Matcha, coffee, and green tea: Which is healthiest? With Prof. Tim Spector and Chef Andrew Kojima

Is matcha the ultimate coffee alternative, or just another wellness fad?

In this episode, Andrew Kojima — aka Chef Koj — an expert in Japanese cuisine, and Prof. Tim Spector, a world-leading expert in nutrition and gut health, explore whether matcha is truly a healthier choice than coffee. 

For listeners curious about incorporating matcha into their daily routine, this episode includes a practical guide on how to prepare matcha properly.

Koj demonstrates the traditional method of whisking matcha and shares tips on avoiding common mistakes. For those new to matcha, he also outlines how to make a simple and delicious matcha latte for beginners. 

The episode concludes with a tasting of Koj’s matcha custard dessert, showing how matcha’s umami-rich flavor can be used in unexpected ways. Could matcha actually help curb sugar cravings and build a taste for more complex flavors? 

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Transcript

Jonathan Wolf: Koj, thank you so much for joining me today. 

 Chef Koj: Hey, pleasure to be here. 

Jonathan Wolf: Tim, welcome along. 

Tim Spector: Great to be here. 

Jonathan Wolf: So, Koj, we like to kick off our show here at ZOE with a rapid-fire Q and A with questions from our listeners. Are you up for that? 

 Chef Koj: Sure. 

Jonathan Wolf: Tim, you ready? 

Tim Spector: Absolutely. 

Jonathan Wolf: Alright, starting with you, Tim, is caffeine the only benefit of drinking coffee or matcha?

Tim Spector: No. 

Jonathan Wolf: Do matcha and coffee share the same health benefits? 

Tim Spector: Similar. 

Jonathan Wolf: Could matcha help prevent certain cancers?

Tim Spector: Possibly. 

Jonathan Wolf: Koj, could matcha help to curb a sweet tooth?

 Chef Koj: No, not on its own. 

Jonathan Wolf: And finally, and you know what, you give us a whole sentence, what's the most common misconception about matcha? 

Chef Koj: It's that it's a completely different type of tea; there's mint teas and all sorts of teas. It's actually for the same tea that many British people drink, you know, black tea.

Jonathan Wolf: Well, look, matcha is having a moment, and so I think it's perfect timing to get into this. As the head of a science and nutrition company, I'm getting more and more questions about it, like what is it? Is it a superfood? 

The biggest question I get all the time is, is it healthy? Is it healthier than coffee? 

I have absolutely no answers to any of these questions, but luckily, I have some world experts here with me, hopefully to give me the answers. And at the end of this episode, we're actually going to demonstrate how to make a proper matcha. We have a world expert in how to do that. 

So if you've got any matcha at home and you're listening to this, grab it now so you'll be ready to join us in a little while. 

But before we get there, Koj, I'd like to just start at the beginning, and you touched on this a bit in your quickfire questions. What is matcha, and where does it come from? 

Chef Koj: Okay, so first of all, it's a type of green tea, and all green teas are made from the same plant that any other teas that we might be familiar with: black teas that we drink typically with milk.

It's a special type of green tea because rather than taking the leaves and infusing those into water, you pick the leaves specially when you first grow them. 

When I say pick, you pick the youngest ones as well and not just physically pick. And then you grind those into a very fine powder. 

It takes a long, long time, the whole preparation, which is why it's quite expensive, and you suspend those particles in water rather than infusing other nutrients out of the tea leaves, and you drink that or eat it.

Jonathan Wolf: So you just drink the whole leaf rather than dipping it in and taking it out again. 

Chef Koj: Exactly. Imagine when I make a coffee plunger and you drink that and you get the bits at the end and it's a bit unpleasant in your mouth. Okay? That's because the particles are not very fine. But if you imagine that they're really, really fine, you would just drink that and not notice. That's what drinking matcha is like. 

Jonathan Wolf: Amazing. And so tell me, is there some magic process by which you decide which tea leaves or I could wander up to a tea plant, pick a few, cut it into little pieces and Hey, presto, I have matcha. 

Chef Koj: No, because it's taken at least 900 years to work out where to grow the leaves, how to pick them, when to pick them, what to do to them before you pick them.

One of the main things that matcha has over other types of green tea is that it's grown in shade. They realized this by accident, initially because it was naturally in the shade of other trees, but they noticed that the leaves had more chlorophyll, so they were greener, and so they look and taste different.

Jonathan Wolf: So it's very particular sorts of tea leaves that are picked. Are tea leaves normally not grown in the shade? 

Chef Koj: No. Most tea would be grown in full sunlight. And you know, tea has moved from China to Japan, to Sri Lanka, to India, to Kenya now as well. And they all share similar characteristics of where they're grown, typically higher up on hills, full sunshine.

But what the Japanese did when they realized the tea leaves that were growing in the shade of other trees naturally were fighting for more sunlight and so they push more chlorophyll into the leaves, and that's what makes them greener. 

So now what they do is they actually shade them. So traditionally, they would shade them with bamboo.

Jonathan Wolf: So how is that different from the preparation of a green tea or a black tea? People who know me know that I'm a bit addicted to my black tea. What is different here? 

Chef Koj: Okay, so I'll start with black tea for a start. The difference with black tea is that you'd collect the tea, you wouldn't be quite so picky on which leaves you choose. You'd let them ferment and oxidize.

As you know, from watching leaves, if you just let them die, they'll go brown, and that's why black tea. It's actually black tea, but Chinese people call it red tea because often when you infuse it, it's more red, brown. So that's the main difference. 

The green tea, you're trying to make sure it doesn't oxidize, make sure it doesn't ferment. And that's the big difference between green and black tea. 

