Dr Rupy: Alex, I'm excited about this podcast. I want to talk about the real reason why people should be drinking coffee every day. What are the incredible benefits of coffee and why is it something that we should be thinking about drinking daily?
Alex: Most people don't realise, but coffee has very potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. So much so that it's been linked consistently to reducing the risk of a whole host of different diseases, most diseases. So the probably the best place that summarises this is a study which was published in 2017 in the British Medical Journal and it was an umbrella review covering 218 meta-analyses. And it basically looked at all of the science published before it on coffee. And they concluded that coffee drinking, if you drink between three to five cups of coffee a day, and we'll go into what a cup means a bit later, but three to five cups of coffee every day, then you have a 17% reduced risk of all-cause mortality. And that's regular coffee and decaf coffee drinkers. And they put it down to coffee's potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. That's the big reason why. Okay. Okay. And so, three to five cups, we'll talk about that in a second. And you mentioned decaf there as well, that's very important.
Alex: So that so the British Medical, this umbrella review saw that decaf had the same reduced risk of all-cause mortality. However, when we go into the more nuanced, the different studies and looking at individual conditions, it is clear that decaf doesn't have the same health benefits in some areas. Like some of the cognitive benefits of coffee are enhanced by the caffeine. Some of the liver benefits of coffee are more in the caffeinated coffees. But decaf obviously does have a lot of benefits in its own right.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. And if you could single out one of these chemicals in coffee to say, okay, this is probably what I'm going to put my bet on that is doing the heaviest lifting. Is there a particular chemical that stands out in your opinion for those anti-inflammatory and antioxidant health benefits?
Alex: Yes, and it's quite clear in the science. So most people think of coffee as caffeine. And they think that's all that's in coffee, but there's over a thousand different bioactive compounds in coffee. But the studies, the science, the research in coffee pretty much all points towards chlorogenic acid, which is a particular type of phenolic acid, a type of polyphenol in coffee, as being the one that gives most of the health benefits. And since then, there was a lot of theories pointing towards chlorogenic acid. Since then, chlorogenic acid is now getting studied in its own right as a nutraceutical for its own kind of therapeutic effects as a subjunct to cancer treatment and everything, you know, chlorogenic acid on its own. So it's chlorogenic acid seems like the the main MVP of coffee.
Dr Rupy: And and chlorogenic acid, I'm assuming is a polyphenol that you find in in other vegetables, other ingredients that we commonly consume.
Alex: You do get them in other vegetables. It's one of a type of polyphenol. So there's seven different sub-classes of polyphenols, something like 8,000 different types of polyphenols. So chlorogenic acid is just is just one of those. You get it in some other fruits and vegetables. I think artichoke is another source of it, but by far the biggest source of chlorogenic acid is coffee. You'd have to try really hard to get much from any other sources. There's bits in other foods, but you don't take other foods for the chlorogenic acid. You might eat other foods for different polyphenols, but you go to coffee for the chlorogenic acid.
Dr Rupy: Okay, cool. So, all right, I you've convinced me. I'm going to be having coffee every day. I mean, I already do. So, you mentioned three to five cups, right? I think this is a source of a lot of confusion for folks listening and watching this. What exactly is three to five cups? Because that sounds like quite a lot to me. I certainly have four espressos, single espressos every single day. So that is a double espresso in the morning and a double espresso mid-afternoon. What how do we equate that to the three to five cups? Because I'm assuming that's not three to five double espressos.
Alex: No, it's not. Um, three to five cups and it's very inconsistent in the research. Very inconsistent. So in some studies it's 150 mil is a cup, some studies 200 mil, some some 250. And actually how that cup is brewed is different across different studies. But I think we can assume in general that three to five cups of scientific cups of coffee equates to two to three mugs of coffee. And when I say mug, I mean a mug like this one here. So that would be one small cafetière. So the recommendation that we give based on the three to five cups is that you should have two to three of those mugs, so or two to three small cafetières, two to three Aeropresses, two to three drippers worth of coffee or two to three double espressos.
Dr Rupy: Two to three double espressos.
Alex: So you have two double espressos, which is about on the money.
