If you’ve walked through the beverage aisle lately, you’ve probably noticed that drinks have gotten a lot more complicated. There are drinks for energy, focus, hydration, sleep, gut health, stress, recovery, immunity, and just about anything else you can fit onto the front of a can. Ingredients like electrolytes, probiotics, mushrooms, adaptogens, botanicals, and amino acids have moved out of specialty wellness stores and into regular grocery stores.
They’re part of a category usually called functional beverages, and they’ve become one of the biggest trends in the beverage industry. But the more I read about functional drinks, the more I keep coming back to the same thought: a lot of what people are looking for already exists in one of the oldest beverages in the world.
Tea.
What Is a Functional Beverage?
A functional beverage is generally a drink designed or marketed to provide something beyond basic hydration or nutrition. Depending on the product, that might mean caffeine for energy, electrolytes for hydration, protein, probiotics, vitamins, minerals, botanicals, or other ingredients associated with a particular purpose.
It’s a very broad category, which is important to remember. Calling something a functional beverage doesn’t automatically mean it has been clinically proven to produce a specific health result, and it definitely doesn’t mean every product with the word “functional” on the label is automatically good for you.
Mostly, it reflects a change in the way people are shopping for drinks. We’re not only asking, “Does this taste good?” anymore. We’re also asking, “What do I want from this drink right now?”
Why Are Functional Drinks So Popular Right Now?
A big part of the functional beverage trend is connected to the larger wellness movement. People are paying more attention to caffeine, hydration, sleep, stress, alcohol consumption, ingredients, and how the things they eat and drink make them feel throughout the day.
At the same time, our drinking habits have changed. Coffee isn’t the only option for morning energy. Alcohol isn’t automatically the default for an interesting evening drink. Soda isn’t the only thing sitting next to the water in the refrigerator. That has created a huge space for beverages designed around particular moments and needs.
Maybe you want caffeine in the morning but don’t want another cup of coffee. Maybe you want something interesting to drink at 4 p.m. that isn’t an energy drink. Maybe you’re having friends over and want a non-alcoholic option that feels more grown-up than soda. Maybe it’s 9 p.m. and you still want the ritual of making yourself a drink, but you definitely don’t want caffeine.
Those are all different beverage occasions, and that’s where tea gets really interesting.
Is Tea a Functional Beverage?
Depending on how broadly you define the category, tea absolutely can fit into the functional beverage conversation.
Traditional tea made from Camellia sinensis naturally contains a variety of compounds, including polyphenols, caffeine, and L-theanine. The amounts vary depending on the type of tea, how it was grown and processed, and how you brew it.
Herbal teas are a little different because they aren’t made from the tea plant at all. They can be made from herbs, flowers, fruits, roots, spices, and other botanicals, which means the ingredients in one herbal blend can be completely different from another.
That gives tea an enormous amount of variety without necessarily requiring manufacturers to start adding a long list of extra ingredients to it. A black tea can naturally provide caffeine. A peppermint blend can be completely caffeine-free. Ginger brings its own distinctive flavor and botanical compounds. Hibiscus brings tartness, color, and naturally occurring plant compounds of its own.
That doesn’t mean every cup needs to come with a promise about what it’s going to do to your body. Sometimes understanding what’s actually in the cup is enough.
Tea Has Been “Functional” for a Very Long Time
One of the most interesting things about the current functional beverage boom is how many of the ingredients being celebrated as new or exciting have been used in drinks for generations.
Ginger isn’t new. Neither are mint, hibiscus, chamomile, tea, flowers, roots, or spices. People around the world have been brewing plants in water for thousands of years, sometimes because they liked the flavor, sometimes because of cultural traditions, and sometimes because certain plants were associated with particular uses.
Modern research gives us new ways to study those ingredients, but the basic idea of choosing different drinks for different times and purposes is hardly new. Tea just didn’t have a marketing department calling it functional.
What Does Tea Actually Do?
This is where the conversation can get messy, because there’s a big difference between talking about what an ingredient contains and promising what it will do.
Black, green, white, and oolong teas naturally contain caffeine in varying amounts. They also contain L-theanine and polyphenols. Researchers continue to study these compounds and their relationships with attention, cardiovascular health, and other aspects of human health.
Herbal ingredients have their own histories and bodies of research. Hibiscus, ginger, chamomile, peppermint, and other botanicals are all studied for different reasons. But a cup of tea is still a cup of tea. It isn’t medication, and we don’t need to turn every plant into a miracle ingredient to appreciate it.
For me, the much more useful way to think about tea is to look at how it fits into your day.
Tea Can Have a Different Job at Different Times of Day
This might be where tea fits most naturally into the functional beverage trend.
In the morning, you might want a bold black tea with caffeine. Full Moon Breakfast, for example, combines Assam and Ceylon black teas with sweet orange peel and gives you the kind of strong morning cup that can stand up to milk or honey.
Later in the day, you might want something lighter, like a green or white tea. In the evening, you can switch to a caffeine-free herbal blend such as Evening Peach Orchard, Secret Garden Mint, or Hibiscus Lavender.
The beverage changes because what you want from it changes.
That sounds incredibly obvious when you put it that way, but it’s actually a pretty big shift from the way many of us grew up thinking about drinks. Coffee was for mornings. Soda was for lunch. Alcohol was for evenings. Water was what you drank because you were supposed to.
Tea doesn’t fit neatly into one of those boxes, which might be one of its biggest strengths.
Functional Doesn’t Have to Mean Complicated
There are some genuinely interesting functional beverages being created right now, and I’m fascinated by where the category is going. But I also think there’s something appealing about a drink where you can look at the ingredient list and immediately understand what you’re drinking.
Tea. Fruit. Flowers. Herbs. Spices.
That simplicity is a big part of how we formulate teas at Full Moon Tea Company. I’m much more interested in what real ingredients can bring to a blend than in making something sound impressive because the ingredient list requires a glossary.
Sometimes a raspberry is allowed to just be a raspberry.
As functional beverages continue to grow, I think more people are going to start looking for that middle ground: drinks that feel intentional and interesting without feeling overly complicated.
So, Does Tea Count as a Functional Drink?
There isn’t one official definition that puts every beverage into a perfect category, but tea fits remarkably well with what people are looking for from functional drinks.
It can provide caffeine or be completely caffeine-free. It contains naturally occurring plant compounds. It can be blended with an enormous range of botanicals. It works hot, iced, sparkling, in lattes, and as the base for non-alcoholic drinks. Most importantly, you can choose a completely different tea depending on what sounds good and how you want your drink to fit into your day.
That may not sound as exciting as a can promising twelve different benefits before breakfast, but I actually think that’s part of tea’s appeal.
We don’t need to reinvent tea to make it relevant to the functional beverage movement. We may just be catching up to something tea drinkers have understood for a very long time: what we choose to drink can be about more than being thirsty.
