Matcha, coffee and green tea: which is healthiest? with Prof. Tim Spector and Chef Andrew Kojima
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Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world-leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health. There's a battle brewing at your local cafe. On one side, coffee, the undisputed caffeine champion. And on the other, matcha, an ancient underdog surging in popularity. This modern-day David versus Goliath battle raises the question, is matcha healthier than coffee?

While both drinks contain nutrients that help with cognition, metabolism and inflammation, only one packs double the fiber. In today's episode, our guests will reveal Matcha's health benefits and show you two incredible ways to enjoy it. Andrew Kojima, better known as Chef Kodge, is a MasterChef finalist, a Michelin-reviewed chef, and his book No Sushi is an expert guide to Japanese cuisine.

He's joined by Professor Tim Spector, one of the world's top 100 most cited scientists, a professor of epidemiology at King's College London, and my scientific co-founder at Zoe. Whether you're a coffee lover curious about matcha, or a matcha enthusiast looking to deepen your knowledge, you'll leave today's episode knowing exactly what's in your cup. Kaj, thank you so much for joining me today. Hey, pleasure to be here.

Tim, welcome along. Great to be here. So, Kaj, we like to kick off our show here at Zoe with a rapid-fire Q&A with questions from our listeners. Are you up for that? Sure. Tim, you ready? Absolutely. All right, starting with you, Tim. Is caffeine the only benefit of drinking coffee or matcha? No. Do matcha and coffee share the same health benefits? Similar. Could matcha help prevent certain cancers? Possibly.

Kodge, could matcha help to curb a sweet tooth? No, not on its own. And finally, you know what you can have, give us a whole sentence. What's the most common misconception about matcha? It's that it's a completely different type of tea. There's mint teas and all sorts of teas. It's actually from the same tea that many British people drink, you know, black tea.

Well, look, Matt is having a moment. And so I think it's perfect timing to get into this. And as the head of a science and nutrition company, I'm getting more and more questions about it. Like, what is it? Is it a superfood? And the biggest question I get all the time is, is it healthy? Is it healthier than coffee? I have absolutely no answers to any of these questions. But luckily, I have some world experts here with me, hopefully to give me the answers.

And at the end of this episode, we're actually going to demonstrate how to make a proper matcha with a world expert in how to do that. So if you've got any matcha at home and you're listening to this, grab it now so you'll be ready to join us in a little while. But before we get there, Kodge, I'd like to just start at the beginning. And you touched on this a bit in your quickfire questions. What is matcha and where does it come from? Okay, so first of all, it's a type of green tea.

And all green teas are made from the same plant that any other teas that we might be familiar with, black teas that we drink typically with milk. And it's a special type of green tea because rather than taking the leaves and infusing those into water, you pick the leaves specially when you first grow them. And when I say pick, you mean you pick the youngest ones as well, and not just physically pick. And then you ground those into a very fine powder. It takes a long, long time, the whole preparation, which is why it's quite expensive.

and you suspend those particles in water rather than infusing other nutrients out of the tea leaves. And you drink that or eat it. So you just drink the whole leaf rather than dipping it in and taking it out again? Exactly. Imagine when I make a coffee plunger, you drink that and you get the bits at the end, and it's a bit unpleasant in your mouth. That's because the particles are not very fine. But if you imagine that they're really, really fine, you would just drink that and not notice. That's what drinking match is like.

Amazing. And so tell me, is there some magic process by which you decide which tea leaves or I could wander up to a tea plant, pick a few, cut it into little pieces and like, hey, presto, I have matcha? No, because it's taken at least 900 years to work out where to grow the leaves, how to pick them, when to pick them, what to do to them before you pick them. And so one of the main things that matcha has over other types of green tea is that it's grown in shade.

And they realized this by accident initially because it was naturally in the shade of other trees. But they noticed that the leaves had more chlorophyll, so they were greener. And so they look and they taste different. So it's very particular sorts of tea leaves that are picked.

And are tea leaves normally not grown in the shade? No, most tea would be grown in full sunlight. And tea has moved from China to Japan to Sri Lanka to India to Kenya now as well.

And they all share similar characteristics of where they're growing, typically higher up on hills, full sunshine. But what the Japanese did when they realized the tea leaves that were growing in the shade of other trees naturally were fighting for more sunlight. And so they pushed more chlorophyll into the leaves.

And that's what makes them greener. So now what they do is they actually shade them. So traditionally they would shade them with, you know, bamboo. And so how is that different from the preparation of a green tea or a black tea? People who know me know that I'm a bit addicted to my black tea. What is different here?

Okay, so I'll start with black tea for a start. The difference with black tea is that you would collect the tea, you wouldn't be quite so picky on which leaves you choose, and you'd let them ferment and oxidize. As you know from watching leaves, if you just let them die, they'll go brown. And that's why black tea, it's actually black tea, but Chinese people call it red tea because often when you infuse it, it's more reddy brown.

So that's the main difference. The green tea, you're trying to make sure it doesn't oxidize, make sure it doesn't ferment. And that's the big difference between green and black tea. And then I think the first thing you asked was what's the difference between green tea and matcha? Well...

