The theme for this year's International Tea Day, held on May 21, was "Tea for Better Lives". Tea, incidentally, is not just the most popular non-alcoholic beverage in the world but is also often described as a beverage of well-being. The medicinal properties of tea have been acknowledged from time immemorial. While the Tea Research Association, Tea Board of India, Indian Tea Association and the United Nations have been unanimous over underlining the medicinal and health values of tea, a resolution of the UN General Assembly held on December 19, 2019, declaring May 21 every year as International Tea Day, had also placed on record that "drinking tea can bring many health benefits, from anti-inflammatory to antioxidant to weight loss." There is a large body of scientific evidence which indicates the benefits of tea drinking for its wide range of medicinal properties. Based on such scientific evidence, it has been said that tea, among other things, prevents coronary heart disease, hypertension, blood sugar and tooth decay. Moreover, tea has also been reported to have antiviral and germicidal properties. A Tea Research Association report in the meantime has said that the most important medicinal value of tea is that it is anti-carcinogenic and anti-mutagenic. The anti-carcinogenic activity contributed by the antioxidant polyphenols in tea has been shown to be very low in concentration even in consumer dosages. In view of this, it has been pointed out that tea offers tremendous scope for emerging as a practical chemi-preventive included in a healthy diet for the protection of the consumers by lowering the risk of different types of cancer. There are about 1000 scientific publications which have documented the cancer-preventive ability of tea. It was in 1988 that a study for the first time documented the cancer-preventive effect of tea. Since then, studies corroborated by several laboratories across the globe have also suggested that catechins and theaflavins found in tea may help reduce the risk of various types of cancers in humans.