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TOPIC:
"Coffee and Antioxidants"
For quite some time coffee has been getting a bad rap as not being the healthiest choice of beverage, while green tea basks in the light of healthy acceptance because of it’s known antioxidant benefits.
Many of you may feel guilty drinking your cup of coffee and if anyone should ask you what’s good about it, besides the taste, you may be hard pressed to think of anything.
For all of you that have been forcing down that cup of green tea “because it’s good for you”, but your taste buds really long for a superior cup of coffee, head on over to your
favorite coffee shop because the truth about antioxidants and coffee is about to be released.
The good news for coffee drinkers is that antioxidants are found in coffee! Lots of them! And they’re also found in the coffee aroma after brewing!
We all know that antioxidants help support the immune system and may lower your risk for both cancer and heart disease, but I bet you didn’t know that consuming coffee up until 20 minutes after brewing will deliver 300 antioxidant phytochemicals which will stay in your body for up to one month.
The Alliance for Aging Research, a non-profit senior citizens group in Washington DC, announced that "a diet rich in antioxidants is effective in guarding against heart disease, cancer, cataracts, and other conditions associated with aging."
The two most well known antioxidants are vitamin C and vitamin E. Thousands of reports have been published all around the world about their importance to health. Vitamin C is water-soluble and is important in protecting the "aqueous" parts of your cells and tissues, while vitamin E is oil-soluble and protects the "lipid" portions, especially cellular membranes.
During the coffee brewing process, the antioxidants released are just as potent as vitamins C and E. A University of California research scientist found that the antioxidant level in a cup of coffee is the same as in three oranges.
How do antioxidants work?
A small number of the oxygen molecules you breathe are converted within your body to unstable free radicals. This is called oxidation. Free radical-caused oxidation causes premature aging, degenerative disease, cancer and heart disease. Your body needs to be able to repair this oxidative damage that occurs. The key is to protect your body's tissue cells from the free radicals before they cause mutations. This is where antioxidants come to the rescue, because they significantly delay, inhibit, or prevent oxidation.
More scientific proof in favor of antioxidants in coffee.
In tests completed at Science News, scientists brewed a strong cup of coffee or tea, or they mixed cocoa powder into hot water to make hot chocolate. Then, they collected blood from healthy volunteers and filtered out the plasma containing lipoproteins (LDL) particles. “In each run, a sample of these LDLs was incubated with a small quantity of the beverage. Then, a known oxidant was added to the mix. Compared to LDLs treated with the oxidant alone, those mixed with a beverage experienced less oxidation.”
Coffee protected the LDLs for 5.0 to 16.0 hours. By contrast, cocoa protected the lipoproteins for 3.5 to 7.5 hours, green tea for 3.0 to 5.5 hours, black tea for 1.0 to 4.5 hours, and herbal tea for 6 minutes to perhaps an hour.
The more concentrated the coffee brew or cocoa, the better protection it afforded. “Concerned that milk might bind to the antioxidant compounds in one or more of these beverages, Richelle’s group investigated whether adding dairy would compromise a drink’s antioxidant potency. The scientists mixed in enough milk to equal 10 percent of the volume for the brews and a full 66 percent of the volume for cocoa. To their surprise, they found no change in any of the drinks’ LDL protection.” Caffeine-free coffee also offered the same LDL protection in these test-tube studies.
Not only is coffee tasty, energizing and above all good for you, it also has another very important attribute – especially for you exercisers out there.
Did you know that according to a recent University of Georgia study published in the Journal of Pain, that coffee blocks a key biochemical called adenosine, which is produced in large quantities during strenuous exercise, which in turn greatly reduces pain and muscle soreness? Indulging in a good cup of java and reducing your risk of colon cancer and gallstones, plus infusing your cells with as many disease-fighting antioxidants as 3 fresh oranges sounds like a very beneficial reward after all that sweating.
It’s high time that your sinfully good cup of coffee moved into the limelight to take its rightful share of the healthful antioxidant, pain and muscle soreness benefits, so the next time someone tries to put you off your coffee and sell you on the antioxidants benefits of drinking that green tea, point them in the direction of this newsletter and tell them, “thanks, but my coffee’s got me covered!”
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