So matcha, you're making sure that you get the particles. And with green tea, you would infuse it as you would with any other normal tea, what I call normal tea, or tea that we're more used to. So in a green tea, I dip it in the hot water. I let it sit there for a few minutes. I take it out. So then all I've got is just the water with some stuff that's sort of come out of the green tea. Whereas in matcha, I've literally got the entire leaf...

smashed in very small pieces? Yes, and I think for me that means that when it goes into your body, if you just put it into water, you're kind of relying on what's water-soluble to then put into your body. But by putting the whole thing in, you're opening up more options in terms of what your body can ingest, process and extract nutrients from. So it's a super concentrated green tea? Correct. Most teas, you would let them dry and you'd crush them or roll them. And actually, if you roll them, one of the good things about that is with green tea, you'll see that they're almost like little sticks.

but they unfurl. So they've been rolled. And I think the reason for that is it delays or prevents any oxidation. Whereas other teas, you would leave them to dry out open and then you'd crush them and they would break into little particles. And that's what you've got in tea bags. And I understand there's another critical part of the process in making matcha that differs from other teas?

you steam it first and you don't do that with other types of tea because if you steam it two things will happen one is it will it won't be able to oxidize a bit like you know when chefs say oh i'm gonna blanch my broccoli and it's going to stay green if you take green beans let's say on one two they've got a sort of dull matte color if you put them into water hot water the cells on the surface break and

and the colour changes and it goes more vibrant. Now, if you then continue to cook those for too long, they would lose their brightness again. And, you know, you might remember from school dinners, green beans that are, you know, mushy pulp. I definitely remember. This is what happens when I cook the broccoli as well. Yeah, exactly. They've had all the life and nutrients cooked out of them and you would be better drinking

the broccoli tea. So explain, coming back to the matcha, just to summarise there for the, what has to be done to make this magic work. So you steam them first and that locks in the colour, locks in the flavour and then you dry them.

And then you grind them. And it's no good sticking them in a blender. That's not the traditional way. The traditional way, typically the artisans will grind them by hand on a granite mill, basically. And if you've ever watched flour being made, it's the same. You're taking a grain, but in this case a leaf, and you're just rubbing it between two millstones effectively. I think it takes an hour to make 30 to 40 grams of matcha.

And that's typically how much I buy in a go. I don't buy more than that because, you know, that's probably, you know, if you're drinking every day a month or two supply. But, you know, it takes an hour for an artist to do it. That's why it's expensive. I've been drinking matcha green tea for 25 years. I've got a question. What is your health worth to you?

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Will you give Zoe a try? We're now available in the US. So head to Zoe.com and take our free quiz to find out what Zoe membership could do for you. Listeners to this podcast can use the code podcast to get 10% off their membership. Now, back to the show. And does it come from Japan? I mean, have people been drinking it for more than 25 years?

Oh yeah, way more. I mean, 900 years. It was British monks who brought it over and planted these tea fields and found that the matcha tea was a very good way of not only stimulating themselves, but also keeping themselves calm. And that was good for meditation because I don't know about you, but I've been to yoga classes where I've fallen asleep in the last pose. I've even forgotten what it's called now. I'm feeling very relaxed and I'd like to be meditating, but I'm very sleepy as well.

Now, the Buddhist monks, when they wanted to meditate, they wanted to be quiet, calm, but they also wanted to be stimulated and mentally alert. This is in Japan 900 years ago. Fast forward, I mean, I went there to Tokyo a few years ago and...

Everything's green. So everything's matcha. You go to a convenience store, the Kit Kats are all matcha flavored. Matcha Kit Kats. You go to McDonald's, you could have a matcha version of your burgers and everything was green. So it's a marketing sensation over there.

Everything is given a healthy gloss. This trend, I think, is coming this way. And I think we are going to see a bit of a matcha revolution, I think. It feels like here in the West, Tim, coffee is the default choice now for energy. Yeah.

Why is that? I think it's because the health perception of it as an unhealthy drink is fading. People are realizing that it doesn't cause heart attacks. It's not mind-altering or, you know, it doesn't cause cancer. All these things that we were taught about 10, 20 years ago are not true. And actually, coffee is now known to be, you know, have a major reductive preventive effect on heart disease. So I think all these things considered...

And the availability of coffee shops everywhere that have overtaken tea rooms...

I think has contributed to this. And the fact also that you can get decaf coffee, which is very drinkable now, which before it was sort of undrinkable. So even if you've got a problem with caffeine, you can still enjoy coffee. So I think that's why it's been so successful. I think one of the reasons that a lot of people listening think they drink coffee is like they wake up and they really need this energy boost. And they think about coffee as this sort of source of that. Is the experience with Matcha different?

Yes, because it's got something else in it apart from caffeine. It's got L-theanine and caffeine and L-theanine work in tandem to slightly delay the caffeine release. So you still feel stimulated.

but you also have this sort of sense of calmness. And when I drink it, I just feel more able to, you know, when we're being overstimulated by screens and various different ways of people contacting you, messages, emails, whatever, I feel much more able to sort of pick them off one by one. And I drink coffee and tea and matcha. I see coffee as two things. One is, you know, I have the sort of Sunday morning waking up thing. I also see coffee as a social thing. It's become that over 25 years.

