Green Tea With Cucumber: What Does It Add?

Cucumber and green tea make a light, cool drink, and that’s the best reason to try it. We searched PubMed and found no study of green tea with cucumber, so we can’t say the pair does more than the tea alone.

What does cucumber add to green tea?

Mostly water and a mild flavor. USDA lists raw cucumber with peel as 95.2% water, with 15 calories per 100 g. Half a cup of slices (52 g) works out like this, scaled from USDA’s figures:

Half a cup of cucumber slices	Amount
Calories	About 8
Potassium	About 76 mg
Vitamin C	About 1.5 mg
Magnesium	About 7 mg

That’s small. Slices steeping in your tea won’t hand over all of that, so treat it as a ceiling, not a dose.

Are there benefits to green tea with cucumber?

We found none shown for the pair. You’ll also see “cucumber tea benefits” online. We found no human studies of cucumber in tea, and any claim for it should be treated as unproven.

What we can say is about the tea. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) says no safety concerns have been reported for green tea as a drink in adults, but that firm conclusions can’t be reached for most uses. The small cholesterol drop it describes came mostly from studies of extract supplements, not brewed tea.

What about lemon cucumber green tea?

Lemon is the part with a little research behind it, and it’s from a lab. In a simulated-digestion study, green tea catechins mostly broke down: less than 20% of the total remained. When the tea was made with orange, grapefruit, lemon or lime juice, recovery of the main catechins was higher than with any other formulation tested.

That was a lab test with no people in it. It measured what survived the digestion, not what reached the blood, and it says nothing about cucumber. Our orange green tea page covers this research in more detail.

How to make green tea with cucumber

This makes one tall glass of iced tea.

1. Scrub a cucumber with a clean produce brush under running water, then dry it. The FDA recommends scrubbing firm produce like cucumbers this way, and doesn’t recommend soap or produce wash.
2. Heat 8 oz of water to 170°F to 180°F. Steep one green tea bag or 1 teaspoon of loose tea for 2 to 3 minutes, then remove it.
3. Let the tea cool, then add 4 to 6 thin cucumber slices. Add a lemon slice if you like.
4. Chill, then pour over ice. Strain out the slices if you want to keep it longer.

These are starting points, so adjust them to your taste. For another cool flavor, try green tea with mint, or browse more green tea blends.

What about bottled cucumber green tea and powders?

These are different products from tea with fresh slices. Bottled cucumber and citrus teas, such as AriZona’s, are flavored drinks, so ingredients and sugar vary by product. We couldn’t open the maker’s current label, so we don’t state its ingredients or sugar here. Our page on whether AriZona green tea is healthy covers the brand.

For any bottle or powder, read the ingredient list and the Added Sugars line. We found no research on cucumber tea powders.

Who should be careful?

• Caffeine: Mayo Clinic lists about 29 mg for 8 oz of brewed green tea. NCCIH says to keep caffeine moderate in pregnancy and to ask your provider.
• Medication: green tea at high doses can lower levels of the blood pressure drug nadolol. Ask your pharmacist if you take regular medicine.