Then I think the first thing you asked was what's the difference between green tea and matcha? Well, matcha, you are making sure that you get the particles. And with green tea, you'd infuse it as you would do with any other normal tea, what I call normal tea, or tea that we're more used to. 

Jonathan Wolf: So, in a green tea, I dip it in the hot water, I let it sit there for a few minutes, I take it out. So then all I've got is just the water with some stuff that's sort of come out of the green tea.

Whereas with matcha, I've literally got the entire leaf smashed in very small pieces.

Chef Koj: Yes. And I think for me that means that when it goes into your body, if you just put it into water, you're kind of relying on what's water soluble to then put into your body. But by putting the whole thing in, you are opening up more options in terms of what your body can ingest, process, and extract nutrients from. 

Tim Spector: So it's a super-concentrated green tea?

Chef Koj: Correct. With most teas, you would let them dry, and you'd crush them or roll them. And actually, if you roll them, one of the good things about that is with green tea, you'll see that they almost like little sticks, but they unfurl. So they've been rolled. 

I think the reason for that is it delays or prevents any oxidation. Whereas with other teas, you would leave them to dry out, open, and then you'd crush them, and they would break into little particles. And that's what you got in tea bags. 

Jonathan Wolf: And I understand there's another critical part of the process in making matcha that differs from other teas.

Chef Koj: You steam it first, and you don't do that with other types of tea because if you steam it, two things will happen. One is, it won't be able to oxidize. 

A bit like when chefs say, oh, I'm going to blanch my broccoli, and it's going to stay green. If you take green beans, let's say, or mange tout, they've got a sort of a dull matte color. If you put them into water, hot water, the cells on the surface break and the color changes and it goes more vibrant in between. 

Now, if you then continue to cook those for too long, they would lose their brightness again. And, you might even remember from school dinners, you know, green beans that are a mushy pulp.

Jonathan Wolf: I definitely remember this is what happens when I cook the broccoli as well, so that's right. 

Chef Koj: Yeah, exactly. They've had all the life and nutrients cooked out of them, and you would be better off drinking the broccoli tea. 

Jonathan Wolf: So, explain, coming back to the matcha, just to summarize there what has to be done to make this magic work?

Chef Koj: So you steam them first, and that locks in the color, locks in the flavor, and then you dry them. And then you grind them.

It's no good sticking them in a blender; that's not the traditional way. The traditional way, typically, the artisans will grind them by hand on a granite mill basically. 

If you've ever watched flour being made, it's the same. You're taking a grain, but in this case a leaf, and you're just rubbing it between two millstones effectively.  

I think it takes an hour to make 30 to 40 grams of matcha. And that's typically how much I buy in a go. I don't buy more than that because if you're drinking it every day, a month or two’s supply. But you know, it takes an hour for an hour to do, and that's why it's expensive.

I've been drinking matcha green tea for 25 years. 

Jonathan Wolf: And does it come from Japan? I mean, have people been drinking it for more than 25 years? 

Chef Koj: Oh yeah, way more. I mean, 900 years. It was Buddhist monks who brought it over and planted these tea fields and found that the matcha tea was a very good way of not only stimulating themselves but also keeping themselves calm.

And that was good for meditation because I don’t know about you, but I've been to yoga classes where I've fallen asleep in the last part, even forgot what it's called now. I'm feeling very relaxed, and I'd like to be meditating. I'm very sleepy as well. 

Now, the Buddhist monks, when they wanted to meditate, they wanted to be quiet, calm, but they also wanted to be stimulated and mentally alert.

Jonathan Wolf: This is in Japan 900 years ago. 

Tim Spector: Fast forward though, I mean I went to Tokyo a few years ago, and everything's green. So everything's matcha. You can't really move. 

You go to a convenience store, the Kit Kats are all matcha flavored. You go to McDonald's, you could have a matcha version of your burgers, and everything was green.

So it's a marketing sensation over there. Everything is given a healthy gloss by putting matcha in it. And the sweetest, most sugary things are considered healthy. 

So this trend, I think, is coming this way, and I think we, you know, we are going to see a bit of a macha revolution, I think.

Jonathan Wolf: It feels like here in the West, Tim, coffee is the default choice now for energy. Why is that? 

Tim Spector: I think it's because the health perception of it as an unhealthy drink is fading. People are realizing that it doesn't cause heart attacks, it's not mind altering, or it doesn't cause cancer.

All these things that we were told about 10, 20 years ago are not true. And actually, coffee is now known to have a major reductive preventive effect on heart disease. So I think all these things considered and the availability of coffee shops everywhere that have overtaken tea rooms, I think has contributed to this.

And the fact also that you can get decaf coffee, which is very drinkable now, which before it was sort of undrinkable. So, even if you've got a problem with caffeine, you can still enjoy coffee. So I think that's why it's been so successful. 

Jonathan Wolf: I think one of the reasons that a lot of people listening think they drink coffee is they wake up and they really need this energy boost, and they think about coffee as this sort of source of that.

Is the experience with matcha different? 

Chef Koj: Yes, because it's got something else in it. Apart from caffeine, it's got altheine. Caffeine and altheine work in tandem to slightly delay the caffeine release. So you still feel stimulated, but you also have this sort of sense of calmness. 

When I drink it, I just feel more able to… When we're being overstimulated by screens and various different ways of people contacting you, messages, emails, whatever, I feel much more able to sort of pick them off one by one.

I drink coffee and tea, and matcha. I see coffee as two things. One is, yeah, I have the sort of Sunday morning get-waking-up thing. I also see coffee as a sort of social thing as you know, it's become that over 25 years. 

