What Are the Health Benefits of Yerba Mate?

The impressive health benefits of drinking yerba mate include increased energy and enhanced weight loss. Should you trade your coffee or tea for this traditional South American beverage?

By Nutrition Diva Monica Reinagel

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

Mate is a traditional South American beverage drink that is brewed from the leaves and stems of the yerba mate plant, a tree that belongs to the holly family. It’s widely consumed in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil, where the mate tree is indigenous. You’ll also find mate as an ingredient in energy drinks or in the herbal tea section of your local health food store.

Fun fact: Technically, the word tea only applies to the leaves of the Camilla Sinensis or tea plant. The beverages popularly known as herbal teas are actually tisanes.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Human beings apparently have a universal appetite for stimulants. Depending on where on the globe your ancestors found themselves, they might have enjoyed beverages made from coffee or cacao beans, guarana berries, kola nuts, or tea or yerba mate leaves. Although each contains a slightly different array of active chemicals, all contain caffeine or a closely related molecule with similar stimulant properties.

Health benefits of yerba mate

There are many impressive health benefits attributed to drinking yerba mate (or mate, for short), including

Greater energy
Mental focus
Reduced fatigue
Weight loss
Antioxidant activity
Enhanced sports performance

But before you get too excited about this new miracle brew, most of the benefits attributed to mate are available from any caffeinated beverage. There’s no question that caffeine stimulates the nervous system, resulting in great alertness and reduced fatigue. The impact of mate on weight and fat loss is likely to be relatively minor—especially compared to the impact of your food and movement choices. Similarly, expect only incremental effects on your athletic performance. It might help you go a little longer or move a little faster, but mate will not turn a weekend jogger into an Olympic runner.

Continue reading “What Are the Health Benefits of Yerba Mate?” on QuickAndDirtyTips.com

Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism

Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.

When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.

Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber

Thank you,

Jeanna Bryner, Editor in Chief, Scientific American