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Is mate bad for your health ? Does mate equal danger ? Two very legitimate questions to ask yourself before consuming a drink you're not familiar with.
Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to find reliable information on this topic online. You can read a bit of everything and anything.
So here is an article where we will sort out the truth from the falsehoods concerning two very widespread assertions about mate.
In the age of social media and 24-hour news channels, announcements travel faster than ever, but rarely pass the "verification" or "journalism" stage.
Indeed, all it took was a headline that sold well, like "this tea is as toxic as 100 cigarettes", for erroneous information to circulate everywhere, without any real verification (Grazia, Biba Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Marie-France, or even the 12 coups de midi on TF1...).
The answer is... NO!
A study published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomaker and Prevention notes that some types of mate contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), molecules also found in tobacco smoke. A 50g dose of these mates contains the same amount of these molecules as 100 cigarettes.
This study mentions mate that is exposed to smoke during drying. However, this is not the case for all mates. Some brands, including ours ( see our mate range ), use a smoke-free drying process, which guarantees PAH-free mate.
Smokeless drying is a relatively new concept in the mate industry. Brands that use this technique usually advertise it.
On the other hand, the vast majority of traditional South American brands (we won't mention any of them) use the traditional smoke-drying process.
This statement also turns out to be false .
A study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Cancer was conducted to determine whether there was a link between the temperature at which tea was consumed and the risk of esophageal cancer.
This study showed that there is indeed a higher risk of cancer following the consumption of very hot drinks, frequently and in large quantities, due to burns caused by the heat of the drink.
This therefore has no direct connection with mate, and applies to all hot drinks (tea, coffee, chocolate, etc.).
When drinking a hot beverage (regardless of the type), it is therefore recommended to never drink it while it is boiling. Obvious, right?
Coming back to mate, and apart from these health recommendations, it has always been recommended to prepare it with hot, but not boiling, water between 70 and 80°C (as indicated in our tutorial ).
Knowing that we are a mate brand, our opinion is necessarily subjective.
But the purpose of this article is to highlight some fairly widespread claims, which have some truth in them, but which are treated with such imprecision that they come dangerously close to fake news.
Furthermore, the purpose of this article is not to say that there is no danger in drinking mate. Although it has many benefits , we recommend avoiding excess (as with everything, ultimately...).
Important: This article is written by the team The Bombilla and does not in any way constitute medical advice.