Matcha: I'd like it to be more of a social thing, but for me, it's a very personal thing. I take time out of my day to drink my matcha. 

I also drink coffee when I'm doing sports. I find that's quite good.

When I'm trying to focus, if I'm trying to sit and write something, I find coffee, I can feel a bit distracted by things. My mind's buzzing a bit too much. I don't find that with matcha. So that's how I differentiate when I drink coffee with matcha. 

Jonathan Wolf: Makes me think of my son who just started drinking coffee recently because my father introduced him to it on a trip, took him to Italy and was like, well you have to drink coffee now. And he came back, and he was just sort of wired each time he had one in the morning.

Because, of course, he wasn't used to it, as I think so many of us had sort of got inured. It made me [think] it's quite a real drug, you know, it was really affecting him. And he decided actually he was going to cut it out for now because it felt like it was too much. I think that's really interesting the way you describe it against matcha.

Tim, are you able to explain it all? What might be going on? 

Tim Spector: Yeah, so when we're talking about the caffeine amounts in these different products, you've got the green teas, which have low levels of caffeine in them, sort of 20 to 50 milligrams. 

Then you've got the matcha, which is the concentrated form, which has about double that 60 to 90 milligrams on average. 

And then coffee goes to a hundred to 130 milligrams. So it's a sort of gradient. So you're getting relatively less in there, and black tea would be somewhere between matcha and green tea. So you've got a range of these caffeines.

But we've been hearing about this other chemical, this L-threonine, which does seem to counteract some of the over-stimulatory effects of the caffeine on the mind, and that's why we're going to get onto some of the studies.

But you know, it doesn't seem to affect your sleep as much as coffee. 

Jonathan Wolf: So there's another drug here that is having a different effect?

Tim Spector: Correct. Yes. I mean, obviously in teas and coffees and, you know, there are hundreds of different chemicals that we're only just discovering, but these are a few that have been isolated that we think definitely have these brain effects. 

So you've got these two competing effects in matcha that are really, really quite fascinating to study, and you can still get some of the benefits of caffeine without it keeping you up at night and making you too wired. Maybe that's why matcha seems to be taking off.

Jonathan Wolf: I'd actually love to get into that now because I always thought the only thing that coffee was, was caffeine. And I know Tim, that you co-wrote a big new paper with  ZOE on this groundbreaking new research on how much coffee can actually transform our gut. 

I know that you've also been reading up on the latest research on matcha. I'd love to almost measure them up against each other a little bit because I think for many of our listeners, they're like, okay, how does this compare with this coffee that I'm so used to? Could you tell me about the nutritional differences between coffee and matcha? 

Tim Spector: So if we start with fiber, coffee's actually a decent source of fiber, 1.5 grams per cup. So if you're having three cups a day, [you're] getting four or five grams of fiber, about a third of the average intake in the U.S. 

Matcha probably has more fiber in it than coffee. It all depends on the amounts you are using, but over 50% of the matcha powder is actually fiber. So if you're putting a tablespoon in, you're going to be getting over 10 grams of fiber.

So fiber [in matcha] is as good, if not better, than coffee. There's less caffeine, relatively, but probably still enough to get you up in the morning. 

It has fats in it that coffee doesn't have. So it's actually a source of omega-3s and these linoleic acids. And these are all healthy fats, interestingly, that come out. We know that these healthy fats are good for the brain, et cetera.

17% of it is protein. So, everyone's on about protein these days, these relatively small amounts, but it's all good quality, giving you a few grams of protein in there as well. 

If you take this all together, then actually nutritionally, there's quite a lot of good stuff going on with this matcha, in this concentration that seems to be pretty equivalent to coffee, given what we know.

I think there's lots of things we don't know. Well, there's other chemicals that are in there. But interesting that the things that it has that coffee doesn't, is it has this L-threonine, which is this other chemical in there that seems to, in studies, maintain sleep quality. 

So, people who are taking, I think they generally take about three grams of matcha before going to bed; it doesn't seem to stop them from sleeping as coffee would. The studies show a bit of variability between people, but that's a really encouraging sign. 

What I really like about matcha is that it's got similar polyphenol levels to coffee, these defense chemicals that you get from the bean or the leaf or, you know, the plant itself.

So, whereas it's more diluted in green tea, you're getting a really concentrated hit of them, and many of them, we still don't understand exactly what they do, but you know, these are great antioxidants. 

Jonathan Wolf: Is there a reason why the matcha might be higher in these polyphenols than your average tea?

Tim Spector: Well, partly it's because more of it is seeping out into the drink. So you're extracting more of them than you would just by dipping the leaf in. 

But it could also be the way they're picked and grown. So sometimes, from what you're describing, it sounds like you're picking the young leaf rather than the whole leaf, then you are getting more polyphenols than that because it's having to grow faster. It needs more defenses. 

So sometimes just selecting the very best quality leaves will also help you there. So some of it is the quality element.

Jonathan Wolf: So growing it partly in the dark somehow affects this?

Tim Spector: Yeah. Well, maybe they have a tougher life. So, again, we come back to this idea that if they're struggling to survive, then they're producing the best chemicals that make us healthy. 

Jonathan Wolf: I always love this. It makes me think about us as human beings today, that we live in this environment where for the first time in our history we're surrounded by food all the time, right?

Our ancestors, obviously, were constantly worrying about starvation. So, at least in the West, we're surrounded by food all the time. And yet, weirdly, we're sort of the least healthy we've ever been. 

It makes me think of your tea leaves here, Koj, that you're sort of causing them to suffer with the shade and all the rest of it.

And then, Tim, you're telling me that actually it gives us the best polyphenols. There's something about how somehow we're not evolved to live in too good an environment. 