Dr Rupy: About on par. Okay, yeah. And I guess you want to titrate that as well to if you are having caffeinated coffee to how you feel with it, you know, with two to three or working up to that and ensuring that the biggest trade-off I think with anything caffeinated is just sleep quality. So if you're finding or anxiety and jitteriness and lack of focus because of the intolerance of caffeine. So if you're finding yourself, this is at the detriment of your sleep, then it's something that you want to pull back on and then gradually increase your tolerance of or opt for a good quality decaf.
Alex: Yeah, so what we recommend is if you can, if you're habituated coffee drinkers who are tolerant of caffeine, two to three cups a day. Well, we recommend three day three cups a day. We'll go into why. But two cups of caffeinated coffee a day and roughly one mug of caffeinated coffee would get you about 200 milligrams of caffeine. Two cups is about 400 milligrams, which is kind of the recommended amount of of caffeine or the recommended broadly the upper limit of caffeine. Um, plus one decaf. So I have two two small cafetières of coffee in the morning and then one decaf in the afternoon.
Dr Rupy: Okay, okay. That's something I've started doing a little bit more of. I've actually started introducing a bit of cacao, like powdered cacao into my afternoon because that's very, very low in caffeine.
Alex: The other thing you can do is mix caffeinated coffee and decaf together. So you look like a half-caf. Half-caf, yeah, or any different ratio, you know. So I've got really into cold brew coffee recently. And cold brew coffee is known as it's so delicious, cold brew coffee. If you've not tried it, you know, it's so delicious. And for me, I like to drink it neat. And neat cold brew coffee is really high in caffeine. So I've started actually making my cold brew coffee with a smaller amount of caffeinated coffee and more decaf. So I actually now put a third caffeinated coffee, two-thirds decaf, and then I'll have it as like a after lunch kind of early afternoon drink and there's much less caffeine in it.
Dr Rupy: So how how for folks at home who haven't heard of cold brew, what what is the process of creating cold brew? How do you do it yourself at home?
Alex: It's the easiest thing to make. It's so easy. So the ratio, if you're using a cafetière, for example, hot water. So you're steeping, you're steeping coffee grounds in hot water for five minutes in a cafetière. In cold brew coffee, you're steeping it in cold water. So that the coffee grounds never never touch hot water. So because of that, you need to steep it for a lot longer. So five minutes is enough when it's hot, but five minutes when it's cold will do absolutely nothing. So you need to leave it for between 16 and 24 hours. So you grind the coffee as you would for a cafetière, potentially coarser. So you have coarser ground coffee, leave it in cold water overnight, so up to 24 hours, and then you just strain it. And then you've got cold brew coffee.
Dr Rupy: And that's it. So you just put it in a like a
Alex: So you can put it in a cafetière and use a cafetière. You can buy special cold brew um beautiful glass vases. I've seen those. I've got one. Hario make a good one. It has a steel filter inside. So I use that and it's it's a piece of it's a work of art. Um but the ratio is um is more. So you in in in a cafetière, you use 60 grams of coffee for 1 litre of water. In a cold brew, you use 120 grams of coffee for 1 litre of water. So it's twice the amount. So that's because that when you drink it, you add ice to it as well, which waters it down. And also you can people top it up with water as well. So in theory, you should drink half, you shouldn't drink a full mug of cold brew, straight cold brew coffee.
Dr Rupy: Okay, because that's just going to be
Alex: Because there's so much double the caffeine.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Alex: But I find it really hard not to because it's so delicious.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Because this is really confusing for folks because there's so many different ways of getting, you know, your your your coffee, you know, we just mentioned a couple there, cold brew, cafetière, there's espresso, obviously, there's also V60. Um, I uh, I wanted to talk a bit about getting the healthiest mug of coffee. What are the sort of criteria of getting the healthiest mug and perhaps we can talk a bit about the different types of brewing methods within that to to extract the most benefits from from your bean.
Alex: So, this is a big topic. There's so many different places that we could take this, but just before you even brewing, I'd say, uh, there's there's a couple of things that you should aim to do. So buying fresh roasted coffee. So, uh, coffee as it's after it's roasted, the polyphenols, the chlorogenic acid in coffee starts degraded, degrading. And after about six weeks, they reckon it's lost about 20% of its polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Just six weeks?
