Putting Milk in Your Tea Will Help Whiten Your Teeth, According to New Study

名本

K. Miller Photographs/Getty

Your afternoon cup of tea could be a more effective teeth whitener than whitening toothpaste or bleaching products.

That is, if you add a splash of milk, which was just found to have positive effects on dental hygiene. A new study published in the International Journal of Dental Hygiene found that the milk you add to your tea can actually prevent your teeth from staining.

“Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world, and the way it’s processed affects how teeth are stained. The more the tea is processed or oxidized, the higher its staining properties are,” said Dr. Ava Chow, who led the study. “But we’ve found that the addition of milk to tea reduces the tea’s ability to stain teeth.”

Chow placed extracted human teeth into a controlled solution of just tea and a solution of tea with milk. After leaving the teeth in the solutions for 24 hours, her team took color readings, which indicated that casein, the protein found in milks, binds with the tannins in tea to prevent staining.

“The results we found showed that casein is the component of milk that is responsible for the reduction of tea-induced staining,” Chow said. “The magnitude of the color change observed in our experiments is comparable to the color change seen by vital bleaching products and more effective than whitening toothpastes.”

Who doesn’t love a study that tells you a thing you do everyday is secretly good for you?

—Maria Yagoda, @mariayagoda  08/20/2015 at 12:01 PM ET  Putting Milk in Your Tea Will Help Whiten Your Teeth, According to New Study

http://greatideas.people.com/2015/08/20/milk-tea-teeth-whitener-study/
RELATED: Sriracha Lovers, Rejoice! Spicy Foods May Extend Your LifeRELATED: Five Reasons to Have Another Cup of Coffee