Tim Spector: No. That's right. We all need a bit of stress in our lives; just gotta titrate it. 

Jonathan Wolf: That's what I bring you, Tim.

Tim Spector: That's why I'm here. Bring us both stress. 

Jonathan Wolf: And I know that in your recent paper, you were talking about this quite significant impact that coffee was having on the gut microbiome. This might be one of the ways in which it affects our health. 

Do we know anything about matcha its effects beyond the sort of the stimulant that we've been talking about?

Tim Spector: I couldn't find anything in detail on matcha. There's a little bit on green tea, but I'd love to do some studies.  

The problem is that matcha hasn't really been used much in the West, so there aren't the big epidemiological studies, so we have to sort of extrapolate a lot of it from just green tea studies. So we are guessing a lot of the work here; it's all quite new. 

There are a few little studies showing it does have definite benefits. We've talked a bit about its anti-caffeine effect, so the idea of the L-threonine means that you're getting a decent night's sleep, and sleep quality seems to be improved.

Some evidence it can reduce stress, as you were suggesting it does for you, in someplacebo-controlledd studies. So, cortisol levels dropping. So some anti-stress effect I think is really interesting. 

Some studies of elderly Japanese, quite a big study, did show cognitive improvements, particularly in the women who were taking not huge amounts, just I think three grams a day, so that over a 12 week period.

So I think everything is suggesting that it's working this way. Metabolic effects. It doesn't make you lose weight. They've done some studies on that. It's not a cure for everything, but it's all pointing towards help. 

It's been touted as an anti-cancer drug. I couldn't find any really good evidence yet that it does that, but there's reasons to theoretically suggest it would do if people were followed up and then we did bigger studies.

So, yeah, I like the look of matcha. It's got all the things that we want to see in healthy food. It's made in this artisan way that's really got no real processing in it, and it's got all these nutrients of the plants in a really concentrated form. So,  yeah, I think we're going to see more and more of it.

Jonathan Wolf: So, Tim, what's your final assessment? Is coffee healthier than matcha? 

Tim Spector: Probably we have more evidence that it's, it's healthier at the moment, but. I think matcha is great. For anyone who doesn't like coffee, then that's obviously the go-to drink. 

I would urge people who do drink coffee to maybe switch to also having matcha, particularly in the afternoons, et cetera, and start to build up that habit. Because the two together look pretty unbeatable. 

Jonathan Wolf: Tim, I mean, I've done a lot of podcasts with you and Koj, he's very rarely that positive about something. So that's actually really interesting. Because if I play it back, I think you're saying there's not a lot of scientific evidence yet on this in terms of real studies. 

Tim Spector: Short-term studies, but not long-term studies.

Jonathan Wolf: Got it. So compared to what you often like to talk about, it seems like there's still quite limited evidence, but the underlying properties of it you really like because they tie to things that you know have really good benefits. 

Tim Spector: Well, that's right, because green tea has been studied, and this is just a form of green tea.

So, if we accept that it's a concentrated, high-dose form of green tea, then there's every reason to be optimistic about its health benefits. I think that's what I'm seeing.

In the last five years, there've been a number of these studies on sleep and mood and cognitive performance that have been very encouraging. So yeah, I'm much more positive about it than I would've been, say, four or five years ago. 

Jonathan Wolf: And my other takeaway, I think, is you probably wouldn't give up coffee for it, given the current data about the health benefits, but perhaps reducing coffee, combining the two, you might be saying is a good outcome.

Tim Spector: Yes. You know, my tea time, my British tea time drink, this could be it. And I might start having my own little tea ceremony. Particularly if it's giving me this calming effect when you're feeling a bit uptight.

So I think we can use both of these potential health foods.

Jonathan Wolf: So I'd love to talk about the reality of drinking matcha in the West now because I have to admit, I was quite cynical going into this podcast. When I think about matcha, I think about somebody ordering an iced matcha latte from Starbucks. And I look at this thing, and I find it very hard to believe that it is a health drink. 

When I think about matcha, should I think about something like that? Iced matcha latte? 

Chef Koj: I think it's a shame that you do, but I'm glad that you do because it means that we're sitting and having a conversation. 

I think of matcha the same way that when I first went to Italy and I'd already developed, acquired a taste for coffee, and I saw the way they drink coffee. Very, very small shots. And that's how matcha is for me. 

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So it doesn't take me very long to make it, and it doesn't take me very long to drink it either. You know, I saw these Italians come into the bar, and they, you know, they don't even sit down. They stand and drink it and go. 

That's pretty much what it's like for me, I make it in a couple of minutes. I drink it in a minute. It's a five-minute ritual.  As I said, it's sort of because fewer people drink it. I don't see it as a social thing, but I'd love for it to be that. 

Jonathan Wolf: And Tim, how should I rush out and have an ice matcha latte? 

Tim Spector: I wouldn't because, generally, they're absolutely packed with sugar and have hardly any matcha in it.

Those large versions you get at Starbucks probably have six or seven spoons of sugar in them. So that, to me, would outweigh any benefits of the poor old matcha. And you can tell, you know, because you've hardly got any fiber in that, which means there's very little matcha in those drinks.

So be wary of, you know, suddenly everything having a matcha halo, which I think it will do. And you know, I mean a matcha Kit Kat is still a Kit Kat. It's just green. And we don't know about the quality of the product that goes into them. There's no stamp of approval in the same way when you've got the pure product; you can actually tell.

So I think we ought to be a bit nervous about embracing all ultra-processed matchas. 