Matcha, I'd like it to be more of a social thing, but for me it's a very personal thing. I take time out of my day to drink my matcha. I also drink coffee when I'm doing sports. I find that's quite good.

When I'm trying to focus, if I'm trying to sit and write something, I find coffee, I can feel a bit distracted by things. My mind's buzzing a bit too much. I don't find that with matcha. So that's how I differentiate when I drink coffee with matcha. Makes me think of my son who just started drinking coffee recently because my father introduced him to it on a trip.

took him to Italy and was like, well, you have to drink coffee now. And he came back and he was just sort of wired each time he had one in the morning because, of course, he wasn't used to it, as I think so many of us have sort of got inured. And it made me realize it's quite a real drug. Like, you know, it was really affecting him. And he decided actually he was going to cut it out for now because it was sort of felt like it was too much.

And I think that's really interesting the way you describe it against matcha. Tim, are you able to explain at all what might be going on? Yeah, so we're talking about the caffeine amounts in these different products. So you've got your green teas...

which have low levels of caffeine in them, sort of 20 to 50 milligrams. Then you've got the matcha, which is the concentrated form, which has about double that, 60 to 90 milligrams on average. And then coffee goes to 100 to 130 milligrams. So it's a sort of gradient. So you're getting relatively less in there. And black tea would be somewhere between matcha and green tea.

So you've got a range of these caffeines, but we've been hearing about this other chemical, this L-threonine, which does seem to counteract some of the overstimulatory effects of the caffeine on the mind. And that's why we're going to get on to some of the studies. But, you know...

It doesn't seem to affect your sleep as much as coffee. So there's another drug here that has been a different effect. Correct. Yes. I mean, obviously in teas and coffees and, you know, there are hundreds of different chemicals that we're only just discovering, but these are a few that have been isolated. We think definitely have these brain effects. And so you've got these two competing effects with matcha that are really, really quite fascinating to study. And that, you know,

You can still get some of the benefits of caffeine without it keeping you up at night and making you too wired. And maybe that's why matcha seems to be taking off. I'd actually love to get into that now because I always thought it was the only thing coffee was, was caffeine. And I know, Tim, that you co-wrote a big new paper with Zoe on this groundbreaking new research on how much coffee can actually transform our guts.

And I know that you've also been reading up on the latest research on matches. I'd love to sort of almost measure them up against each other a little bit, because I think for many of our listeners, they're like, okay, how does this compare with this coffee that I'm so...

Could you tell me about the nutritional differences between coffee and matcha? Yes. So if we start with fiber, coffee's actually a decent source of fiber, 1.5 grams per cup. So if you're having three cups a day, getting four or five grams of fiber, about a third of the average intake in the U.S.,

And matcha probably has more fiber in it than coffee. It all depends on the amounts you're using. But over 50% of the matcha powder is actually fiber.

So if you're putting a tablespoon in, you're going to be getting over 10 grams of fiber. So fiber is as good, if not better, than coffee. There's less caffeine relatively, but probably still enough to get you up in the morning. It has fats in it that coffee doesn't have. So it's actually a source of omega-3s and these linoleic acids,

And these are all healthy fats, interestingly, that have come out. We know that these healthy fats are good for the brain, etc. 17% of it is protein. Everyone's on about protein these days, relatively small amounts, but it's all good quality, giving you a few grams of protein in there as well. If you take this all together, then actually, nutritionally, there's quite a lot good stuff going on.

with this match in this concentration that seems to be pretty equivalent to coffee, given what we know. And I think there's lots of things we don't know, but there's other chemicals are in there. But interesting, the things that it has that coffee doesn't is it has this L-threonine,

which is this other chemical in there that seems to, in studies, maintain sleep quality. So people who are taking, I think they take generally about three grams of matcha before going to bed, doesn't seem to stop sleeping as coffee would. The studies show a bit of variability between people, but that's a really encouraging sign. What I really like about matcha is that it's got similar polyphenol levels to coffee.

These defense chemicals that you get from the bean or the leaf or the plant itself. And so whereas it's more diluted in green tea, you're getting a really concentrated hit of them. And many of them, we still don't understand exactly what they do, but these are great antioxidants. Is there a reason why the matcha might be higher in these polyphenols than your average tea?

Well, partly it's because more of it is seeping out into the drink. So actually you're extracting more of them than you would do just by dipping the leaf in. But it could also be the way they're picked and grown. So sometimes from what you're describing, it sounds like the leaf, if you're picking the sort of young leaf...

rather than the whole leaf, then you're getting more polyphenols in that because it's having to grow faster. It needs more defenses. So sometimes just selecting the very best quality leaves will also help you there. So some of it is the quality element. It's growing partly in the dark somehow affects this? Yeah, well, maybe they have a tougher life. So again, we come back to this idea that if they're struggling to survive...

that they're producing the best chemicals that make us healthy. I always love this. It makes me think about us as human beings today, that we live in this environment where for the first time in our history, we're surrounded by food all the time, right? And our ancestors obviously were constantly worrying about starvation. So at least in the West, you know, we're surrounded by food all the time. And yet, weirdly, we're sort of the least healthy we've ever been. And it makes me think of your tea leaves here, Kaj, that you're sort of

causing them to suffer with the shade and all the rest of it. And then, Tim, you're telling me that actually it gives us the best polyphenols. There's something about how somehow we're not evolved to live in too good an environment. No, that's right. We all need a bit of stress in our lives, just got to titrate it.

