When the temperature outside is very cold, it is a pleasure to drink something hot to get warm, but do you know which hot drink keeps you warm the longest? A Japanese television program ranked 6 hot drinks by their warming effect and found that ginger tea, the drink most commonly thought to be the best at keeping the body warm, ranked third. The champion was somewhat unexpected.
The difference in heat retention is up to 50 minutes
No matter what kind of hot drink it is, the moment you drink it you will warm up. But do the effects last the same for different drinks? To find out, Japan’s TBS TV program What’s the difference? conducted a real-life test.
The experiment used 6 women between the ages of 20 and 40 who all experience the symptoms of having cold hands and feet. They drank 200 ml of green tea, coffee, black tea, cocoa, amazake, and ginger tea. All these beverages were heated to 60°C (140°F) and the experiment was in a room at 20°C (68°F).
The program invited Ishihara Shincai, the vice president of Ishihara Clinic, who is known for treating diseases with traditional Chinese medicine and natural therapy, to analyze the results.
Among these six common hot drinks, ginger tea is commonly used to make one warm, coffee is consumed by more than half of Japanese people every day, and green tea is a tea that has been loved by Japanese since the Nara and Heian periods.
Four minutes after everyone drank the beverages, ginger tea and amazake raised their body temperatures higher than the other beverages. After more than 5 minutes, the body temperature of all people rose steadily. However, the time it took for body temperature to drop varied widely. The ability to retain warmth for different drinks varied by up to 50 minutes.
Warming effects ranked
No. 6: Coffee
Nine minutes after drinking coffee, the subject began to feel cool and her body temperature dropped to normal. Ishihara Shinca said that caffeine has the effect of lowering body temperature, so it cannot keep the body warm for a long time.
No. 5: Green tea
Next was green tea. The subject’s body temperature dropped to normal after 14 minutes. Green tea also contains caffeine, so the warming effect won’t last very long either.
No. 4: Amazake
After 27 minutes, the body temperature of the amazake drinker dropped back to normal. Amazake has the highest sugar content among the six hot drinks, and sugar is absorbed by the body to generate heat. Ishihara pointed out that amazake has a certain thickness, which can prolong the time it stays in the stomach and make the body temperature continue to rise. Nonetheless, amazake did not rank the highest as it lacks ingredients that can promote blood circulation making the warmth retention not last.
No. 3: Ginger tea
After 47 minutes, the subject who drank the ginger tea returned to their original body temperature. The shogaol in ginger can rapidly increase the body temperature and cause sweating. But sweating causes the body to cool down, so the body temperature cannot continue to rise.
No. 2: Black tea
It took 52 minutes for the black tea drinker’s body temperature to drop. Black tea contains theaflavins, which have the effect of improving blood circulation and raising body temperature, which is a unique component of black tea.
No. 1: Cocoa
The subject who drank the hot cocoa went back to her original body temperature after 59 minutes. Cocoa polyphenols have the effect of promoting blood circulation, and the duration of warming the whole body is the longest.
Translated by Patty Zhang
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