Health benefits from drinking coffee?

Health benefits from drinking coffee?

Would your opinion about coffee change if you knew it actually contained health enhancing compounds along with the caffeine? Read on to find out more.

Coffee is a very popular beverage that is consumed regularly by large numbers of people, mainly for its taste and “buzz”. What is less well known is that coffee contains several bioactive compounds known to possess useful antioxidant properties (e.g., phenols) and can be a significant source of these compounds in the diet.

Food researchers from the Agriculture and Life Sciences Division at Lincoln University investigated the total phenol content and antioxidant activities of six commercial coffee drinks (espresso, long black, filtered, flat white, latté and cappuccino) bought from four major retail outlets.

Project Leader, Dr Alaa El-Din Bekhit, said that over the years there has been considerable research carried out into the individual flavour compounds found in coffee beans but little about the bioactive and health promoting compounds when they are made into coffee drinks.

“If we want to know the antioxidant status of a food and its contribution to the diet, it is important to study it in the form that it is most commonly consumed, that is, as a drink”

“Our research showed that coffee is a good source of antioxidants in the diet. However, we also discovered that there was considerable variation in the results depending on the type of coffee and also when and where it was purchased. This variation would affect how much coffee contributed to people’s daily antioxidant intake.

“Another very interesting and unexpected result from our research was the discovery that the antioxidant activity was higher in white coffee than in black,” said Dr Bekhit.
“We have no real idea about the mechanism behind this change in antioxidant affinity, but it will be interesting to see if we can find out why this happens.”

Other researchers have already shown that coffee beans have relatively high levels of antioxidant properties compared with other popular antioxidant containing beverages such as tea, cocoa, wine and juice.

“Despite this good news about health benefits from drinking coffee, it is still important not to drink too much of it as there can still be negative effects when people regularly drink large amounts of coffee,” said Dr Bekhit.

“Moderation in coffee drinking is best.”

This research project, supervised by De Bekhit, was undertaken by a visiting Chinese scientist, Kunbo Wang, who was one of a group who came to Lincoln University to improve their English and work with Lincoln University’s scientists.

ENDS

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