Alex: Six weeks. So, it's not a huge amount, you know, this because we we'll go on to how much there is in coffee to begin with. You're starting with a really high amount there anyway. But 20% after six weeks. So you want to buy fresh roasted coffee. If you're buying coffee in a supermarket, it could have been on the shelf for two, three, four, five months or whatever since it's been roasted. So
Dr Rupy: I've noticed that actually, because since you told me about this, I started looking at the back of the packs and like, you know, the best before date is fine, but the roasting date is what you want to look for, right?
Alex: Yeah, exactly. And you know, you you I'd say no coffee sold in a supermarket would have a roasted on date. They don't want you to know. They don't want you to know. So, so ideally you want to be buying, ideally you want to be buying fresh roasted coffee. Okay, within a week or two. So coffee does degas after it's been roasted. So they reckon to get the best extraction in espresso, you want to leave it about a week to 10 days after it's been roasted to degas to get the the best flavour out of coffee.
Dr Rupy: What does degassing mean?
Alex: So after coffee's roasted, the beans expel carbon dioxide. So it degasses. So the beans release air. And that's why when you buy a bag of coffee, it has a valve on it. And that's a one-way valve to let the carbon dioxide out of the pouch as it degasses. If it didn't have the valve on, the pouch would explode on the shelf.
Dr Rupy: Right, right.
Alex: So that's why it has a valve. Not so people can sniff it and smell the coffee.
Dr Rupy: That's what I thought it was. That's what I used to think. I was like, oh, this is great. I just squeeze the bag and smell the flavours. I thought it was for me to experience.
Alex: Well, that as well. For the for the sensory effect.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: So, yeah, so coffee does degas. So you really want to get coffee that's been roasted, you know, within a week or two, probably being roasted and then drink it within another two to four weeks after that, really.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Okay, so fresh roasted coffee. And then you also want to freshly grind the coffee yourself, ideally.
Dr Rupy: Right.
Alex: So it's the the coffee bean or the ground coffee being exposed to the atmosphere and the oxygen in the atmosphere that causes the coffee to stale. And that staling of the coffee causes the chlorogenic acid to degrade. So if you grind coffee, the surface area of the the coffee grounds is increased thousands of times over versus a bean. Like the the surface area open to oxygen in the atmosphere is so much bigger that it accelerates the the degrading of the chlorogenic acid. So we tested and um and ground coffee after two after six weeks lost 20% of its polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: And whole bean coffee after six weeks lost 12%.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So 20 versus 12%. Um and then you can also store it. So we actually have these fancy storage containers which store coffee in a relatively air-free environment.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So if you can remove that air from your storage method, it also slows it down. And drastically slows it down. So we tested that as well. And after six weeks, coffee beans stored in one of these containers lost only 2% of the polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow.
Alex: So, so, so fresh roasted coffee, freshly ground coffee, store it in an air-free environment.
Dr Rupy: Air-free environment. I guess it makes sense because you're basically lessening the oxidation of the of the coffee itself. So anything that you can do to minimise contact of the coffee with oxygen will preserve the the the benefits, preserve those polyphenols. And the same thing can be said of things like spices, which is why I tend to opt for um new spices, like cumin seeds, for example, and buy them as seeds, whole, rather than ground, because again, same principle is you're lessening the oxidation.
Alex: Definitely. Same with all foods. You know, and it's, you know, you can see that oxidation happening in some foods. You can't see it in coffee. It shows no visible signs of staling and oxidation, but things like apples, you cut an apple in half, it turns brown. And that's the oxidation because that inside of the apple is open to oxygen in the air. You just can't see it in coffee, but it's happening.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. And so and if folks are, you know, I can't do all these different things. If there was one out of all those different strategies that you would say, you know, versus buying fresh roasted, uh grinding yourself and air tight storage, which one out of all those would be the most important factor?
Alex: I would say fresh roasted coffee is going to be the best because if you drink coffee that's kind of it's so hard, you know, fresh ground coffee as well. Fresh ground coffee because you've got taste to factor into it as well. You know, and there's, you know, freshly ground coffee, like it retains so much more of the taste and the flavour of coffee. So as soon as coffee's ground, within days or especially within weeks of it being ground, it really its taste, it loses its taste really quickly. So for the taste side, I'd say freshly ground coffee.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, I'm always like fresh ground every like since I started grinding fresh, noticeable difference in flavour and that difference in flavour is going to be reflective of those polyphenols. Um so yeah, for me, I just think for the whole experience of enjoying something that is healthful as well as, you know, the the sort of ritual of of of coffee, like I I love grinding myself.
