Before we get all excited over the recent news about coffee being our new antioxidant, we need to take a look at the “entire” picture. Is there truly a coffee antioxidant? If there is, how exactly is coffee an antioxidant? Does it become the antioxidant when it’s heated? Does the coffee antioxidant benefit everyone? Are there still dangers to drinking coffee? How much coffee is good for us and when does it become bad for us?
First let’s try to break this down to something we can all understand. I mean, have you read the information about, “Green coffee antioxidant extract?”
Here’s a quote from the applied food sciences, “Chlorogenic acid has been proven in animal studies in vitro to inhibit the hydrolysis of the glucose-6-phosphate enzyme in an irreversible fashion. This mechanism allows chlorogenic acid to reduce hepatic glycogenolysis (transformation of glycogen into glucose) and to reduce the absorption of new glucose. In addition, in vivo studies on animal subjects have demonstrated that the administration of chlorogenic acid lessens the hyperglycemic peak resulting from the glycogenolysis brought a....“
Basically chlorogenic acid is an antioxidant. This is one of the components in a coffee bean. Antioxidants are said to be an inhibitor of certain types of diseases. However, they are talking about cholorogenic acid in an isolated form. So, don’t start chewing on coffee beans just yet.
When I realized how much mumbo jumbo was in that .pdf file I decided to try and find something a little less science lab nerd related and here’s a quote from the next site I discovered, “The specific antiradical activity against the hydroxyl radical of the water soluble components in green and dark roasted Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta coffee samples, both in vitro by the chemical deoxiribose assay and ex vivo in a biological cellular system (IMR32 cells), were determined. All the tested coffee solutions showed remarkable antiradical activity.”
Do these people think we all have medical and science degrees??? I mean come on Mr. Science guy, get a clue, write something with fewer ego-stroking sentences ok?
Once you get down to the very bottom of that article, you’ll find something that makes sense, “The results indicate that brewed coffee contains many antioxidants and consumption of antioxidant-rich brewed coffee may inhibit diseases caused by oxidative damages.”
I should get high kudos’ for giving that little bit of information up so freely. Now let me give you an idea of what I had to chew threw in order to get to the “bottom line”.
Coffee beans are not all a like. Not all coffee beans are of the same quality or even the same make up. Sort of like comparing tennis shoes to sandals. Both go on your feet, but they are not made up of the same components.
You can actually break coffee down into several different water-soluble components. The dietary fiber derived from roasted coffee silverskin. This is one component of the coffee bean that has high antioxidant content.
Here’s something else I found to be a bit tweaky. When they conduct these studies it’s not like they get a huge group of people together, poor them all a cup of coffee and then measure just what sort of antioxidant effects are derived from drinking it. I mean really, doesn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to figure this out?
No? Hey, did he just call me a knucklehead!
Okay, so that’s not how science works. What they do in fact is the break down the coffee beans into different components. They filter out the components that the coffee antioxidant is found in, and then they test lab rats in a variety of experiments to determine how well they survive with or without the various additives in their diet.
When they discover something really swell, like a coffee antioxidant, our culture of coffee drinking addicts suddenly becomes a feverorish mob. For years and years we’ve heard bad things about coffee of which most of us ignored, things like, “It’s bad for your heart, increases blood pressure, may cause breast cancer, probably keeps you awake at night, and my personal favorite, has a poisonous gas when brewed.” So, when the world of coffee addicts even gets a tiny hint that coffee could have something beneficial, believe me they don’t just drink more coffee, they try to get everyone to join them.
Suddenly everyone’s an expert. Webmasters quickly write articles about how coffee cures cancer and helps to eliminate world hunger – ok, well maybe they didn’t say that, but believe me, some of the stuff I’ve read online will make you percolate too.
by Chrisi Darrington