Netherlands’ Health Council advises citizens to drink five cups of tea a day

Black and green tea have been linked to improved cognitive function

Children in the Netherlands are already encouraged to drink tea at school (S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images)

People in the Netherlands have been advised to drink between three and five cups of tea a day, according to official health guidelines.

The Health Council of the Netherlands, an independent scientific advisory body for the country’s government, advocated the benefits of regular tea drinking in new protocols published this week, the Telegraph reports.

Guidelines state the tea must be green or black, while herbal teas are not advised.

Already in the country children at leading schools are encouraged to drink tea.

At Theo Thijssenschool in Amsterdam, students are offered milky tea at lunchtimes from the age of four. There are even special brands of herbal tea marketed for children in the country.

Eert Schoten, a spokesman for the health council, said: “There are clear signs that drinking tea is good for your health.

“Three to five cups a day reduce blood pressure, diabetes and stroke risks, so this comes as one of our 16 guidelines.”

The Tea Advisory Panel say drinking tea has a variety of health benefits including reductions in the risk of breast cancer, stiffness of the arteries, oral cancer and variability in blood pressure.

Both Black and green tea have been linked with improved cognitive function, according to a study published earlier this year published in Nutritional Neuroscience 2015, in which three types of brain wave activity, alpha, beta and theta, were all found to increase within an hour of drinking a cup of black or green tea.

Tea is the most commonly consumed beverage in the world after water, according to the Tea Advisory Panel. In the UK it has been drunk for more than 350 years, and today, 77 per cent of British adults drink the hot beverage.