Are tea bags bad for you? Yes. Read this to learn why

Are tea bags bad for you? 🍵

A tea bag is the first experience many of us have with tea, but as you dive deeper into the world of tea, important questions arise: are tea bags harmful or even dangerous to your health? 

While convenient, there are growing concerns about why tea bags are bad and the potential side effects of tea bags that you might not be aware of. To truly enjoy the rich flavors and health benefits of tea, switching to loose leaf is often the better choice. 

In this article, we’ll explore why tea bags are bad for you, the dangers of tea bags, and why many believe loose leaf is the healthier option. Whether you're wondering are paper tea bags bad for you, or simply asking yourself is tea bag good for health, we've got you covered.

Without further ado, let's get started! 🎉

 

Why are tea bags bad for you? Because of what they're made from. 

Most tea bags are made from nylon, plastic, or bleached paper, raising the question: are tea bags bad for you? Many tea bags are also sealed with a type of glue, which can add to potential tea bag side effects. When you ask, are tea bags harmful, it’s important to look closely at the individual materials used to make each one and understand the potential dangers of tea bags.

While old-fashioned paper tea bags are indeed made from paper, a lot of newer teabags are made from plastic. Although the plastic won’t “melt” when placed in hot water, it can corrode over time and release microplastics into your tea. 

 

Are Tea bags Bad for You if They’re Paper?

Even paper tea bags don’t get a free pass.

Despite their appearance, they are often bleached and sealed with either staples or glue: factors that explain why tea bags are bad for you and why many people are concerned about tea bags' side effects.

 

What makes your tea bags toxic 

When it comes to asking are tea bags bad for you and your health, one of the most important concerns is the presence of microplastics.

Studies have shown that 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics can be released in a single cup of tea. 

These particles are released when hot water interacts with the tea bag, especially those made from nylon or plastic. This has led many to question why tea bags are bad, and raises valid concerns about tea bags side effects. 

With every sip, you're potentially ingesting trace amounts of plastic, and while it may seem small, it can accumulate over time.

This brings into question are tea bags healthy, or more specifically, is tea bag good for health when it contains hidden contaminants.

 

Harmful effects of paper, plastic & nylon tea bags 

Nylon is a common ingredient for teabags because it has a higher heat tolerance than plastic, but it still can be degraded with boiling water. As you may notice by now, boiling water and chemicals really don’t go together!

Plastic Tea Bags

There is a misconception that drinking tea from a tea bag is good for health, but this is not neccesarily true thanks to all the additional chemicals. 

Plastic teabags are of course the worst offenders. The plastic used to make plastic teabags is polyethylene, the same used to make grocery bags. This material is really problematic when submerged into boiling water, or even warm water. 

Paper Tea Bags

On the surface, paper teabags may seem like they are a healthy alternative, but this can be misleading. This is because the paper teabags are almost always treated with bleach to make them white. This bleaching process uses chemicals like chlorine dioxide. Although this trick is used to make the teabags look clean and pure, the opposite is true.

So are tea bags bad for you? That depends on what they are made out of, but all of the most common types seem to be.

Harmful effects on your health

Although more research is needed, it would appear that microplastics are making their way into our food chain and consequently into our digestive systems. The full extend of this is not fully known, but some plastics like Bisphenol A (BPA) are known endocrine disruptors. This means that they can have harmful effects on the hormonal activity in humans. 

So again we ask are tea bags bad for you? Based on the microplastics alone, it would appear so. The bad news doesn’t end there, we haven’t even looked at the environmental impacts.

Harmful effects on our planet

The materials in tea bags aren’t just bad for flavor, they can also be bad for the environment. Another major reason to avoid them is the environmental impact, which adds to the broader argument about why tea bags are bad. In Britain alone, it's estimated that 100 million cups of tea are consumed daily, and with 96% of those made using teabags, that’s around 35 billion tea bags being discarded each year.

These aren't just harmless paper tea bags either, they often contain harmful plastics, metal from staples, and strong threads. So when people ask are tea bags bad for you, it's not just about personal health, it’s about the health of the planet, too. Many tea bags are individually wrapped, creating even more waste. To reduce these issues, consider making the switch to loose leaf tea. 

It eliminates the dangers of tea bags related to both your well-being and the environment. Plus, loose leaf tea is more efficient in terms of packaging, and when you're done brewing, the tea leaves can go straight into the compost—no need to wonder is tea bag good for health or sustainability.

 

The Price of Tea Bags

Teabags also are thrown out after one use. Loose leaf tea, on the other hand, can be reused many different times. Some teas can even improve the second or third time around like fukamushi sencha, which becomes and even more vibrant shade of green with stronger vegetable tasting notes. 

This also lowers the price per cup. If you want to compare the prices of loose leaf tea and teabag tea, you have to consider that a teabag only contains 2 grams of actually tea and it likely needs to be thrown out after 1 brewing. Loose leaf tea on the other hand can be used 3-5 times, so that 100 gram pack of tea can be used to make 150-250 equivalent cups, with a much better flavor. That being said, we recommend that you use 5 grams of leaves and a smaller amount of water to really concentrate the brewing and create a more powerful flavor profile. It’s better to enjoy a smaller quantity of really amazing tea than a larger quantity of slightly watered down tea.

 

How to avoid the harmful effects of tea bags

The best way to avoid the harmful effects of teabags is to become self-sufficient. Later on in this guide, we will be providing you with instructions of how to prepare your own tea and teabags at home. This means that you don’t have to rely on the big teabag companies anymore, and you can drink healthy, high quality green tea!