Alex: That's it. And the grinding adds a adds to the ritual of making coffee, especially if you hand grind.
Dr Rupy: You yeah, within grinding, again, like we're opening up these little windows and you know, you can do deep dives into them. Um, the there's so many different types of grinder, right? There's like blade grinders, there's the burr grinders with ceramic plates. Um, I don't think anyone's doing a pestle and mortar job. But uh if there was a preferred method of grinding, again, with the perspective of how am I going to create the healthiest, most flavourful mug of coffee? What is there a particular grinder method that that you prefer?
Alex: Yeah, definitely. It has to be a burr grinder, conical burr grinder. So if people who don't know what they are, imagine two cups, one sitting inside the other, and them turning. And you can adjust how closely those cups sit next to each other. So if you sit those cups further apart, you'll get a more coarse grind size. If you sit those cups closer together, you'll get a finer grind size. If you use a blade grinder, the blades will just obliterate the beans. And the difference is, if you use a blade grinder, you'll get bean particles, ground coffee of all different sizes. It's really inconsistent sizes. And when we come on to discuss the polyphenol extraction, the quantities in a minute, you'll see that it is one of the biggest factors that play here is is how fine or coarse the grinds are. So if you use burr grinders, you can really guarantee a consistently fine grind size. And that's important for the health extraction of the health healthy compounds and also the the flavonoids and the the flavour side of coffee as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's that's something that I only came to know about over the last couple of years from you teaching me a lot. Um, okay, so I think we've done roasting and and the grinding side of things. People know sort of what to do with that. What about the actual bean itself? Because I'm assuming, you know, uh, not every coffee bean is going to be as healthy as it can be. I'm sure sourcing comes into it. I'm sure like, you know, the the processing and what how it's grown, all that kind of stuff can can confer more or less health benefits.
Alex: There's three broad stages of of coffee that it goes through between being in the farm and in your tummy. Um so the first stage is the sourcing and and the farm, how things are affected at the farm. Then there's the roasting and then the brewing. Sourcing, roasting, brewing. And each one of those stages has a big impact on the health benefits of coffee, the quantity of polyphenols in coffee. So at the sourcing stage, there's loads of factors which affect the quantity of polyphenols. You know, polyphenol is produced by coffee plants in response to stresses on the plant. And they have different types of stress. So abiotic stress and biotic stress. So stresses from the environment, like temperature, the weather conditions, also stresses from pesticides and and even kind of the bacteria and the the soil as well.
Dr Rupy: So that's biotic and then abiotic is like the environment.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. Abiotic is yeah, not alive stresses and biotic are living stresses on the plant. So, you know, there's loads of different ways of processing coffee and all of them will have an impact on the quantity of polyphenols in coffee. Then the roasting, um so each one of these stages magnifies the difference of the stage before. So the the roasting has a huge impact on coffee in itself, but if there's already a big difference between the quantity of polyphenols caused by the how it's grown at the farm, that difference will be magnified further at the roasting stage, which will be magnified further when you brew it. So roasting coffee, um chlorogenic acid, um which we want as much of as possible in coffee, starts at its highest concentration in the green bean, and then as you roast coffee, it slowly degrades, and then as you get towards a dark roast coffee, it drops off a cliff and you can lose 90% of it.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So roasting has a huge impact on the quantity of chlorogenic acid in coffee.
Dr Rupy: 90%?
Alex: 90%. And then, um, and then brewing coffee, obviously, has a a big difference and magnifies all of those. So there's actually there's one study which was uh published in 2014, which I love quoting, which tested the chlorogenic acid content of 104 espressos bought in cafes across Scotland, Italy, and Spain. 104 espressos and they found a 31 times difference between the the best coffees and the worst coffees in terms of chlorogenic acid. And the difference was 6 milligrams per cup versus 188 milligrams per cup.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Alex: So it's huge. You're basically getting none or you're getting 188. So there's a huge difference.
Dr Rupy: Wow. Which one were the the lowest? I'm assuming it's like, you know, the big chains or the sort of the Nespresso, I don't know.
Alex: I mean, Starbucks, Costa, and Nero were all in there.
Dr Rupy: Oh, really? Okay.
