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Try a Tea-Tox

12th August 2010

Afternoon tea has an unfair reputation for being an unhealthy indulgence. It's time to set the record straight!

While we wouldn’t disagree that eating scones smothered in clotted cream every day won’t help your waistline, we must point out that tea is one of the healthiest drinks around. Your daily cup has high levels of antioxidants (these are the health-giving molecules that fight aging free radicals and help keep your body young), incredibly low levels of caffeine (to give your powers of concentration a gentle boost and your mood a subtle lift) and excellent hydrating properties (so no need to drink gallons of boring water every day.) Drinking four cups of tea a day is as beneficial to your health as getting your five portions of fruit and veg (and sometimes it’s far easier to sip a cuppa than cram in another apple.) The key components of a cup of tea help towards keeping your heart healthy (tea drinkers have been proven to have lower levels of cardiovascular disease than non-tea drinkers) while the naturally-occurring fluoride helps to diminish the levels of plaque on your teeth (saving you from gum disease and strengthening your tooth enamel) and that’s not forgetting the simple stress-busting that relaxing with a cuppa can do!

Tea-Tox

But still the reputation of afternoon tea as a naughty indulgence remains. To counterbalance this, The English Tea Room at Brown’s Hotel (winner of The Tea Guild’s Top London Tea award 2009) have created an ingenious healthy menu, christened the Tea-Tox, where guests can sample almost all the delights of a traditional afternoon tea, without the side serving of guilt. The new menu is similar to the classic afternoon tea but as well as famous tea blends such as Ceylon, Oolong and Earl Grey there is a great choice of green teas (noted to be one of the healthiest brews around due to their mega levels of antioxidants) and white teas. Leyla Mussaud, Manager of The English Tea Room,  recommends enjoying a customized mix of Silver Needle White tea with whole rosebuds to aid the de-tox process. As well as being truly delicious it’s a super-healthy choice as it doesn’t need milk or sugar to enhance its flavour.

Instead of starting finger sandwiches, the Tea-Tox offers open sandwiches of smoked salmon (high in skin-plumping Omega 3) and low-fat crème fraiche on dark rye bread; sliced egg white and cress on spelt bread (skipping the high-cholesterol egg yolks); sliced cucumber on bran bread (a tasty high-fibre choice) and mackerel pate on an oat cracker (the high GI index of the oats help keep your blood sugar levels high – so you don’t feel the need to snack.) These unrefined grains are great low-carb choices and help you feel fuller for longer. They’re far more satisfying and none of the sandwiches contain salt (which has been linked to high blood pressure.) The traditional scone course is replaced with a fresh array of crudités and a vibrant coriander-spiked hummous while the final cake course of sugary pastries has been replaced with sugar-free sweet treats. Proving you don’t need sugar to keep things sweet, the high point was a light, fluffy and creamy orange cake with yoghurt topping – it’s Leyla’s favourite.

Initiating this innovative new menu took the hotel’s team “several months” to introduce. Working closely with a nutritionist, Leyla reveals, “we were keen to create a tea that sat well alongside our award-winning Traditional Afternoon Tea so that if one guests is enjoying scones and cakes, their friend didn’t have 'plate envy!'” Now we’ve found a healthy afternoon tea we might turn the occasional treat into a regular occurrence! But even if you can’t partake in Brown’s delicious Tea-Tox, the superb benefits of tea-drinking – both at home and in one of The Tea Guild’s member venues – will keep you healthy and happy.

Other healthy options

At Peacocks Tearoom in Ely, the 72 strong menu of teas contains 11 antioxidant rich green teas while The Tea Guild’s Top Tea Place 2010, The Black Swan Tearoom & Patisserie in Helmsley, has twenty great blends available. These venues are passionate about tea, and its surprising health benefits, and staff will be able to guide your choice of cup to ensure you get the most benefits from your brew. In London, Tea at Liberty, based at the famous department store, has a section of their menu dedicated to ‘Health Teas of the World’ where popcorn-scented Sencha Genmai Cha (“packed with antioxidants”) and Sweet Love detox tea (“a blend of black tea with ginseng, liquorice root, spices and pink pepper”) will give your body a boost. If the food accompanying the tea is your dieting downfall look out for healthier options such as those at The Connaught. Their afternoon tea menu includes a sandwich filled with chicken, granny smith apple, Greek yoghurt (rather than calorific mayo) and chives and a fruity, high-fibre peach pastry. At former Top London Tea winner, The Lanesborough, the gluten and dairy-free tea – while not advertised as the healthy option – is a great choice for those watching their waistlines. Just ensure you give the required 12 hours notice before arrival. And even traditional tearooms are aware that guests are requiring lighter options at tea-time. Dartmoor Tearooms proudly proclaim that, “walkers, tourists and weight-watchers of all ages are all welcome!” Cheers to that.

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• Tea and hydration - keep your fluids up with tea
• Caffeine in tea - it has much less caffeine than coffee!
• Antioxidants - 3 cups of tea have more 'anti-oxidant power' than an apple