I drank nothing but tea for a week

For many students, tea becomes a vital part of everyday functioning so I thought drinking it for a week would be a good idea.

Being typically British, whenever any form of  crisis arises, my immediate response is to awkwardly  ask “shall I pop the kettle on?”

As a nation, us Brits enjoy  165 million cups every day, equating to 62 billion cups per year. Typically, 70% of the UK population who are aged 10 or over drank at least one cuppa yesterday. This means that over 25 per cent of all the milk consumed in the UK goes in the nation’s daily tea habit.

Armed with my bumper bag of 1200 teabags (weighing in at an impressive 3kg) I felt I was well equipped for the challenge.

Day 1- Wednesday 14th

Teabag count- 7

I began my  adventure by having a plain green tea with dinner. It’s fair to say it added nothing to the dining experience, with a bland taste and a dodgy colour. The whole ordeal was made worse by my house mate enjoying a ice cold beer next to me, it had only just hit me what I was letting myself in for.

Later that evening, myself and two of my house mates went to the cinema, my plastic bottle of cold black tea sneakily hidden in my bag from cinema staff.

Although I had the smug satisfaction of not having to take out another student loan to afford a cinema drink, my happiness was quickly subdued when I had to take my first sip out of my crappy plastic bottle.  Nothing quite screams class like sipping dark mystery liquid out of a shabby diet coke bottle.

Still hopeful

Day 2-Thursday 15th

Teabag count- 14

Although tea is often the best part of my morning, by lunchtime my enthusiasm for the beverage had dwindled. After being in uni from 9 until 1, by the  time I got home all I fancied was a cold glass of anything but tea. Regardless, I proceeded to make myself a boiling hot cuppa and waited what seemed like hours before it was an acceptable temperature to drink.

I found that waiting for tea to cool down was becoming much more of an issue than I had originally thought.

Day 3- Friday 16th

Teabag count- 22

By now, I was completely sick of tea despite only being a couple of days in.  On average, each one of my cuppas contained 30-50mg of caffeine, and since caffeine stimulates hormones such as adrenaline and acts as a stimulant on the central nervous system, I was beginning to feel jittery and restless after my 4th or 5th cup.

It was also becoming really boring having the same thing to drink day in day out, I don’t think I’d ever craved a simple glass of water more in my life.

Day 4- Saturday 17th

Teabag count- 30

My best friend and her boyfriend came to Lincoln for a visit and I told them pretty quickly about my commitment to tea. It was received by confused faces and my friend responded with “but…why?”, to which I had to shrug my shoulders and say “just fancied it”.

After working up a sweat shopping in town, I seriously did not want to have to have a hot drink, so I hit a new low and simply dunked a green tea bag into cold water.

No more

Day 5- Sunday 18th

Teabag count- 37

In the morning I decided to embrace the cold and go for a run, sadly without my trusty water bottle. Instead I carried a bottle of green tea that made me look like I had fashioned a home-made shewee.

Compared to water, tea was so  underwhelming, completely lacking that instant “ohh shit that’s good” feeling.  When I returned home I had a very unsatisfactory cold black tea, which left me under-refreshed and with a pounding headache to boot.

It was this evening that I broke, and in a moment of weakness I chugged my  house mate’s cloudy lemonade straight out of the 2 litre bottle.

Day 6- Monday 19th

Teabag count- 44

I never thought I’d come to hate tea as much as I do right now. Days are dragging by (I feel like James Franco’s character in 127 hours) and the only thing keeping me committed is the fact that the whole ordeal ends tomorrow. Resisting the temptation to run down to Sainsburys local and grab as many bottles of value lemonade as I can carry is becoming such a challenge.

Soon

I’ve stashed a bottle of prosecco  in the fridge as my house mate takes her driving test tomorrow morning, and I fully intend on making bucks fizz (without the orange juice) regardless of the outcome.

Day 7- Tuesday 20th

Teabag count- 51

My house-mate failed her driving test (sad times), so the bubbly was hurriedly stashed away and the kettle boiled once again for the final day of my tea journey.

It was on this day that I actually decided to do some research into any possible benefits of tea, to see whether or not my tea binge had done me any good at all. I found one website claiming that  tea’s health properties are down to to polyphenols (a type ofantioxidant) and phytochemicals.

Although this sounds like a load of jargon, it essentially means that tea can have lots of health benefits. These include increased exercise endurance, reduce the risk of a heart attack and green tea specifically has been found to improve bone mineral density and strength.

Good to know my week hasn’t been a complete waste of time.