 

How to know if your tea bags are safe 

Of course when people ask are tea bags bad for you they are really asking about the teabags they are using. It doesn’t hurt to check the ingredients of your teabags for a clue as to why tea bags are bad. 

If the ingredients list includes nylon or plastic, that’s a concern many point to when asking are tea bags harmful or questioning the potential tea bag side effects. You can also learn a lot just by looking at the tea bag itself. Staples, glued or sealed edges, or unnaturally white paper tea bags may all be signs that the bag contains bleached paper or adhesives, both of which contribute to the dangers of tea bags. In short, if you’re still asking is tea bag good for health, these are visual cues worth paying attention to.

 

What are the better alternatives to tea bags?

There are two main alternatives for those questioning are tea bags bad for you. The first is loose leaf tea, which we strongly recommend if you're concerned about the dangers of tea bags or potential tea bag side effects. Loose leaf tea allows you to avoid the unknown materials often found in tea bags, which helps answer the question is tea bag good for health with more confidence.

#1 Loose leaf tea 

The best solution to the teabag conundrum is to just switch to loose leaf tea. This may seem like a difficult switch, but all you need is a strainer and some loose leaf tea. Just this switch alone will make a huge difference in your tea ritual. Even some of the mid-grade loose leaf teas outshine some of the most expensive teabags.

#2 Make your own tea bags

If you really must keep using the teabag, we suggest you use your own. Just like cooking your own food, making your own teabags lets you really control what goes into your body. We recommend going for a silk teabag that has a resealable pouch. 

These are common in Japan, and we sometimes use them when we are traveling to meet farmers. You can use high quality loose leaf tea inside the teabag and seal it up without any glue or staples. It may not be nearly as good as loose leaf, but it still is miles apart from mass produced teabags.

 

3 reasons why you will never prepare a great green tea with tea bags:

In addition to being bad for your health, teabags are bad for your taste buds as well. For us the question of are tea bags bad for you also comes down to the taste of them. It is important to find a tea that you truly enjoy, and you will find that loose leaf tea almost always beats teabags.

1. tea bags contain much lower quality leaves

The first and most important point to cover is the fact that teabags tend to contain much lower quality leaves than loose leaf tea. In order to get large tea leaves into a teabag, they have to be be broken down and therefore they will lose a lot of their essential oils, which are responsible for the complex flavors and aromas of a tea. A producer making high quality tea for a premium market would never waste the leaves in a teabag, so all of the best teas in the world are made for loose leaf consumption. If you’ve ever wondered why tea bags are bad, this is a key reason.

Teabags are made with the casual tea drinker in mind, and therefore they are mass produced using cheaper leaves. Teabags are often made from the leftover leaves from the tea production process. They can be made from later harvests with less nutrients or contain older leaves, stems or other plant material. The flavor of loose leaf and teabags couldn’t be more different, with the teabags having a flat and bitter flavor and loose leaf green tea having a sweet and complex assortment of flavors.

2. tea bags are the less effective way to brew tea

Even if you were to use high-quality leaves in a tea bag, the tea bag itself is still a less effective way to brew tea. One reason why tea bags are bad is because tea leaves need ample space to open up fully and release their complete flavor into the water. When they're cramped inside a small tea bag, the flavor becomes muted and weak. This is a major factor behind the dangers of tea bags—not just for health, but also for taste.

This is the second key reason to reconsider tea bags: they hinder proper infusion. To get the best results, you should prepare loose leaf tea in a teapot like this one, which gives the leaves room to expand and infuse. Once the tea is ready, you can pour it out while the built-in filter keeps the leaves out of your cup—proving that tea bag side effects go beyond microplastics and extend into brewing inefficiency as well.

3. tea bags affect the flavor of the tea 

The third reason not to use tea bags is that the tea bags themselves can affect the flavor of the drink. Don’t forget that when you prepare tea using a tea bag, you're pouring hot water not just on tea leaves, but also on paper, plastic, and glue. This is one of the reasons why tea bags are bad—they introduce unwanted flavors into your cup. Many people notice a faint cardboard taste when drinking tea bag tea, and that’s not just from low-quality leaves—it’s also from the bleached paper and packaging materials used in the bag itself.

In addition to paper, most tea bags are sealed with glue, which is often plastic-based. This glue can begin to break down and leach into the tea, especially when exposed to hot water. It's yet another reason people ask, are tea bags harmful or even are paper tea bags bad for you. Beyond glue, tea bags may also contain staples, metal, and string, all of which can affect both the safety and taste of the tea.

 

Conclusion: Are tea bags bad for you? Yes and also for the environment!

So, are tea bags bad for you? Based on everything we’ve covered—the presence of microplastics, the impact on flavor, and the environmental waste—we can confidently say tea bags are bad for you and for the planet.

If you’ve been wondering why are tea bags bad for you, the reasons are clear: from potential tea bags side effects like ingesting plastics, to the poor flavor and the waste they create, the downsides are hard to ignore. Whether you’re concerned about are tea bags harmful, or asking is tea bag good for health, the answer leans heavily toward choosing a better alternative.

We know this may be difficult to accept, almost every tea lover began their journey with tea bags. But recognizing the dangers of tea bags can open the door to a more flavorful and sustainable tea experience.

How to Make The Switch

I hope this article has helped you make the switch from teabags to loose leaf. If you’re looking to pick up a teapot, you can get a free one on our website with certain orders. If you need any recommendations for which loose leaf teas to start with, please feel free to leave us a message in the comments below. Thanks so much for reading, we’ll see you next time.