Alex: I don't like naming and shaming. You can share the study in the show notes and you can see which one of those chains was the bottom because it was one of them. But I don't want to name and shame.
Dr Rupy: Sure, yeah. Who what about the higher end? What kind of qualities did that coffee have? Were they more independents? Were they more like
Alex: Yeah, because these were cafes, you know, these are just cafes that I'd never heard of the cafe. I'd never heard of the type of coffee before. So, you know, it wasn't recognisable brands other than those three. They were the three recognisable brands that were in there. But yeah, otherwise it's like independent specialist cafes and things.
Dr Rupy: Sure, sure, sure. Okay, fine. So, uh, the the roasting, I'm assuming there's a fine balance between having a pure green bean and roasting it somewhat to extract the flavour that you want from a cup of coffee. So what is the roasting level that we should be looking at? What's something that you found in your own experience with Excel?
Alex: Yeah, so the roasting really is a balance of the taste of the coffee and the health benefits of the coffee. So and the health benefits of the coffee don't just depend on chlorogenic acid. There are loads of other things in coffee which need to be considered as well. So, for example, melanoidins are incredibly healthful compounds in coffee as well, but they're formed during the roasting process. And there's something called the Maillard reaction which happens during roasting, which is a caramelization of the sugars in coffee, which happens in loads of foods as you cook it. Uh and they produce melanoidins which also have their own health benefits and they peak at around a medium roast. So you'd get none in the green bean. They peak at a medium roast and then they degrade as you get to a dark roast.
Dr Rupy: Oh, right.
Alex: So for the health benefits, we opted for a medium roast as being the optimal amount. So we retain as much chlorogenic acid as possible without hitting that point that it free falls and and drops off a cliff. But we've developed more of the melanoidins. On the taste side, taste also has a big impact on uh roasting also has a big impact on taste. And you know, if you're going to be under roasting a coffee, uh then you're just not going to get, it's going to taste too acidic, astringent, maybe grassy. Um as you roast the coffee, you're developing more of the sweetness, more of the body, more of the sugars are caramelizing. So most people generally prefer the taste of a slightly darker roasted coffee. So again, we've developed the the beans as far as possible into a medium roast to get as much of the the sweeter flavours of coffee. Um to the point where, you know, a lot of people just they who would normally add sugar or or milk to coffee can say that they can drink our coffee because we've we've roasted at that optimal amount that's not uh too acidic, it's not too bitter, but it's got as much sweetness in it as possible.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. So if folks are listening to this, they want to know, they want to know what kind of roast they should be looking for. As a general rule of thumb, bearing in mind that different polyphenols will be optimized at various roasting uh levels, you're probably best off with a medium, light to medium roast.
Alex: A light to medium. A light to medium. Also depends how you drink your coffee. If you're going to be adding milk to your coffee, if you're getting a light, a lighter coffee, then it won't compete with the milk at all. So you won't you won't get much flavour of the coffee through. So then you'll want a slightly darker. So that's why we have a darkish roast. We call it darkish because we've not roasted it too dark, so it's not lost too much of the chlorogenic acid. But if you drink it with milk or anything else, you'll get the coffee flavours coming through the milk.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: Um whereas if you like to drink with a V60 or a dripper and a filter paper, you're looking for more nuanced flavours in coffee. So you want a lighter roasted coffee because then you will you will get more of the the fruity flavours. Like some of the some coffees you'll buy them and they've got like jasmine and hibiscus notes and these things. And you're not going to get that if you roast it too dark and you're not going to get that if you you add milk to your coffee.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I've had like drip coffee and it's just like sometimes, maybe it's because my palate is more tuned to bitter flavours these days, but like it feels like blackcurrant and like real juicy tartness, but like the real juiciness in it and like a dry finish on my mouth and it's like it's wonderful. And it's something that, you know, I never thought I would I used to just think of coffee as like something dark, you fling some milk at it and like it all tastes the same. But now when you start like, you know, experimenting with different roasts and stuff, you just introduced to a new world of flavour.
