Coffee: Just as Healthy as Vegetables

Having multiple cups of coffee is just as good – maybe better – than having several servings of vegetables.

Its benefits are diverse, but as is the case with most healthful things, there are conditions attached. Let’s look at some of those benefits first before we start looking at any possible negative attributes (and how to remedy them).

What Are The Health Benefits Of Coffee?

Coffee has sometimes gotten a bad rap for its caffeine content, but most of caffeine’s ill effects are either transient or mitigated by coffee’s overall health benefits. Caffeine does appear to raise blood pressure in some people, but habitual users develop a tolerance to that side effect. It can of course also contribute to insomnia, but that too may fade with habitual use.

Paying attention to caffeine’s half-life of 2.5 to 4.5 hours, depending on the individual, might also help with the insomnia problem. In other words, switch to decaf 5 to 10 hours before bedtime if it keeps you up.

High caffeine intake can also stimulate urine production slightly, but no detrimental effects on hydration status have been found with long-term, moderate (400 mg. a day) intake. That dry mouth you feel after drinking coffee? It’s because of the tannins in the coffee, not because caffeine is a potent diuretic that’ll cause you to dehydrate, convert to dust, and blow away like Melisandre in GOT.

Some people also mutter about caffeine negatively affecting insulin sensitivity, but that’s only in the short term. Consumption of up to 4 to 5 cups per day for 6 months has failed to affect insulin sensitivity (Alperet, et al, 2020).

Caffeine has also been credited with some of coffee’s beneficial effects. It’s true that caffeine can improve lung function in adults, possibly reduce the risk of liver fibrosis or cirrhosis, lower the risk of Parkinson’s, improve thermogenesis (which leads to burning of fat) and, of course, improve mental and physical performance.

More importantly, both animal and human studies show that the coffee is only a weak antioxidant and the concentrations of coffee constituents reached in plasma are too low for efficient free radical scavenging.

The same goes for its alleged anti-inflammatory effects. Randomized, controlled studies that compared water intake to coffee intake over several weeks found small and inconsistent variations in inflammatory markers in coffee drinkers

The most important take-home points:

1. Coffee should be viewed as a healthy vegetable food.
2. Anywhere from 1 to 5 cups a day has been shown to reduce all-cause mortality, but 2-3 cups a day seems to be the sweet spot.
3. When possible, use paper filters to brew your coffee so that you trap potentially harmful diterpines and maybe even acrylamides.
4. Pick darker roasts as increased roasting helps incinerate some of the acrylamides.
5. Take the brand-new K-Cup machine you received as a wedding gift and drop-kick it into a trash can.

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