The Coffee Cup

With Ink Spots sang “I love the java jive and it loves me” in 1940, they could not have known how right they were.
Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthy antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.

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

“The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think,” Vinson said in a telephone interview.

Antioxidants, which are thought to contribute to the fight against cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.

Vinson said he was a graduate of tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.

His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different foods, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They used the then Board of Agriculture data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person’s diet.

They concluded that the average adult consuming 1299 mg of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams, beans, 72 milligrams, and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Board of Agriculture, the typical adult American drinks first 64 cups of coffee daily.

That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruits and vegetables.

“Unfortunately not, consumers are still eating enough fruits and vegetables that are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view of properties due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber,” Vinson said.

Dates, cranberries, red grapes Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said.

The antioxidants in coffee called polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant, said Vinson.

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, but more research is needed, Vinson said.

“If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread out to keep the levels of antioxidants up,” Vinson said. “We always talk about moderation in anything.”

His findings were released in connection with the Annual Convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.

In February, reported a group of Japanese researchers 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 two cups a day and increased to 3-4 cups.

Diabetes Risk Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health to drink coffee reduce the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups caffeinated coffee per day reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced the risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who do not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson’s conclusion, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.

But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson’s research group, warned that many people have faith that antioxidants reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more facts have always panned out. Most experts look beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, “she said.

I’m sure you’ve heard all this before. I would not be surprised if companies start producing coffee commercials promoting the health benefits of coffee because of the antioxidants – they probably are! In which case, how true is this? Is coffee really good for our health because of the amount of antioxidants it contains? There have been various studies on this question, but here is one made by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania. According to his study: “The average adult consumes 1299 mg of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources of bananas, 76 milligrams, beans, 72 milligrams, and corn, 48 milligrams. The Board of Agriculture, the typical adult American drinks first 64 cups of coffee a day. “What is it again – in English, please? Coffee contains a high amount of antioxidants. The question that remains is whether antioxidants is enough to make up some of the possible negative effects of coffee. Do not get me wrong – I can not survive without coffee. But I also know that too much coffee (I do not want to admit that it is something that too much coffee, really) can induce hyperacidity, among other things. Some people feel jittery. Other (of course) have difficulty falling asleep. The effects are different with different people. I’m no scientist, but at that time, if they say coffee has antioxidants and that it may be good for you, I take it as a good thing. Whether it has antioxidants, I still love this drink, right?

Boake Moore founded the Missionary coffee grounds to help impoveished children in the world. It is a nonprofit, which has spent 100% of their profits to build schools and orphanages in China, Russia, Venezuela and Africa.