Jonathan Wolf: The team actually did take a look into this just before because I was sort of curious, and apparently, the ice matcha latte from Starbucks, according to its own website, has 33 grams of sugar in it, so six and a half teaspoons in that one drink.

Now that's quite a lot of sugar, isn't it, Tim? 

Tim Spector: That is a hell of a lot of sugar. Yeah. Which,  again, that matcha isn't going to be worth that much of amount of sugar. So it's all a trade-off. 

Jonathan Wolf: So, I'd love to talk about how you would drink matcha if you want to do it properly. So I'm assuming that Starbucks is not the way that those Buddhist monks 900 years ago were drinking their matcha.

Chef Koj: No, I mean, I'd love to show you how I do it, and that's very purely matcha and water, nothing else. And if you acquire the taste for that, then you can, you know, experiment putting it into other things. I put it into avocado this morning, for example.

Jonathan Wolf: An avocado. This is fantastic. I have to admit, this is the bit I've been most excited about.

Our producers have been sent away to boil the water in advance. I'm hoping that's going to have happened and they're going to come and help, and we are going to get our own matcha tasting from a world expert. So thank you, Koj. 

Alright, well, Koj, you've just gone and delved into your magic box of secrets and brought a whole bunch of stuff up onto the table. Can you tell us what's in front of us? 

Chef Koj: Well, this is the matcha. This is ceremonial grade. Ceremonial grade is the best. This box is 30 grams. I personally do about a gram per serving. It's about 17 pounds. 

So what would that be about just north of $20. It's just over 50p per matcha shot. 

Jonathan Wolf: So that's about 70 cents. 

Chef Koj: So you know about a 10th of the price of your Starbucks matcha latte? Probably much higher quality. We have to make it ourselves. We have to do the washing up ourselves. 

Jonathan Wolf: Ceremonial grade has this wonderful ring. Is there a ceremony associated with this, or it's just clever marketing? 

Chef Koj: Yes. The ceremony developed over years, and if you go to Japan, you can see this and you can be mesmerized by the beauty and the tranquility of the process. You went to one? 

Tim Spector: Yeah, they're amazing. 

Chef Koj: Well, there's only really two other things you need, and even then, you don't really need them. This is the bamboo whisk. You can see that in cross section. It's just a bit of bamboo, but it's been cut into, I've never counted, but you know, hundreds of very delicate prongs.

Jonathan Wolf: It looks a little bit like a whisk, I think, but made of bamboo. 

Chef Koj: Yeah, it's called a chasen. Cha is tea, sen is whisk. And this is a chashaku,  a tea spoon, I suppose. 

Jonathan Wolf: Which I would describe as a very small wooden spoon. 

Tim Spector: Hockey stick. 

Chef Koj: Hockey stick. It's like a hockey stick. You can experiment how much matcha you like, but this sort of measures a small amount, and you could use just, you know, the tip of a teaspoon.

Tim Spector: When I was researching this, it seemed to be very different amounts that people use. No standard amount per portion. People like more concentrated, more dilute. 

Chef Koj: Yeah. I think even the instructions say one to two grams. So there's a 100% difference. So I just put about that much in. 

Jonathan Wolf: But people have different amounts in Japan. It's not like everyone in Japan always has one teaspoon.

Chef Koj: Well, it's very difficult to weigh this unless you're a drug dealer. So I do it by eye and maybe put a little bit more in, in fact.

Tim Spector: Is this just for three of us then? 

Chef Koj: So I would do one scoop per person. I'd rather make that last because it's expensive, but I'd rather have one or two of those a day, maybe even three,  rather than just load it all into one. 

Tim Spector: I'd rather have more and get my fiber in.

Chef Koj: Well, you could, but you get your fiber in over the day if you have three of them.

Tim Spector: Got it. 

Jonathan Wolf: I think the first thing I'd say is it's incredibly green. It's really vibrant in comparison to my normal expectation about tea or anything like that, which I would expect to be sort of dried and nothing like as strong a color.

Chef Koj: It looks healthy, doesn't it? 

It would normally be in a Japanese teacup. But for the purposes of this demonstration, I've bought a glass so you can see what we're doing. 

I mean, one of the first things we do is use the whisk just to sort of smooth out any lumps. Because you, I don’t know if you've sort of tried this thing with cocoa, it's hydrophobic, so you just want to minimize the risk of that. So, just get rid of any clumps of matcha. 

And then the next stage is basically pouring in. I would normally do about 50 mls, which is probably about the size of these cups. I brought these along. That's probably more than Italians would drink in terms of a shot of coffee, 

Jonathan Wolf: Tiny compared to my venti at Starbucks.

Chef Koj: Short, intense, potent, and then this is boiled water, but not boiling. So we've left this to cool down; it's probably about 70 degrees Celsius. Probably about one 60 fahrenheit. 

Jonathan Wolf: Really not very hot, though. So I'm used to tea, and generally, that's a hundred degrees. To me, 60 degrees seems really low. 

Chef Koj: I think the point of this is that you are going to drink this in, you know, two, three sips. So we want to drink it, and then we want to get on with our day. We don't want to have it there while we go back, and it gradually comes down in temperature.

Jonathan Wolf: So there's something very mindful about this. I've got to be there, I'm making it. I'm going to drink it right now. It's not this thing I'm then just going to carry around with me in this enormous cup for the next two hours. 

Chef Koj: No, exactly. There's a mindfulness to the making it and drinking it, but the whole process doesn't…

The other thing I think about coffee is, it's a social thing. It's a stimulant. It wakes you up. But tea is more, hopefully when you drink tea as well, it's like, right, I'll put the kettle on so instantly it’s calming. So that's part of the mindfulness process for me. 

