A study of European populations found that countries that drank four cups a day - the British average - had a 20% lower risk of developing the illness.
Tea drinking ranged from an average of none a day in Spain to four a day in the UK.
The study found that benefits seemed to be most obvious among heavy tea drinkers - drinking a mere one to three cups a day doesn't lower the risk.
A research team led by Christian Herder from the Leibniz
Center for Diabetes Research at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, Germany,
said previous analyses showed tea consumption was associated with lower
incidence of type 2 diabetes.