Alex: Yeah, but also and it's so fun. That's the fun of coffee. That's the fun of. I mean, there's, you know, people taste wines and people talk about different tastes in wines. And I think it was I think in wine, there's like a a few hundred different flavonoids which contribute to the flavour of wine. But then in coffee, there's something like 900 different flavonoids. And it's the different unique ratio of all of these different compounds in coffee which give no two coffees to an expert, no two coffees taste the same.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: No two coffees. And then also you've got one coffee, but you can brew it in an infinite number of different ways. I probably have 15 different brewing methods at home. But even with each one of those, there's loads of different ways of brewing it. And our coffee brewed in an Aeropress versus an espresso versus a cafetière tastes totally different.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: So that's the fun side of coffee.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Just to go back to sourcing, um so we we mentioned those abiotic and biotic stresses. If I'm looking on the shelves, what are the sort of criteria that I should be looking for for from a coffee other than just choosing Excel because I know you you've done a lot of work in sourcing. Um what what are the what are some of those like the key points you should be looking for? Is organic one of them?
Alex: Organic is. Yeah, organic definitely is. Um and organic, you know, William Lee really explains this wonderfully on some of his podcasts. But organic coffee, any organic plant, but organic coffee plants grown on an organic farm are more likely to have pests attacking them. So there'll be more pests. And coffee produces chlorogenic acid as a reaction. It's kind of a natural pesticide. So as a reaction to pesticides attacking it, a coffee plant will produce chlorogenic acid. So coffee plants grown on organic farms are more likely to have higher levels of chlorogenic acid. Um so that's one thing to look for. Um altitude as well is another stress. Air's thinner at higher higher altitudes. So higher altitude coffee in general could have marginally more chlorogenic acid in it. Um the way you process coffee, so there's there's different ways of processing it, like a a washed versus a natural versus semi-washed and lots of different flavours in between. Um and natural processed coffee, natural processed coffee is left out on drying beds to dry for a lot longer. So there's a whole different, there's loads of things that play here. So, you know, if a natural coffee is left out on drying beds for say a month or two, um it's more open to contamination from things like moulds and and their mycotoxins as well. So we've tested coffees that are natural processed coffees and they have much significantly higher levels of mould in them.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow.
Alex: A lot of that is roasted off, but not all of it. Especially some things like aflatoxins aren't all roasted off, especially. Right, right. Um so we tended to avoid any natural processed coffees and only uh looked at washed processed coffees.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. And does washed have an impact on the polyphenol content as well or is that
Alex: Well, so natural processed coffees are left under the the sun and the UV rays of the sun actually can degrade the polyphenols. So and it's only by a few percent, but the research says that natural processed coffee because of this UV damage have slightly lower polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha.
Alex: So we go for a washed for that reason as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I guess every level, you know, if you are looking to create the healthiest coffee, which you are, you know, you're looking at these few percentile differences at every stage of the process from farm to bag. And it you know, it does it sounds like picky, but actually everything does add up, right?
Alex: Yeah, exactly. But without splitting hairs too much on it. You know, if you just follow the general guidelines and then, you know, rather than going, I think there's not going to be much benefit to us going too much further than we have done into these things. And actually, you know, if people really want to get an extra benefit, more benefit from their coffee, it's just adding an extra cup of decaf into their day. We'll have a way bigger impact than me going, okay, well, if we if this bacteria is using the fermentation process, then I think you'll get an extra 1% of polyphenols in the bean. Well, you know, there's there's better ways of spending our time than focusing too much on that.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Okay. So the general criteria, washed, organic, high altitude, would you say?
Alex: Yeah, as a general rule of thumb.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Yeah. Great. The other the other big one we should mention is specialty grade. So specialty grade coffee is coffee that is it's like the crème de la crème of coffee. So the Specialty Coffee Association has a rating scale out of 100 and to be classed as specialty coffee, you have to score over 80 out of 100. And to score and that's on taste. And to score over 80 out of 100 on taste, a coffee bean has to be meticulously looked after during its life. And you know, whether it's organic or not organic. Um so we've visited specialty coffee farms where the farmers won't let even let the the workers picking the coffee uh cherries wear perfume or aftershave because they think it'll affect the quality of the beans. So and they take it to that extreme a measure. So if you're buying specialty grade coffee, you know you're going to be getting a coffee that's really well looked after, really well treated. So it's going to be naturally high in polyphenols and chlorogenic acid.
