Good news for coffee lovers
The good health news for coffee drinkers is that it contains soluble fibre, the type that can help lower cholesterol. With about 1 gram per cup, coffee’s fibre impact is modest.
But the report is the latest in a growing stream of positive news about coffee, according to writer, Joyce Hendley, from EatingWell.com, reproduced in AARP magazine, one of the largest seniors’ organisations.
She writes, “Some of the most promising findings come from studies of diabetes. When Harvard researchers combined data from nine studies involving more than 193,000 people, they found that regular coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who abstained. The more they drank, the lower their risk.”
More good news: a study in February’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that healthy people 65 and over who drank four or more cups of caffeinated beverages daily (primarily coffee) had a 53% lower risk of heart disease than non-coffee-drinkers.
How coffee might work isn’t clear; the studies weren’t designed to identify cause-and-effect relationships. Antioxidants, such as chlorogenic acid (related to polyphenols in grapes), are likely players as coffee has more of them per serving than blueberries do, making it the top source of antioxidants in our diets.
Antioxidants help quell inflammation, which might explain coffee’s effect in inflammation-related diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Magnesium in coffee might help make cells more sensitive to insulin.
And caffeine seems to have its own beneficial effects; the diabetes studies found that those who drank regular coffee had lower risks of the disease than decaf drinkers.
Caffeinated-coffee drinking has also been linked with reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease, gallstones, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Bottom Line: For healthy adults, having two or three cups of coffee daily generally isn’t harmful and it may have health perks.