Actually going to put the kettle on, maybe coming back and then letting it steep and then finishing it off and drinking it here, it's, it can all be done… well, I've taken a very long time over this, but it can all be done in about a minute or two. 

Okay. So all I'm going to do is pour a little bit of water in.

Jonathan Wolf: So you took quite a small amount of water there. 

Chef Koj: Just a small amount, yeah. 

I'm just going to use this whisk to make sure that all those particles are suspended. The water's green because it's suspended in the water. It's not dissolved in the water. If you make instant coffee, it's dissolved.

Jonathan Wolf: So it looks really green, but actually just tiny, tiny little bits of tea floating in this water, but they're so tiny that it looks, I have to say, it looks as though now that you've got a sort of like a green smoothie. 

Tim Spector: And it's frothing up, isn't it? 

Chef Koj: It's frothing up. So that's the other nice thing about this: if you do get into drinks through creamy and milky lattes and things like that, coffee or otherwise, that foam is going to give you the mouthfeel of creaminess but without any cream at all. Just plant and water. Simple as that. 

Tim Spector: But you've got some fats in there. So as we mentioned, the omega threes and other ones, so that does give it that extra mouthfeel.

Chef Koj: So I'm getting a little bit more in, 

Tim Spector: You've got an inch of water now. 

Chef Koj: Yes. I'm partly making this so I can pour this out and give you a taste. But there we go. I mean, that's pretty much it. Would you like to try some? 

Jonathan Wolf: I would love to try some. 

Chef Koj: Okay. Let's try not to do this.

Jonathan Wolf: Thank you. It feels like some sort of high-end soup that you've now made for me in a small little tasting cup.

Chef Koj: Sip it, two or three sips.

Jonathan Wolf: Hmm. It's not as bitter as I thought it was going to be. 

Chef Koj: That's because it's good quality. 

Jonathan Wolf: There's quite a lot of taste afterwards to start with; it doesn't taste so much like a tea. I feel like the aftertaste, after a while, tastes more like a green tea, but it tastes quite different to start with Tim.

Tim Spector: Yeah, well it's smoother, isn't it? I think it's got that creamy frothiness. 

Jonathan Wolf: There's more to it. It would be rather disappointing as a soup, but it's definitely a lot more than a tea in terms of the consistency, which I think now that I understand, it actually has all these bits of tea in it and you haven't diluted it that much because the amount of water in it is quite small. 

So I was sort of expecting you to give me a sort of mug of this. And actually, it's a very small amount of tea, so there's still quite a bit of tea, I guess, in this little drink. 

Tim Spector: I've had longer versions of it, and I quite like an Americano equivalent. I'd say you can have bigger shots. I think there's a fair bit of flexibility in how you want to drink it, aren't there, you know, longer or shorter versions of it. 

Chef Koj: I did bring some cold water as well. I mean, sometimes I just make it with cold water. And this is a sauce whisk that I have as a chef, and many people have these little whisks, but if you don't have one of these, that will do the same.

It's sort of aerating it.

Jonathan Wolf: What's it called? 

Chef Koj: A sauce whisk. 

I'm going to put a bit more in because I'm going to do this more diluted, perhaps, just to show that you don't have to have it…

It's nice to make it sort of traditional and part of the ritual, but you could just put this cold water in because, for me, the main reason for using hot water with tea is to speed up the infusion. But of course, you're not infusing here, and you're not dissolving either. You're suspending the particles. 

Now, you can see already that there are a few little clumps of green tea, i.e., the sauce whisk is not quite as effective as the traditional bamboo. 

Tim Spector: You mean the temperature of the water doesn't matter? 

Chef Koj: No. I would say that's the whisk, but you can still see a little bit of a foam there.

Jonathan Wolf: And so that's really interesting because I guess I was thinking, well, obviously it needs to be quite hot in order to dissolve it or take the flavors out. But you're saying, well, of course it doesn't really matter because actually it's just sort of floating in this.

The temperature is really just about how I like the taste of the drink. 

One of my pet frustrations when I'm traveling in any country that isn't a big tea country, whether it's France or America, is that nobody boils the water hot enough to make the tea. But with matcha, I should always be happy because it doesn't really matter what the temperature of the water is.

Alright, so it looks like you made about twice as big an amount. 

Chef Koj: This time, it's more, and you can dilute it to taste and see where it is. There is a little bit of bitterness, but if you compared lots of matchas, the lower quality will be more bitter.

The other thing about green tea compared to brown tea is obviously the leaves themselves are oxidized. But if you then do that trick where you start trying to get two cups of tea out of the same tea bag, the second extraction will be more heavy in tannins and therefore more bitter. With green tea, that's less of an issue. 

Do you want to try some cold? 

Jonathan Wolf: I would love to try some cold. Thank you. 

Tim Spector: Are you feeling more calm already, Jonathan? 

Jonathan Wolf: Oh, I'm feeling quite hyped up at this point, so no, I don't know. How long does it take to get the benefits of  L-threanine? 

Chef Koj: Over the next half an hour. Okay, so that's just cold.

Tim Spector: Yeah, it's nice, but I prefer the warm one. It's a different experience, isn't it, 

Chef Koj: For me, when it's cold like that and it's a bit more diluted, it tastes more of creaminess and airiness. 

Tim Spector: Yeah. 

Chef Koj: You know, we've changed two variables there. Temperature and the dilution, but you could imagine someone has dropped some milk in there.

Tim Spector: It is. I get that now. Yes. 

Jonathan Wolf: It's still got quite a strong flavor, I think, doesn't it? If you compare it with any tea, there's a much stronger flavor.

So you can see that it's more like coffee in that sense that it's got that sort of depth and presence to it. And even when it's cold and more diluted, I think I still feel that.