Dr Rupy: Gosh, it really makes it really frames the whole sort of uh snobbery around the price of coffee because people think that 15 pounds a bag or like 18 pounds a bag or even I mean, I know uh coffee isn't as expensive as it is even that, but like they think that's too expensive. But the quality that you're getting for specialty grade coffee is phenomenal. If like the farmers and the the producers are taking it to that degree of um of accuracy.
Alex: Yeah, I mean, and if you break it down to uh per cup, you know, even the expensive coffees, like people say ours is expensive, it's 60p a cup. Um which there's nothing else in our diets at 60p a cup will add so many polyphenols and such benefits to your health, you know, and that is so delicious. And that is and that also you're not just trusting in long-term health benefit. You're also getting like a an instant hit of energy for some people, you know, and it and it gives you a lot a lot of instant gratification as well as long-term health benefits.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, definitely. Okay, so we've done sourcing, roasting, let's let's move to brewing because we've got we've got these different brewing methods in front of us. So what what is the healthiest way to preserve all that that effort that's gone into creating this wonderful bean with all these different benefits? What is the best method for me to utilize if I want to try and extract as much benefit as possible?
Alex: So, my answer to this question always is brew your coffee however is your favourite way of brewing it. So you know, we all prefer the different tastes of different types of coffees, different brewing methods. However, we have done a whole load of testing recently on different brewing methods and it does seem that there is some uh differences in them.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So we actually tested, so we test, we bought this really fancy piece of kit, which was quite fun. Um and we tested brewing coffee in cold brew, espresso, dripper, cafetière, Aeropress.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Okay, five main brewing methods. The only one that we missed was Moka pot. But that's just because I didn't have any gas hobs at home. So we will be brewing in a Moka pot. I just need to borrow someone's gas.
Dr Rupy: Just for folks watching on YouTube, so we've got a V V60, was that one of the methods that you used? Yeah. Uh and then we've got the espresso, so that's the porta filter. We've got our cafetière here, French press, and that's about it. We don't have the uh Aeropress, but I've got that for when I when I'm outside the house. I always take that with me.
Alex: Okay, cool. So yeah, Aeropress, yeah, I mean, these all have their own, aside from the health benefits of them, they all have their own pluses and minuses. So if you're brewing for a group of people, if you have friends over, you know, you want to use a cafetière like this, because if you were going to do four Aeropresses or four drippers, you're going to be there all day. It takes ages. So always go for a cafetière. Um if you're out camping, um I'd say an Aeropress is the best because it's indestructible. You chuck it in your backpack, it's not we take it travelling with us. You can't break an Aeropress. So so Aeropress is they all have their own place for different situations. However, the one that came out tops in our study, in our in our own testing was a a dripper.
Dr Rupy: A dripper?
Alex: Steel dripper.
Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.
Alex: So, and that was a steel dripper. So a V60 uses a paper filter.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Um that was a steel dripper. So before going into that, there is a a differentiation we should make between paper and steel filters.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So, um most of these, some of these methods, like a a dripper, that one there is a V60, you can use a paper filter in it. I uh recommend using a steel dripper which doesn't use a paper filter.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So there's three main reasons for that. So two of coffee's healthiest compounds, cafestol and kahweol, are fat soluble.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So if you use a paper filter, it removes up to 98% of the cafestol and kahweol from coffee because uh they just can't pass through the paper.
Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.
Alex: So the fats are basically they they stay in the paper.
Dr Rupy: Exactly. Oh, wow.
Alex: So you're losing the cafestol and kahweol from coffee if you use a paper filter.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Um also paper filters, um well, steel filters are reusable, so it's better for the environment. And also paper filters are bleached. So
Dr Rupy: Yeah, that's why they're so brilliantly white, right?
Alex: Exactly. So unless you you can buy unbleached ones, but they're quite expensive as well. So it's cheaper as well. That's the fourth reason. Um there is a fifth reason which uh emerged is that um one of the biggest ways to impact the amount of chlorogenic acid you get when you're brewing coffee is how fine you grind it.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So just as a finer ground coffee with a bigger surface area stales faster, you know, because it's got the bigger surface area, the bigger surface area when you're brewing coffee is desirable. It's not desirable when you're storing coffee, but when you're brewing coffee, it is desirable because that bigger surface area means that there's more of the coffee bean, a bigger surface area open for the extraction reaction to take place.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: Um it also means, it turns out that there's a there's a smaller grind size, so it's it's more easy to access the the chlorogenic acid from deep within the the ground coffee. Anyway, so a a dripper, um a steel dripper over a paper dripper. If you use a steel dripper, you use a finer ground coffee to slow be to slow down the rate that the water is passing through the grinds.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Okay.
