Its probably NOT what the antismoking lobbyists wanted to hear, but it seems that drinking green tea may significantly reduce a smoker’s chances of contracting cancer, according to a recent Taiwanese study.

Lin Yi-hsin, a student from the Graduate School of Public Hygiene at Taiwan’s Chung Shan Medical University, recruited 500 people, including 170 lung cancer patients, for her study.

"I analysed their lifestyles and habits of smoking, eating and drinking tea," she told a news conference at her university in Taichung, central Taiwan.

The study discovered non-green tea drinkers are five times more likely to develop lung cancer than those who do. Smokers that do not drink green tea are 13 times more likely to contract lung cancer compared with people who drink at least one cup of green tea each day.

"This is because tea polyphenols are an antioxidant which can inhibit the formation of lung cancer cells," she said.

"This study has shown that drinking green tea can check the growth of insulin-like growth factor, which is a hormone that stimulates the growth of cancerous cells," according to Professor Wong Jui-hung, who supervised Lin’s research. "Lung cancer is common in Taiwan but rare in Japan because the Japanese like to drink green tea."