That's what I bring you, Tim. That's why I'm here. Bring us both stress. And I know that in your recent paper, you were talking about this like quite significant impact that coffee was having on the gut microbiome. And this might be one of the ways in which it affects our health. Do we know anything about matcha and its effects, you know, beyond the sort of the stimulant that we've been talking about?

I couldn't find anything in detail on matcha. There's a little bit on green tea, but I'd love to do some studies. The problem is matcha hasn't really been used much in the West. And so there aren't the big epidemiological studies. So we have to sort of extrapolate a lot of it from just green tea studies. So we're guessing a lot of the work here is all quite new. There are a few little studies that

showing it does have definite benefits. We've talked a bit about its anti-caffeine effect. So the idea of the L-threonine means that you're getting decent night's sleep and sleep quality seems to be improved.

Some evidence that can reduce stress, as you were suggesting it does for you, in some placebo-controlled studies. So cortisol levels dropping. So some anti-stress effect, I think, is really interesting. And some studies of elderly Japanese, quite a big study, did show cognitive improvements, particularly in the women who were taking not huge amounts, just I think three grams a day.

So that over a 12-week period. So I think everything is suggesting that it's working this way. Metabolic effects doesn't make you lose weight. They've done some studies on that. It's not a cure for everything, but it's all pointing towards help. It's been touted as an anti-cancer drug.

I couldn't find any really good evidence yet that it does that. But there's reasons theoretically suggest it would do if people followed up and then we did bigger studies. So, yeah, I like the look of matcha. It's got all the, you know, the things that we want to see in a healthy food. You know, it's made in this artisan way that's really got no real processing in it.

And it's got all these nutrients of the plants in a really concentrated form. So, yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of it. So, Tim, what's your final assessment? Is coffee healthier than matcha?

Probably we have more evidence that it's healthier at the moment, but I think matcha is great for anyone who doesn't like coffee. Then that's obviously the go-to drink. And I would urge people who do drink coffee to maybe switch to also having matcha, particularly in the afternoons, et cetera, and start to build up that habit because the two together look pretty unbeatable.

Tim, I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts with you and Kaj, he's very rarely that positive about something. So that's actually really interesting because if I play it back, I think you're saying there's not a lot of scientific evidence yet on this in terms of real studies. Short-term studies, but not long-term studies. Got it. So compared to what you often like to talk about, it seems like there's still quite limited evidence, but the underlying properties of it you really like because they tie to things that you know have really good benefits. Well, that's right, because green tea has been studied.

And this is just a form of green tea. So if we accept that it's a concentrated high dose form of green tea, then there's every reason to be optimistic about its health benefits. I think that's what I'm seeing. And in the last five years, there have been a number of these studies on sleep and mood and health.

cognitive performance that have been very encouraging. So yeah, I'm much more positive about it than I would have been, say, four or five years ago. And my other takeaway, I think, is you probably wouldn't give up coffee for it, given the current data about the health benefits, but perhaps reducing coffee, combining the two...

you might be saying is a good outcome? Definitely, yes. You know, my tea time, my British tea time drink, this could be it. And I might start having my own little tea ceremony. And particularly if it's giving this calming effect when you're feeling a bit uptight, you know, so I think we can use both of these potential health foods, yes.

So I'd love to talk about the reality of drinking matcha in the West now, because I have to admit, I was quite cynical going into this podcast. Because when I think about matcha, I think about somebody ordering like an iced matcha latte from Starbucks. And I look at this thing and I find it very hard to believe that it is matcha.

like a health drink. When I think about matcha, should I think about something like that? Iced matcha latte? I think it's a shame that you do, but I'm glad that you do because it means that we're sitting here having a conversation. I think of matcha the same way that I, when I first went to Italy and I'd already developed quite a taste for coffee and I saw the way they drink coffee, very small shots.

And that's how matcha is for me. So it doesn't take me very long to make it and doesn't take me very long to drink it either. You know, I saw these Italians come into the bar and they don't even sit down. They stand and drink it and go. That's pretty much what it is for me. I make it in a couple of minutes. I drink it in a minute. It's a five minute ritual. As I said, it's sort of because fewer people drink it. It's not, I don't see it as a social thing, but I'd love for it to be that ritual.

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And Tim, how should I rush out and have an ice matcha latte?

I wouldn't because generally they're absolutely packed with sugar and have hardly any matcha in it. You know, those large versions you get at Starbucks probably have got six or seven spoons of sugar in it. So that to me would outweigh any benefits of the poor old matcha. And you can tell, you know, because you've hardly got any fiber in that, which means there's very little matcha in those drinks. So be wary of...

you know, suddenly everything having a matcha halo, which I think it will do. And, you know, I mean, a matcha KitKat is still a KitKat. It's just green. And I think, you know, we don't know about the quality of the product that goes into them. There's no

No stamp of approval in the same way when you've got the pure product, you can actually tell. So I think we ought to be a bit nervous about embracing all ultra-processed matchers. The team actually did take a look into this just before because I was sort of curious. And apparently the ice matcher latte from Starbucks, according to its own website, has 33 grams of sugar in it. So like six and a half teaspoons in that one drink.

