What is it good for? Part Three: Coffee

In my third and final blog post I think it’s time we take a look at one of the most popular drinks on the planet: coffee.

 

Coffee. What is it good for?

I think that it’s safe to say that a lot of us drink coffee. But is it benefiting us? Over the years, I know that I have head, all these great things about coffee. ‘It increases your metabolism, lose weight faster by drinking coffee!’ Is that true though? Throughout my research for this particular blog post, I found no link of coffee to weight lose. But there are several other health benefits linked to drinking coffee.

 

 

What benefits?

What I did find throughout my research though, was that coffee is credited with helping to prevent heart failure, Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer and that it can also help protect against type 2 diabetes. There are copious amounts of websites and web pages dedicated to praising the health benefits of coffee. If you want to see some more benefits of coffee, visit this website, or this website. In all honesty, you could simply google search ‘health benefits of coffee’ and you’ll be amazed by how fantastic coffee is.

 

Does science support this?

For this particular blog post, I plan to focus on one health benefit that coffee apparently has; the prevention of type 2 diabetes. In an article for Diabetologia, it was discussed how caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes. Previously, it is recorded that caffeinated coffee produces a 12% decrease in type 2 diabetes whilst decaffeinated produces a 11% decrease. (Palatini, 2015) However, the article goes on further to explain that it is not so much the caffeine in coffee that creates this decrease, but other components of coffee that aid in the prevention of type 2 diabetes. (Palatini, 2015) The components mentioned are chlorogenic acid and polyphenols dihydrocaffeic acid, which are remarked as protective antioxidants that have beneficial activities on glucose homeostasis. (Palatini, 2015) This article is an eye opening to me, as it demonstrates that caffeine isn’t the be all end all that I have always been led to believe, but that it is other parts of coffee that help. To read the entire article, visit this link.

 

Implications?

Coffee is robust and lovely. It wakes me up in the morning. It energies me for the day ahead. It also puts me to sleep. Go figure… However I think coffee has a really strong play within society. A vast amount of people drink coffee, whether it’s with skim milk, low fat, in the form of a latte or cappuccino… I strongly believe that the health benefits of coffee will influence people to drink more of it. My reasoning? Because it is already such a major role in people’s daily lives that they could increase their intake if it becomes well known how healthy coffee could be. But for now, I think I’ll just enjoy my skinny cappuccino with one sugar daily whether it benefits me or not.

 

 

Conclusion

So what do you think? Though it is only shown that coffee can aid type 2 diabetes prevention, what do you think? I think coffee is wonderful whether it helps me or not, much like wine and chocolate. In my opinion, coffee is popular across the entire world. Melbourne is becoming renowned for its coffee and coffee lifestyle. I believe that coffee will stay popular whether or not the health benefits are proven or not. It’s part of our society now and people thoroughly enjoy a nice cup of coffee.

 

References

Palatini, P 2015, ‘Coffee consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes’, Diabetologia, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 199-200. Available from: 10.1007/s00125-014-3425-3. 26 April 2016