it turned out, coffee was not the reason for the deficiency of these or those vitamins.