Coffee a health drink, says study

The idea of coffee as a health drink has received a boost from a new study.

Not only does it clear the mind and perk up the energy, coffee also provides more antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to the study released this week.

Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.

The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage. "The point is people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think," Professor Vinson said.

Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many fruits and vegetables.

Professor Vinson warned, however, that the study did not prove that coffee was good for you because high levels of antioxidants in food did not necessarily translate into higher levels absorbed by the body.

Professor Vinson's team analysed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used US Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person's diet.

The study - funded by the American Cocoa Research Institute - concluded that the average adult consumes 1299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294mg. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76mg; dry beans, 72mg; and corn, 48mg.

According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.

That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruits and vegetables. "Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fibre," Professor Vinson said. Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said. The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group.

The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the polyphenols.

"We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways," including affecting enzymes and genes, Professor Vinson said.

In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

- Independent