Now, that's quite a lot of sugar, isn't it, Tim? That is a hell of a lot of sugar, yeah. Which, again, that matcha isn't going to be worth that much amount of sugar. So it's all a trade-off. So I'd love to talk about how you would drink matcha if you want to do it properly. So I'm assuming that Starbucks is not the way that those Buddhist monks 900 years ago were drinking their matcha? No, I mean, I'd love to show you how I do it. And that's very purely matcha and water and nothing else.

And if you acquire the taste for that, then you can experiment putting it into other things. I put it into an avocado this morning, for example. An avocado. Okay, this is fantastic. I have to admit, this is the bit I've been most excited about. Our producers have been sent away to boil the water in advance. I'm hoping that's going to have happened and they're going to come and help. And we are going to get our own matcha tasting from a world expert. So thank you, Kosh.

Alright, well, Kod, you've just gone and delved into your magic box of secrets and brought a whole bunch of stuff up onto the table. Can you tell us what's in front of us? Well, this is the matcha. This is ceremonial grade. Ceremonial grade is the best. This box is 30 grams. I personally do about a gram per serving. It's about 17 pounds. So that would be about just north of $20. It's just over 50p per matcha shot.

So that's about 70 cents. About 70 cents, yeah. So, you know, about a tenth of the price of your Starbucks matcha latte, probably. Much higher quality. We have to make it ourselves. We have to do the washing up ourselves. And

And ceremonial grade has this wonderful ring. Is there a ceremony associated with this or it's just marketing? The ceremony developed over years. And if you go to Japan, you can see this and you can be mesmerized by the, you know, just the beauty and the tranquility of the process. You went to one. Yeah, they're amazing.

There's only really two other things you need, and even then you don't really need them. This is the bamboo whisk. You can see that it's in cross-section, it's just a bit of bamboo, but it's been cut into, I've never counted, but hundreds of very delicate prongs. Looks a little bit like a whisk, I think, but made of bamboo. Yeah, it's called a cha sen. Cha is tea, sen is whisk. And this is a cha shaku, a tea spoon, I suppose.

Which I would describe as a very small wooden spoon. Hockey stick. Yeah, it's like a hockey stick. You can experiment at how much match you like, but this sort of measures a small amount. And you could use just the tip of a teaspoon. When I was researching this, it seemed to be very different amounts people use.

No standard amount per portion people like more concentrated more dilute. Yeah, I think even the instructions say one to two grams So there's a hundred percent difference. So I just put that much in but people have different amounts in Japan It's not like everyone in Japan always has one teaspoon. Well, it's very Very difficult to measure the way this unless you're drug dealer So, you know I do it by eye and I

You know, maybe I could put a little bit more in. Is this for three of us then? Yeah, so I would do one scoop per person. I'd rather make that last, because it is expensive, but I'd rather have, you know, one or two of those a day, maybe even three, rather than just load it all into one. I'd rather have more than get my fibre in, but, you know, that's... Well, you could get your fibre in over the day if you have three of them. Got it. I think the first thing I'd say is it's incredibly green.

It's really vibrant in comparison to like my normal expectation about like a tea or anything like that, which I would expect to be sort of dried and nothing like as strong a colour. It looks healthy, doesn't it? It would normally be in a Japanese teacup. But for the purposes of this demonstration, I bought a glass so you can see what we're doing. I mean, one of the first things we do is we use the whisk just to sort of

smooth out any lumps because I don't know if you've sort of tried this thing with cocoa it's hydrophobic so you just want to minimise the risk of that so just get rid of any clump of matcha and then the next stage is basically pouring in I would normally do about 50ml which is probably about the size of these cups I've bought these long that's

That's probably more than an Italian would drink in terms of a shot of coffee. Tiny compared to my venti at Starbucks. Right. Short, intense, potent. And then this is boiled water, but not boiling. So we've left this to cool down. It's probably about 70 degrees Celsius, probably about 160 Fahrenheit. And really not very hot. So I'm used to...

to tea and generally that's 100 degrees. You're very fussy about your water aren't you Jonathan? I'm quite fussy but it's normally in the sort of 195 maybe 90 like to me 60 degrees seems really low. I think the point of this is that you're going to drink this in you know two, three sips.

