Green Tea With Milk: What the Studies Show, and a Latte Worth Making

By Kiyomi Koike, Founder and ITMA Certified Tea Master · First published August 2024 · Updated November 2026

Can you put milk in green tea? Yes, and most of what the leaf gives you still reaches you. The worry you may have read, that the proteins in milk bind to green tea's catechins and cancel out the benefits, rests on a real mechanism and an overstated conclusion. Three studies have asked the question in people, and together they say this: milk did not change how much catechin reached the blood from black tea; adding milk to black tea did erase one measured effect on the arteries; and with green tea, milk lowered the EGCG that reached the blood by about a third while most of the total catechins still got through. So a green tea latte is not a wasted cup. It is a cup with somewhat less EGCG, and I treat it that way: one plain bowl with water in the day, and the latte for pleasure. The studies, the figures and my latte recipe are below. I sell tea, so read all of this knowing that.

What the studies found

Laboratory studies describe milk proteins as carriers that wrap around catechins, and the results in test tubes run both ways. I only lean on the studies done in people, and there are three.

• Milk did not change catechin absorption from black tea (1998). Twelve healthy adults, seven women and five men, drank green tea, black tea, and black tea with 100 ml of semi-skimmed milk in 600 ml, each made from 3 g of tea solids, a week apart. The catechins reaching their blood were essentially the same with and without milk. The authors' conclusion was that "milk does not impair the bioavailability of tea catechins" (van het Hof et al., European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1998). A study of 12 people, run at a food company's research laboratory.
• Milk erased one measured effect of black tea (2007). Sixteen healthy postmenopausal women drank 500 ml of black tea, the same tea with 10% skimmed milk, or hot water. Two hours later, an ultrasound measured how well the artery in the forearm widened with blood flow. Black tea improved it compared with water; with milk, the improvement was gone. In the laboratory part of the same study the caseins in milk accounted for the blocking, probably by forming complexes with the tea's catechins. "Milk counteracts the favourable health effects of tea on vascular function," the authors wrote (Lorenz et al., European Heart Journal, 2007). Sixteen women, one dose, black tea: a small study that measured an effect, not the catechins themselves.
• Milk lowered EGCG absorption from green tea by about a third (2013). Twenty-four healthy women drank a 1.75 g green tea extract on its own, with skimmed milk, with caseinate, or with soy protein, in random order a week apart, with blood sampled for four and a half hours. Measured against the plain extract, EGCG came through at about 68% with milk, 63% with caseinate and 76% with soy protein; total catechins at about 87%, 79% and 88%. The two catechins that carry no gallate group, EGC and EC, were absorbed slightly better with protein, not worse. The authors found that dietary proteins taken at the same time "reduce the bioavailability of galloylated catechins" (Egert et al., European Journal of Nutrition, 2013). This is the one study done with green tea, and it used an extract, not a brewed cup or a powder.

That is the whole human record as I know it. Nobody has yet measured what happens when matcha, where you swallow the leaf itself rather than an infusion, meets milk in a person.

The figures, side by side

Why milk proteins bind catechins

Catechins are the compounds that make a strong green tea feel astringent, and they feel that way for the same reason milk affects them: they bind to proteins. In the mouth they bind to the proteins in your saliva, which is the drying sensation. In a latte they bind to the caseins, the main proteins in cow's milk, and a catechin wrapped in casein is not absorbed as easily in the small intestine. The catechins with a gallate group, EGCG and ECG, are the ones that bind most tightly, which is why EGCG fell by about a third in the 2013 study while EGC and EC did not fall at all. Most of what is in the cup still arrives: in that study, about 87% of the total catechins. The 2007 study is the one to keep in mind, because it measured an effect rather than a blood level, and the effect was lost entirely. Whether the same would happen with green tea, with matcha, or with a cup that has a splash of milk rather than 10% has not been tested, and I will not pretend it has.

Which milk changes the least?

Only three proteins have been tested in people: skimmed cow's milk, caseinate on its own, and soy protein. Soy lowered EGCG the least of the three, to about 76% of the plain figure, and caseinate the most, to about 63%. Oat milk, almond milk and coconut milk have not been tested, so I cannot tell you they are better; oat milk in particular carries some protein, and any protein may bind a share of the catechins. What I can tell you is which milks make a better latte. Whole dairy milk and oat milk froth best and give the creamiest cup, almond is the lightest, and soy sits between them; the full method, hot and iced, is on our matcha latte guide, hot and iced. If you want the least interference and still want something creamy, a smaller pour of milk is the surest change, because the studies that saw an effect used a lot of it.

Does milk change the caffeine?

The three studies measured catechins, and caffeine was not the question. I know of no study showing that milk changes how much caffeine you absorb from tea, and caffeine does not bind to casein the way catechins do, so count a latte at the full figure of its serving: about 41 mg from a 1.5 g serving of our matcha, about 20 mg from a 0.75 g serving of our sencha, from our most recent batch testing; results vary by lot and by packaging. If you want a latte in the evening, our decaf matcha keeps about 6 mg a serving. The figures for every tea we make, and for brewed green tea in general, are on our caffeine page, tea by tea.

So should you put milk in green tea?

If you drink green tea for its EGCG, have at least some of it plain, with water only: the one study done with green tea found milk lowers the EGCG you absorb by about a third, and the one study that measured an effect found milk took it away. If a creamy latte is what gets you to enjoy matcha or sencha every day, make it and enjoy it. Most of the catechins still reach you, and a tea you drink every day does more for you than a perfect cup you skip. I make no claims that green tea prevents or treats a disease, detoxes anything or causes weight loss, with milk or without it; what the research does and does not show, study by study, is on the green tea research, study by study, and the way I make the plain cup is on the plain cup, made with water only. One more thing a latte does well: milk is naturally sweet, so many people find they need no sweetener at all.

A latte worth making: matcha or sencha with maple

Here is the latte I make at home, with either our Organic Matcha, Ceremonial Grade A or our Organic Sencha. Matcha gives the classic latte, round and creamy; sencha gives a brighter, grassier cup that takes maple especially well. Both are USDA Certified Organic, which matters more in a latte you make every day than in an occasional cup; the reasons are on why organic comes first for a daily latte. Use one 1.5 g stick of matcha, or one 0.75 g stick of sencha (two if you like it greener), whisked smooth in 2 oz of warm water, never boiling, before the milk goes in. Taste it before you sweeten. If you want something, a teaspoon of real maple syrup is enough; its woody sweetness suits green tea, and the other options, from honey to stevia, are compared on the best sweeteners for green tea. For an iced latte, pour the same concentrate over ice and cold milk. The recipe card with the measurements is at the foot of the page.

Milk and green tea FAQ