I agree that it's less bitter, but it's definitely not as bitter as I expected because it's just water, right? There's no sugar, there's no milks or any of the rest of it. 

Tim Spector: It's not like coffee. It doesn't have that coffee,  that roasted aroma because there's nothing roasted in here. So it really is just the sort of raw plant.

So it's more herbal, more grassy, the notes that I'm getting here. So it's a very different experience to coffee, except perhaps that mouth feel when you get, you know, if you had a froth-up sort of espresso or one with a head on it. That's the only similarity. 

And then the little bit of bitterness and the long follow, isn't it? So once you've drunk it, you're still getting those flavors 30 seconds later. 

Jonathan Wolf: I think that's one of the things that really distinguishes it from some mass-produced sugar-sweetened beverage, as they like to say in the States, right? You get the hit of the sugar and flavor, it disappears very fast.

Whereas this, I think like a coffee, like a really good meal, like you're still getting a lot of taste afterwards. I guess is part of why I imagine some people like matcha, and presumably some people really dislike it. It's definitely got a strong flavor to it. 

Tim Spector: Yeah, but nothing like coffee, I don't think. It doesn't have that intense bitterness. So someone like you who's not a coffee drinker, you probably… 

Jonathan Wolf: Happily drank it without complaining. 

Tim Spector: Yes, exactly. 

Jonathan Wolf: I feel like a lot of people are drinking matcha, not just with water, but in a way rather like a replacement for coffee. Do you think this is a disgusting habit? How do you think about that? 

Chef Koj: No, I think it's a real shame if it's loaded with sugar, but one of the ways I like to drink it is just with some warm coconut milk.

It's something we haven't really touched on yet, but when you taste it, it actually has umami. It's got that sort of soothing savoriness. And when you then layer that up with something else that's got umami, so like nut milks or I did it with avocados this morning, you get this double whammy of umami and that's very satisfying. 

Tim Spector: How would you add it to other foods? So you talked about your avocado. But someone's starting out, you know, you've got some spare powder, you want to add it to everything you can think of. What would you…

Chef Koj: Well, This is the perfect example; my daughter's 12, probably 12 is roughly where you should need to be careful a bit about caffeine and your son as well. But she has exams today. And I gave her last night lemon honey and ginger because she's on the verge of a cold. try and get her some good sleep. 

Then this morning, I know she's not going to have that taste that, but I just sprinkled one gram as I chopped up some avocados a little bit of salt,  little lemon and juice and put that on some toast. And that was her breakfast.

Tim Spector: I've seen it on eggs. Have you seen matcha eggs?

Chef Koj: Yeah, you could use it as a seasoning. One of the problems is it does clump a little bit, but if you put it in with some salts, fine salts, or even actually crystal salts, it will disperse itself within the salts. And there you could use it as a seasoning as well. 

Jonathan Wolf: Do you feel like the natural introduction to this for someone who hasn't used it before is as a drink and the food follows? Or actually is it more the other way around? 

Chef Koj: I think that I subconsciously knew about it through food first. Because there's another Japanese dish called Zuki, and that would be green tea with dashi. A dashi is a stock. 

So again, you've got that double whammy of umami. You've got the umami of the dashi stock and the umami of the tea. And then you combine those and you pour them over rice, and it's a very sort of comforting way of eating leftover rice in the next morning for breakfast or something.

I'd had that as a child. 

Jonathan Wolf: Now I think you have brought another show and tell am I right, Koj? Which is a way in fact to eat matcha rather than to just drink it. 

Do you want to tell us what you've just brought out? 

Chef Koj: Yes. Well, I was cooking the weekend, and it was Burns night. I'm half Scottish and half Japanese, so I did a Japanese cranachan.

So, basically, I made a granola that went with a matcha cream effectively. Now, this is slightly sweetened. It's got eggs, sugar, a touch of butter,  double cream, and a little bit of mascarpone. 

Jonathan Wolf: Wow. It's also pretty bright green, I would say, Tim. In comparison to my average dessert. It makes it seem sorry.

Chef Koj: You're not meant to eat the whole lot. This is just, it would be, it had lots of other things. You'd find that a bit clawing if you ate the whole lot. 

 Jonathan Wolf: Well, I was just thinking that when you've described the ingredients, it probably didn't sound like the healthiest thing I was ever going to eat, but it looks a bit like a mashed avocado, like blended avocado.

Really green. So I'm thinking, Tim, it must be really good for me, and I clearly allowed more than one spoonful. What do you think? 

Tim Spector: I think you're allowed at least two spoonfuls.

Chef Koj: But again, you should get this double whammy of the umami that's in the milk products with the umami of the matcha.

Tim Spector: Surprising taste, isn't it? I wasn't expecting that. 

Jonathan Wolf: It's pretty good, isn't it? 

Tim Spector: Yeah, it's good. It's very rich

Jonathan Wolf: But I'm definitely inviting Koj round to cook my dinner.

Tim Spector: So you've got the sweetness, but it's got much more depth. That's a lovely flavor.

Jonathan Wolf: It feels like you can feel a lot of the fat in it gives it the sort of smoothness if I compare it with what we were just having with the matcha, but you can still get some of the taste of the matcha coming through it.

Tim Spector:  Is it easy to blend in with yogurts and creams and cream, cheeses and eggs or not?

Chef Koj: It's quite difficult. What I tend to do is if I'm using sugar, I put it in with the sugar because that sugar will naturally disperse it. 

Tim Spector: Right. So, like you're adding it with salt. So you're putting it with something else first. 

