It has to be said that in recent years, the incidence and mortality rate of cancer in China is quite high, and every year 3 million people in China die of cancer.
Because of this, everyone is more and more afraid of cancer, and various ways of preventing cancer have come out. Many foods and drinks have also been notorious for carcinogenicity, and one of the most widely circulated rumors is that overnight tea will cause cancer!
There are also various analyses in the rumors, such as overnight tea will produce an ingredient called nitrite, nitrite contains high toxicity, a one-time intake of 3 grams of nitrite will lead to adult poisoning and death.
Moreover, after entering the body, nitrite will also be converted into a class of carcinogen nitrosamines under the action of proteins, stomach acid and other substances. In WHO's carcinogen list, nitrites and nitrates are also included in Class 2a carcinogens!
By all indications, overnight tea seems to have the possibility of carcinogenicity, but is this really the case?
First of all, the so-called nitrite is actually a general term for a class of inorganic compounds, which mainly refers to nitrite. This ingredient is widely present in everyone's living environment and is the most common nitrogen-containing compound in nature. In the water of nature, nitrite is also present.
Indeed, nitrite has a certain toxicity, adults ingest 0.3 to 0.5 grams of nitrite, will cause poisoning. However, this does not mean that drinking overnight tea will cause cancer!
Bottom line: Any act of talking about toxicity beyond the dose is a hooligan!
There are nitrites in natural water, but after purification, the content of nitrites is fully in line with human drinking standards. Moreover, even the tea, after a whole night of storage, the color only deepens and the taste becomes more intense. However, the content of nitrite it contains has not increased, and it is even less than the content of an ordinary cup of boiled water.
This is not nonsense, and multiple experts and research teams have tested overnight tea before. Studies have confirmed that a cup of about 240 ml of black tea, green tea, Longjing tea, the nitrite substance contains less than 0.03 mg.
Even if the brewed tea is left for a whole day, the nitrite content is not much at all, only growing to about 0.2 milligrams.
You know, nitrite is a food additive, it is allowed to be added by our country. In our daily diet, food and water there are nitrites, but they are added in accordance with the strict standards of our country, and are not in the range of exceeding the standard and causing human poisoning. Most of the nitrites that enter the body are hurried visitors of the body and will be excreted with urine.
It should also be emphasized here that while nitrite may be converted into carcinogen nitrosamines in the body, this is not absolute.
According to the information available in clinical practice, it will only be converted into nitrosamines in the characteristic environment. 0.2 mg of nitrite is only excreted with urine, far from causing human poisoning, let alone carcinogenicity.
Therefore, overnight tea is of course drinkable, and any rumors about overnight tea causing cancer are actually rumors.
However, it is not recommended that you drink overnight tea here, because after a long period of time, the taste of tea has already changed, it is more bitter, and the color of the tea will deepen and become turbid, and the perception and drinking experience will both decline. Therefore, it is best to pour the tea overnight!