I love these sorts of studies!!!
Study says coffee delivers more health benefits than fruit and veg
JOHN VON RADOWITZ
COFFEE is likely to contribute far more health-giving anti- oxidants to the British diet than fruit and vegetables, new research suggests.
The evidence comes from the United States, where scientists measured the antioxidant content of more than 100 items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and beverages.
Coffee emerged as easily the biggest source of antioxidants, taking account of the amount per serving and level of consumption. Black tea came second, followed by bananas, dry beans and corn.
“Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source - nothing else comes close,” said the leader of the study, Professor Joe Vinson, of Scranton University, Pennsylvania. Caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee appeared to provide similar antioxidant levels. The US findings probably reflect a similar trend in the UK, with 47 per cent of the population drinking about 70 million cups of coffee each day.
Antioxidants help to rid the body of harmful free radicals - destructive molecules that damage cells and DNA - and have been linked to a number of health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer.
Studies have associated coffee drinking with a reduced risk of liver and colon cancer, type two diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. But Prof Vinson urged moderation, recommending that people drink only one or two cups per day. He added: “Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view.”
A spokesman for the British Coffee Association said: “This study reconfirms the fact that moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups a day not only is perfectly safe but may confer health benefits.”
Java Joy: Study Touts Coffee’s Benefits
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 28, 2005; 7:08 PM
WASHINGTON – When the 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 healthful 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 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,” Vinson said in a telephone interview.
Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.
Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.
His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department 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 consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. 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 fruit 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 fiber,” 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, Vinson said.
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, though more research is needed, Vinson said.
“If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up,” Vinson said. “We always talk about moderation in anything.”
His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.
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.
Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did 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 finding, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.
But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson’s research team, cautioned that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, she said.
Coffee is number one source of antioxidants
“Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close,” says study leader Joe Vinson, Ph.D., a chemistry professor at the university. Although fruits and vegetables are generally promoted as good sources of antioxidants, the new finding is surprising because it represents the first time that coffee has been shown to be the primary source from which most Americans get their antioxidants, Vinson says. Both caffeinated and decaf versions appear to provide similar antioxidant levels, he adds.
He cautions that high antioxidant levels in foods and beverages don’t necessarily translate into levels found in the body. The potential health benefits of these antioxidants ultimately depends on how they are absorbed and utilized in the body, a process that is still poorly understood, says Vinson, whose study was primarily funded by the American Cocoa Research Institute.
The news follows a growing number of reports touting the potential health benefits of drinking coffee. It also comes at an appropriate time: Coffee consumption is on the rise in the United States and over half of Americans drink it everyday, according to the National Coffee Association.
Antioxidants in general have been linked to a number of potential health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer. For the current study, Vinson and his associates analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. The data was compared to an existing U.S. Department of Agriculture database on the contribution of each type of food item to the average estimated U.S. per capita consumption.
Coffee came out on top, on the combined basis of both antioxidants per serving size and frequency of consumption, Vinson says. Java easily outranked such popular antioxidant sources as tea, milk, chocolate and cranberries, he says. Of all the foods and beverages studied, dates actually have the most antioxidants of all based solely on serving size, according to Vinson. But since dates are not consumed at anywhere near the level of coffee, the blue ribbon goes to our favorite morning pick-me-up as the number one source of antioxidants, he says.
Besides keeping you alert and awake, coffee has been linked to an increasing number of potential health benefits, including protection against liver and colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease, according to some recently published studies. But there’s also a downside: Java can make you jittery and cause stomach pains, while some studies have tied it to elevated blood pressure and heart rates. More research is needed, particularly human studies, to firmly establish its health benefits, Vinson says.
While the findings would seem to encourage people to go out and drink more coffee, Vinson emphasizes moderation. “One to two cups a day appear to be beneficial,” he says. If you don’t like coffee, consider drinking black tea, which is the second most consumed antioxidant source in the U.S. diet, Vinson says. Bananas, dry beans and corn placed third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
But don’t forget about fresh fruits and veggies, the researcher cautions. “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 fiber,” Vinson says. Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the top fruits for antioxidants on the basis of concentration (antioxidants per serving size), he says.
[Coffee is number one source of antioxidants]
The following chart shows the top ten sources of antioxidants in the U.S. diet.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization, chartered by the U.S. Congress, with a multidisciplinary membership of more than 158,000 chemists and chemical engineers. It publishes numerous scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
The paper on this research, AGFD 10, will be presented at 8:30 a.m., Sunday, Aug. 28, at the Washington Convention Center, Room 203A, during the symposium “The Potential Health Benefits of Antioxidants.”