Chef Koj: Yes, exactly. Mix it. Or if I'm not using sugar, I would just make a very small amount of tea and then use it. Because what you don't want to do is put too much water into your cream cheese or whatever else you're doing. 

Jonathan Wolf: Tim's very self-controlled. I've had two more spoons while he's been talking, and I've now put it a bit away because I can tell I'm going to eat the entire thing if I leave it too close. It was delicious. 

So, Koj, you've given us lots of different ways to eat matcha. If someone like me, has never tried it before and they're thinking out of this show, you know what, I'm really sold on this combination of this beautiful story of 900 years of Japanese monks eating it and Tim talking about the health benefits.

If you were trying to advise the best ways to start, what would you tell someone who's listening now? 

Chef Koj: Well, I think the avocado is a very good way, but my daughter didn't even notice it was there, and I only told her in the car on the way to the exam. 

I think if you want to taste it, try on some rice and add a little stock, and that's the best way to acquire that taste.

Same way that you'd acquire a taste for coffee, you might have it with milk first. Or the French famously teach their children to enjoy wine, they dilute it. So you are just sort of introducing it slowly. 

Tim Spector: Does it matter whether you buy a cheap one or an expensive one to start with? 

Chef Koj: I think if you're going to use it to mix with other ingredients, you can certainly buy a less expensive one.

Tim Spector: But drinking it on its own, when you start, go for the more expensive one. 

Chef Koj: I think so. Because it's got less of the bitterness and a bit more sweetness. 

Jonathan Wolf: Let's say I was like, you know what? I really want to try it as a drink because I see it advertised in all these different coffee shops. Would you have any guide?

I have already heard both of you told me not to go to have the Starbucks venti, but is there a way that might maximize my chances of having something that you would approve of? Both, I guess, in terms of the quality of the matcha and also the experience. Is this maybe a very easy entry point?

Chef Koj: Yeah, just some warm milk. Just again, because it's a powder, add the milk very slowly at the beginning, even maybe a bit of cold milk to make it into a paste so you don't have any of the clumps of powder left. And then top it up with warm milk.  

Again, you'll get the soothingness, the umami of the milk. And actually, you know, when you taste good milk, it is sweet. You don't need the extra sugar. 

Tim Spector: Yeah, so I think it's reasonable to start with, but I think there is some evidence that having milk in your teas does interact with the good polyphenols, so they may not be absorbed as well. 

So use that as a starting point, then try and wean yourself off the milk and go hardcore like we've done today. I actually prefer it neat rather than with milk. But the most important thing is to enjoy it. 

Jonathan Wolf: Well, I'm going to try and do a quick summary. 

So I guess I’ll start with this amazing idea that there were these Buddhist monks 900 years ago who figured out that the secret to enlightenment was growing their tea in the dark, picking just the right bits, smashing it up into millions of pieces, and then drinking it. I always wonder about how anyone ever figures any of this stuff out. 

But then, amazingly, modern science says, basically, they cracked it. And that's because it not only has this caffeine, it has this other thing, L-threonine, which apparently sort of balances this out. Tim, I think you're saying it sort of improves your sleep quality and so sort of reduces some of those rough edges that come with the caffeine. 

So there's something real here. It's a drink that's been drunk for a very long time, so it's not just a sort of made-up thing in the last few years where they claim it comes from the East. It's actually real. 

There is less caffeine in it than coffee. So it is a way to sort of reduce that if you feel like you are on a bit of a caffeine rollercoaster with coffee, which I've definitely been in the past, but there's more caffeine than black tea or green tea. 

Part of the reason for this is actually it's completely different from a tea. In a tea you're sort of steeping this leaf, which might have been fermented in boiling water, and it's getting some extracts. 

Here you're actually getting the whole leaf, and that one of the reasons I think, Tim, that you were so positive about it, is that therefore you're actually getting a lot more plant because you're eating this whole thing and the plant has got all of these polyphenols. 

It's got a lot of fiber in it. I think you said probably going to be more fiber than in your coffee. Certainly the way that you, you drink it, Tim. So there's a lot of health benefits that come from that because you're going to eat the whole thing. 

And an easy entry point might be to just swap out the way you're having your coffee today. A lot of people will be having coffee with milk or some sort of milk alternative. And Tim, you're saying that's a good entry point, but actually, the milk is potentially blocking quite a lot of the health benefits. So you really want to end up being able to drink it the way Koj that you introduced us to today.

I think I'm pretty sold. I have to admit the cold one, I don't think I'm going to start drinking cold matcha. It didn't feel, it didn't give me that pleasure. I think of the warm drink. The warm matcha is really nice. 

I love the fact that you had this little ceremony of making it, and I think, like a lot of people listening, I feel like I spend my life at 110 miles an hour and never stop. And actually, even just making a cup of tea is often something I think I like for just a few minutes of stopping. 

So the idea that you have to sort of brush with a brush for a couple of minutes, that is something very lovely about it. I think I'd be totally up for trying that.

And in terms of the food, someone else is going to have to make it, Koj. So, if you are willing to come round and make me that amazing dessert, I'm all sold. 

Thank you so much, Koj, for coming in and showing us how to do this. We'll make sure we put some links on the website for anybody who's interested to understand a bit more about that process.

Tim, thank you for taking us through the amazing science here. 

Tim Spector: This was a real pleasure.

Jonathan Wolf: Thank you both. 

Chef Koj: Thank you.

Jonathan Wolf: If you enjoyed this chat with Koj and Tim learning all about matcha, you won't want to miss this episode with Tim and YouTube's number one coffee expert, James Hoffman. He showed us how to brew the perfect cup of coffee and answered the burning question: Which type of coffee is the healthiest?

Thanks so much for watching.