A sugary coffee drink may be a bit of a health contradiction.
Drinking coffee may offer some biological defenses against a high fructose diet, according to a new review, but the evidence comes with several key caveats.
The review, published Aug. 11 in the open-access MDPI journal Diseases, examined whether coffee, caffeine and coffee polyphenols may help blunt some of the harmful effects associated with high fructose intake. Fructose is a type of sugar, often found in sugar-sweetened beverages, which has been linked to obesity, insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, cardiovascular risk and changes in gut bacteria.
While potentially good news for coffee drinkers, the review’s authors note that most of the evidence comes from animal studies and coffee should not be treated as an antidote to high fructose intake.
The paper was written by researchers affiliated with Mexico’s Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social and Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez.
“In recent years, coffee and its bioactive compounds, including caffeine, chlorogenic acid (CGA), and caffeic acid, have received increasing attention due to their potential contribution to the health benefits associated with coffee intake,” the study states. “In this context, coffee consumption may represent a potential protective dietary factor against metabolic alterations promoted by Western dietary patterns, particularly those associated with high fructose intake.”
The strongest caution is that very little of the existing academic literature involves people drinking coffee under controlled high-fructose conditions, with most of the favorable findings coming from animal studies. The review identified only one human study directly testing the interaction.
In the human trial, healthy young men drank 4 cups of coffee per day for 14 days, with high fructose intake added during the final six days. The fructose increased fat inside liver cells and caused the liver to produce more glucose. Coffee attenuated the increase in glucose production, suggesting improved liver insulin sensitivity, but none of the coffee preparations prevented the buildup of liver fat.
Animal studies produced more consistently favorable results, according to the review. The authors noted that several of the studies might help identify possible biological pathways for coffee’s protective effects, but they do not prove that brewed coffee produces those effects in humans.
The review reinforces the idea that coffee’s health associations often depend on context, including additives, brewing method and broader diet. DCN has recently covered studies linking coffee consumption to gut bacteria, gut-related blood sugar pathways and gut-brain effects. Another recent piece of research suggested coffee may reduce type 2 diabetes risk while added sugar or artificial sweeteners may weaken those associations. The health-related divide between sweetened and unsweetened coffee also appeared in a recent study on cardiovascular health.
The new study reported no external funding and the authors declared no conflicts of interest.
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