So we want to drink it and then we want to get on with our day. We don't want to sort of, you know, have it there while we go back and it gradually comes down in temperature. There's something very mindful about this. I've got to be there. I'm making it. I'm going to drink it right now. It's not this thing I'm then just going to carry around with me in this enormous cup for the next two hours. No, exactly. There's a mindfulness to making it and drinking it. The other thing I think about coffee is it's a social thing. It's a stimulant. It wakes you up. But tea is more...

hopefully when you drink too as well it's like right I'll put the kettle on it's it's instantly I'm calming it so that's part of the mindfulness process for me actually going to put the kettle on maybe coming back and then letting it steep and then finishing it off and drinking it here it can all be done I've taken a very long time over this but it can all be done in about a minute or two okay so all I'm going to do is pour a little bit of water in

So you've turned in quite a small amount of water there. Just a small amount, yeah. I'm just going to use this whisk to make sure that all those particles are suspended. The water's green because it's suspended in the water. It's not dissolved in the water. If you make instant coffee, it's dissolved. So it looks really green, but actually just tiny, tiny little bits of tea floating in this water. But they're so tiny, I have to say, it looks as though now you've got a sort of

like a green smoothie. And it's frothing up, isn't it? It's frothing up. So that's the other nice thing about this. You know, if you do get into drinks through creamy and milky, you know, lattes and things like that, coffee or otherwise, that foam is going to give you the mouthfeel of creaminess, but without any cream at all. Just plant and water. Simple as that. But you've got some fats in there, as we mentioned, the Omega-3s and other ones. So that does give it that extra mouthfeel. So I'm going to add a little bit more in.

You've got an inch of water now. Yes, I'm partly making this so I can pour this out and give you a taste. But there we go. I mean, that's pretty much it. Would you like to try some? I would love to try some. Okay, let's try and not do this. Thank you. Tim? It feels like some sort of high-end soup that you've now made for me in a small little tasting cup. Kanpai. Kanpai. Sip it, you know, two or three sips. Mmm. Mmm.

It's not as bitter as I thought it was going to be. That's because it's good quality. There's quite a lot of taste afterwards. To start with, it doesn't taste so much like a tea. I feel like the aftertaste after a while tastes more like a green tea, but it tastes quite different to start with, Tim. Yeah, well, it's smoother, isn't it? I think it's got that creamy frothiness.

There's more to it. It would be rather disappointing as a soup, but it's definitely a lot more than a tea in terms of the consistency, which I think now that I understand it actually has all these bits of tea in it. And you haven't diluted it that much because the amount of water in it is quite small.

So I was sort of expecting you to give me a sort of mug of this. And actually, it's a very small amount of tea. So there's still quite a bit of tea, I guess, in this little drink. I've had longer versions of it, like an Americano equivalent. And yeah, you can have bigger shots. I think there's a fair bit of flexibility in how you want to drink it, aren't there? Longer or shorter versions of it.

I brought, I did bring some cold water as well. I mean, sometimes I just make it with cold water. And this is a sauce whisk that I have as a chef. And many people have these little whisks. But if you don't have one of these, that will do the same. It's sort of aerating it. What's it called? A sauce whisk. A sauce whisk. A sauce whisk. Yeah. And now you're putting about the same amount of tea it looks like. Well, I'm going to put a bit more in because I'm going to do this more diluted perhaps. Okay. Yeah.

And just to show that you don't have to have it, it's nice to make it sort of traditional and part of the ritual, but you could just put this cold water in. Because for me, the main reason for using hot water with tea is to speed up the infusion.

But of course you're not infusing here and you're not dissolving either. You're suspending the particles. Now you can see already that there's a few little clumps of green tea, i.e. the sauce whisk is not quite as effective as the traditional bamboo. You mean the temperature of the water doesn't matter? No, I would say that's the whisk, not the...

But you can still see a little bit of a foam there. So that's really interesting because I guess I was thinking, well, obviously it needs to be quite hot in order to dissolve it or take the, you know, take the flavors out. But you're saying, well, of course it doesn't really matter because actually it's just sort of floating in this. The temperature is really just about my...

how I like the taste of the drink. One of my pet frustrations when I'm traveling in any country that isn't a big tea country, whether it's France or America, is nobody boils the water hot enough to make the tea. But with matcha, I should always be happy because it doesn't really matter what the temperature of the water is. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so it looks like you've made about twice as big an amount this time. Yeah, it's a bit more. And you can dilute it to taste and see where it is. There is a little bit of bitterness, but if you compared lots of matches, you would get some that have... The lower quality will be more bitter. The other thing about green teas compared to brown teas is obviously the leaves themselves are oxidized. But if you then...

do that trick where you're trying to get two cups of tea out of the same tea bag the second extraction will be more heavy in tannins and therefore more bitter with green tea that's less of a less of an issue do you want to try some cold i would love to try some cold thank you feeling more calm already jonathan oh i'm feeling quite hyped up at this point so no i don't know how long does it take to get the benefits of uh l-threonine over over the next half an hour okay so that's just cold cheers

Yeah, it's nice, but I prefer the warm one. It's a different experience, isn't it? For me, when it's cold like that and it's a bit more diluted, it tastes more of creaminess and dairy-ness. Yeah. You know, we've changed two variables there, temperature and dilution. But you could imagine there's someone who drops some milk in there. It is. I get that now, yes.

It's still got quite a strong flavor, I think, doesn't it? If you compare it with any tea, there's a much stronger flavor. So you can see that it's more like coffee in that sense that it's got that sort of depth and presence to it. And even when it's cold and more diluted, I think I still feel that. I agree that it's less bitter, but it's definitely not as bitter as I expected because it's just water, right? There's no sugar, there's no milks or any of the rest of it.

