The scientific community continues to deliver fresh findings on coffee’s associations with specific health outcomes, from deep in our bones to our most impulsive behaviors.
Yet a recent analysis underscores how coffee’s complex chemical composition represents something of a team effort for health, for better or worse.
Published late last year in Frontiers in Nutrition, the study from a team of researchers at Henan University in China and Rutgers University doesn’t present new clinical trial data, but instead synthesizes epidemiological findings and lab research to explain how coffee’s most-studied compounds might plausibly nudge biological systems linked to chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disorders and kidney disease.
The study focuses on four main components of long-term health — all of which come up repeatedly in past studies on coffee. They include how the body handles sugar and fat (metabolic regulation), how the brain responds to stress or inflammation (neuroprotection), how cells deal with “wear and tear” from reactive molecules (oxidative stress) and how strongly the immune system stays switched on (inflammation).
Among the mix of chemical compounds in coffee, the researchers identified caffeine, trigonelline, chlorogenic acids (CGAs), cafestol, kahweol and melanoidins as “constituting the core functional components.”
Paradoxical Examples Abound
From a practical industry perspective, one of the paper’s most relevant discussions may be the one on diterpenes, especially cafestol and kahweol, chemicals that exist largely within coffee oils.
According to the review, paper filters remove more than 85% of these diterpenoids, with the paper citing about 6-12 milligrams per cup of cafestol and kahweol (combined) in unfiltered brews such as French press and Turkish coffee.
The coffee-health equation on diterpenoids gets more complicated as cafestol and kahweol are described as “paradoxical.” They have been linked to higher LDL (“bad”) cholesterol in some contexts, yet they are also discussed for potential anti-inflammatory, liver-protective and anti-carcinogenic activity in other models.
The review also highlights melanoidins, large molecules formed during roasting via the Maillard reaction. In everyday terms, they are part of what makes coffee look and taste “roasty,” and they may also promote antioxidant activity.
At the same time, the authors note a common health-science caveat for roasted foods: The same browning that creates desirable flavors can also create unwanted byproducts, including acrylamide.
Toward a Holistic Understanding
The authors wrote that they are attempting to provide an “integrated perspective” of how these and other compounds may be associated with human health, in order to advance a “more holistic understanding of coffee as a functional food.”
In doing so, the researchers identified numerous existing research gaps — chief among them being that research often isolates one compound at a time. Meanwhile, humans drink the whole cup of compounds.
The study was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China. The authors said the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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