Coffee lovers may raise both cups and their eyebrows at the latest piece of news. As it appears, according to an article published in the magazine "Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry", coffee contains just the type of soluble fibres that help decrease the cholesterol level.
Diabetes studies have given the most promising results. When the researchers at Harvad added up the results of nine studies that included more than 193,000 people, it appeared that those who drink coffee on a regular basis have a significantly lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who do not.
Regardless of a wide-spread opinion that coffee is bad for your heart, recent epidemiological studies have not confirmed this. Some articles have even stated that coffee can protect your heart. A study published in the February edition of the magazine "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" indicated that healthy over-65-year-olds who drank at least 4 cups of caffeinated drinks a day (mostly coffee) were 53% less susceptible to heart disease than those who did not.
It is not clear how coffee works as the cause and effect relationships have not been studied in the current studies. Antioxidants such as chlorogenic acid that is similar to the polyphenols found in grapes probably play a big part. Coffee contains more of these substances per portion than blueberries, so coffee is the most important source of antioxidants in our diet. Antioxidants help alleviate inflammation.
This might explain why coffee works so well for inflammatory diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases. The magnesium contained in coffee helps make cells more sensitive to insulin. It has also been found that the caffeine in coffee reduces the risk of Parkinson disease, gallstones, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
All in all: two to three cups of coffee a day is generally not harmful for healthy adults and can even be healthy.