It's not like coffee. It doesn't have that coffee, that roasted amoma because there's nothing roasted in here. So it really is just the sort of raw plant. So it's more herbal, more grassy. They're the notes that I'm getting here. So it's a very different experience to coffee, except perhaps that mouthfeel when you get, you know, if you had a frothed up coffee.

It's an espresso or one with a head on it. That's the only similarity. And then the little bit of bitterness and the long follow, isn't it? So once you've drunk it, you're still getting those flavors, you know, 30 seconds later. I think that's one of the things that really distinguishes it from, you know, some...

mass-produced sugar-sweetened beverage, as they like to say in the States, right? You get the hit of the sugar and flavour and it disappears very fast. Whereas this, I think, like a coffee, like a really good meal, you're still getting a lot of taste afterwards. I guess this is part of why I imagine some people like matcha and presumably some people also really dislike it. It's definitely got a strong flavour to it. Yeah, but nothing like coffee. I don't think it doesn't have that intense bitterness.

Agreed. So someone like you who's not a coffee drinker, you probably, you know. Happily drunk it without complaining. Yes, exactly. I feel like a lot of people are drinking matcha not just with water, but in a way rather like a replacement for coffee. Do you think this is a disgusting habit? How do you think about that? No, I think it's a real shame if it's loaded with sugar. But one of the ways I like to drink it is just with some warm coconut milk.

Something we haven't really touched on yet, but when you taste it, it actually has umami. It's got that sort of soothing savoriness. And when you then layer that up with something else that's got umami, so like nut milks or, I mean, I did it with avocados this morning, you get this double whammy of umami and that's very satisfying. How would you add it to other foods?

So you talked about your avocado. Yeah. But someone is starting out, you know, you've got some spare powder, you know, you want to add it to everything you can think of. What would you start with? Well, this is the perfect example. My daughter's 12. Now, this probably 12 is roughly where you need to be careful a bit about caffeine and your son as well.

But she has exams today. And I gave her last night lemon, honey and ginger because she's on the verge of a cold. Try and get her some good sleep. And then this morning, I know she's not going to have that, taste that. But I just sprinkled one gram as I chopped up some avocados, a little bit of salt, a little lemon juice and put that on some toast. And that was her breakfast.

I've seen it on eggs. Have you seen matcha eggs and eggs in a soup? Yeah, you could use it as a seasoning. You could even put it in... One of the problems is it does clump a little bit, but if you put it in with some salt, fine salt, or even actually crystal salt, it will disperse itself in the salt, and there you could use it as a seasoning as well. Do you feel like the natural introduction to this for someone who hasn't used it before is as a drink and the food follows, or actually is it more the other way around? I think that I...

subconsciously knew about it through food first. Because there's another Japanese dish called Ochazuke and that would be green tea with dashi. Dashi is a stock. So again, you've got that double whammy of umami. You've got the umami of the dashi stock and the umami of the tea. And then you combine those and you pour them over rice. And it's a very sort of comforting way of eating leftover rice the next morning for breakfast or something. And I'd had that as a child. Do you know someone who's curious about matcha?

why not share this episode with them right now? You'll empower them with the latest scientific advice to help them choose the daily drink that's best for them. And I'm sure they'll thank you. Now, I think you have brought...

another show and tell am i right kodge which is a way in fact to eat matcha rather than to just drink it do you want to tell us what you've just brought out yes well i i was cooking the weekend and it was burns night i'm half scottish and half japanese so i did a japanese cranican so basically i made a granola that went with a matcha cream effectively now this is slightly sweetened

It's got eggs, sugar, a touch of butter, double cream, and a little bit of mascarpone. Wow. It's also pretty bright green, I would say, Tim. Yeah. In comparison to my average dessert. It makes it seem... Sorry, you're not meant to eat the whole lot. It's just...

It would be, it had lots of other things. You'd find that a bit cloying if you didn't make the whole lot. Well, I was just thinking that when you described the ingredients, it probably didn't sound like the healthiest thing I was ever going to eat, but it looks, it looks basically like a bit like a mashed avocado, like a blended avocado, really green. So I'm thinking, Tim, it must be really good for me. And I clearly allowed more than one spoonful. What do you think?

I think you're allowed at least two spoonfuls. Should we give it a go? Yeah, let's go. But again, you should get this double whammy of the umami that's in the milk products with the umami of the matcha. Oh, wow. Surprising taste, isn't it? I wasn't expecting that. Pretty good, isn't it? Yeah, it's good. But I'm definitely inviting Codge around to cook my dinner. So you've got the sweetness, but it's got much more depth on it. So yeah, that's a lovely face.

It feels like you can feel a lot of the fat in it. It gives it this sort of smoothness if I compare with what we were just having with the matcha, but you can still get some of the taste of the matcha coming through. Is it easy to blend in with yogurts and creams and cream cheeses and things or not? It is quite difficult. What I tend to do is I would...

