Unless you’re one of those magical individuals who rely on absolutely NO caffeine to get you through your day (seriously, though, who are you people and how do you do it?!), then you likely identify with one of three teams: team soda, team coffee, or team tea.

Personally speaking, we tend to find ourselves identifying with ‘team coffee’ for the most part—though we do dip into ‘team soda’s’ stash if we are having a particularly rough day! That said, new information on the drink that comes in the “bagged” variety has made us wonder if we should switch over to ‘team tea’ for good.

Why drinking tea could help you flaunt your creative side

A study published in the journal Food Quality and Preference suggests that simply drinking one cup of tea before beginning a creative activity could help boost your results.

The study, which was conducted at China’s Peking University, called for 50 students with an average age of 23 to perform two activities: 1) construct an “attractive and creative” structure out of building blocks and 2) invent a “cool” name for a fictional noodle restaurant.

Before the students embarked on their tasks, they were split up into two groups—the first group was instructed to drink a cup of black tea, while the other was instructed to drink a glass of water.

Once everyone had completed their building and naming tasks, researchers scored each and every students’ assignment. As it turned out, the students who were part of the tea-drinking group ended up receiving higher scores than their water-guzzling counterparts.

These surprising results lead the researchers to one conclusion—tea does, in fact, help stimulate creativity. The data also helped them determine that tea promotes heightened levels of both “spatial” and “divergent” thinking. They think this may have something to do with black tea’s caffeine and theanine contents, two components that are known to boost alertness.

Impressive, to say the least!

How black tea compares to your other favorite caffeinated beverages

Now, before you go out and ransack your local market’s tea supply, it’s important that you educate yourself on the beverage first. You see, all teas are not created equal; while some may stimulate your mind, others will quite literally put you to sleep. Here’s how the caffeine content of the three tea varieties breaks down:

• Black Tea (English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Chai, etc.): contains about 42 mg of caffeine per cup.
• Green Tea (Sencha, Genmaicha, Gunpowder, etc.): contains about 25 mg of caffeine per cup.
• Herbal Tea (Chamomile, Anise, etc.): contains 0 mg of caffeine per cup.

Remember, the only tea variety that has been shown to promote creative thinking is BLACK TEA, so that is the variety to invest in if innovation is your goal.

We don’t know about you, but this study has definitely convinced us to incorporate more tea into our diets. English Breakfast, here we come!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on all things tea. Are you a tea drinker? If so, do you feel like it brings out your creative side? What’s your favorite way to prepare the hot beverage?