If I'm using sugar, I put it in with the sugar because that sugar will naturally disperse it. Right. So like you're adding it with the salt when you do the mix. So you're putting it with something else first. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Or if I'm not using sugar, I would just make a very small amount of matcha tea and then use it. Because what you don't want to do is put too much water into your cream cheese or whatever else you do.

Tim's very self-controlled. I've had two more spoons while he's been talking and I've now put it a bit away because I can tell I'm going to eat the entire thing if I leave it too close. It was delicious. So, Coach, you've given us like lots of different ways to eat matcha. If someone, you know, like me has never tried it before and they're thinking out of this show, you know what, I'm like really sold on this combination of this matcha.

beautiful story of 900 years of Japanese monks eating it and Tim talking about the health benefits. If you were trying to advise the best ways to start, what would you tell someone who's listening now? Well, I think the avocado is a very good way, but my daughter didn't even notice it was there and I only told her in the car on the way to the exam. I think if you want to taste it, try it on some rice.

and add a little stock, and that's the best way to acquire that taste. The same way that you'd acquire a taste for coffee, you might have it with milk first. The French famously teach their children to enjoy wine, they dilute it, so you're just sort of introducing it slowly. Does it matter whether you buy a cheap one or an expensive one to start with? I think if you're going to use it to mix with other ingredients, you can certainly buy a less expensive one.

But I think on its own, you should start go for the more expensive. I think so, because it's got less of the bitterness and a bit more sweetness.

And let's say I was like, you know what? I'd really want to try it as a drink because I see it advertised in all these different coffee shops. Would you have any guide? I have already heard both of you told me not to go to have the Starbucks, venti, whatever, but is there a way that might maximize my chances of having something that you would approve of, both, I guess, in terms of the quality of the matcha and also the experience? Is this maybe a very easy entry point? Yeah, just some warm milk. Again,

again because it's a powder add the milk in very slowly at the beginning even like maybe a bit of cold milk to to get make it into a paste so you don't have any of the clumps of powder left and then top it up with warm milk um and again you'll get you'll get the soothingness the umami of the milk and actually you know when you taste good milk it's it is sweet you don't need the extra sugar yeah so i think it's reasonable to start with but i think

There's some evidence that having milk in your teas does interact with the good polyphenols, so they may not be absorbed as well. So use that as a starting point, then try and wean yourself off the milk and go hardcore like we've done today, which is I actually prefer it neat rather than with milk. But, you know, the most important thing is to enjoy it.

Amazing. Well, I'm going to try and do a quick summary. So I guess I start with this amazing idea that there were these Buddhist monks 900 years ago who figured out that the secret to enlightenment was growing their tea in the dark, picking just the right bits, smashing it up into millions of pieces, and then drinking it. I always wonder about how anyone ever figures any of this stuff out.

But then amazingly, like modern science says, basically they cracked it. And that's because it not only has this caffeine, it has this other thing, L-threonine, which apparently sort of balances this out. Tim, I think you were saying sort of improves your sleep quality and so sort of reduces some of those rough edges that comes with the caffeine. So there's something real here there.

It's a drink that's been drunk for a very long time. So it's not just a sort of made up thing in the last few years where they claim comes from the East. It's actually real. There is less caffeine in it than coffee. So it is a way to sort of reduce that if you feel like you're on a bit of a caffeine roller coaster with coffee, which I've definitely been in the past. But there's more caffeine than black tea or green tea. And part of the reason for this is actually...

it's completely different from a tea. In a tea, you're sort of steeping this leaf, which might've been fermented in boiling water and it's getting some extracts here. You're actually getting the whole leaf. And that one of the reasons I think Tim, that you were so positive about it is that therefore,

you're actually getting a lot more plant because you're eating this whole thing. And the plant has got all of these polyphenols. It's got a lot of fiber in it. I think you said probably going to be more fiber than in your coffee, certainly the way that you drink it, Tim. So there's a lot of health benefits that come from that because you're going to eat the whole thing. And an easy entry point might be to just swap out the way you're having your coffee today. A lot of people will be having coffee with milk or some sort of milk alternative.

And Tim, you're saying, you know, that's a good entry point, but actually the milk is potentially blocking quite a lot of the health benefits. So you really want to end up being able to drink it the way, Kodge, that you introduced us today.

And I think I'm pretty sold. I have to admit the cold one, I don't think I'm going to start drinking cold match. It didn't give me that pleasure, I think, of like the warm drink. The warm match is really nice. I love the fact that you have this little ceremony of making it. And I think like a lot of people listening, I feel like I spend my life at 180.

10 miles an hour and never stop. And actually even just making a cup of tea is often something I think I like for just a few minutes of stopping. And so the idea that you have to sort of brush with a brush, like for a couple of minutes, that is something very lovely about it. I think I'd be totally up for trying that. And in terms of the food, someone else is going to have to make it. So if you're willing to come round and make me that amazing dessert, I'm all sold.

Thank you so much, Kaj, for coming in and showing us how to do this. We'll make sure we put some links on the website for anybody who's interested to understand a bit more about that process. Tim, thank you for taking us through the amazing science here. This was a real pleasure. Thank you both. Thank you. Now, if you listen to the show regularly, you already believe that changing how you eat can transform your health. But you can only do so much with general advice from a weekly podcast.

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