Alex: Whereas if you use the paper filter, you use a slightly coarser ground coffee.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha.
Alex: So a steel dripper lets through more cafestol and kahweol, use a finer ground coffee, which also in theory should extract, not in theory, in reality, extracts more of the chlorogenic acid, better for the environment, it's just better all around.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So I'm going to get a steel because I don't have a steel steel dripper. So I'm going to go and get a steel dripper now.
Alex: Steel dripper. The taste is totally different. So you know, it can be fun to have both and you know, try both out. Same goes for an Aeropress. So Aeropress, if you use a steel filter, you if you most Aeropresses come with a paper filter as standard. You can buy a steel filter and uh and you're going to get a similar kind of additional health benefits from using the steel filter.
Dr Rupy: That makes it actually a lot easier when I'm transporting it, which is generally when I use an Aeropress because um otherwise you have to bring the pack of papers with you and they you know, dirt on them or whatever, they get wet, you know, you lose them and then or you forget them. I've forgotten them once and I was like, oh, I can't make any any coffee now. So
Alex: So another little hack on the Aeropress is um you can buy a fitting from Fellow which an Aeropress has dozens of holes in it in the bottom. The water is pushed through dozens of holes and as you're pressing down on the Aeropress, it generates a bit of pressure.
Dr Rupy: Uh-huh.
Alex: So there's two ways broadly of extracting everything from coffee. One's from steeping it, leaving the coffee grind in water over an amount of time. So five minutes in a cafetière. Another way is using pressure. So espresso uses nine bar of pressure to extract things in a short amount of time. So you've got pressure or you've got steep time. An Aeropress uses a small amount of pressure. So you get a bit of the benefits of additional pressure.
Dr Rupy: Ah, okay.
Alex: Only a small amount extra. So atmospheric pressure is one bar. Aeropresses 1.5 bar roughly. So it's a tiny amount. But that extra bit of pressure does help.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: But there is a fun little thing that is made by a brand called Fellow which you can attach to your Aeropress instead of the normal cap and those dozens of holes turns into one hole. So it generates extra pressure. So it makes something which is stronger in flavour, closer to the flavour of an espresso. Like the difference is huge. And more pressure and you extract slightly more chlorogenic acid and polyphenols because it's getting more pressure out of it. So
Dr Rupy: Good to know. So so my espresso, which is the way I prefer to drink, this is a bit cold now, but this is this is basically how I drink my coffee. How does that compare to the steel dripper and and everything else? Am I getting more because of the nine bars of pressure?
Alex: So you've if that's a single espresso, then that's probably going to be about half of what you'd get from a mug from the others, you know, from an a dripper, from a cafetière. So but if we're talking in terms of a double espresso.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: So a double espresso roughly equates to one of these other things.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Yeah.
Alex: Um and a double espresso. So how much coffee you actually put in your espresso?
Dr Rupy: 21 grams in
Alex: 21 grams in a single espresso?
Dr Rupy: In a in a double, sorry. A double, yeah, that's a double. Yeah.
Alex: Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. So 21 grams. So a dripper and how much do you put in your V60?
Dr Rupy: In the V60, I'd probably put around uh similar amount, I would say, like 18 to 20 grams, something like that.
Alex: Yeah. Because that does make a big difference. So in a cafetière, we use 17 grams of coffee.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Alex: In an Aeropress, we use 17 grams.
Dr Rupy: Per person?
Alex: Is that right? Yeah, exactly, for one person. This is one serving.
Dr Rupy: Uh-huh.
Alex: In an Aeropress, we use 17 grams. I think the standard Aeropress instructions are 14 grams.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I always found it quite weak.
Alex: Yeah. So I go go for 17 grams. In espresso, you're using a bit more. So I use 20 grams in my uh espresso machine. You use 21. I'd say most people who make home espresso would struggle to get 20 grams in. So they're probably are using more like 17 or 18 grams.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: But an espresso, um brewed, a double espresso brewed with 20 grams, um was the same as a steel dripper with 20 grams. But you're using a bit more coffee. So in the dripper, I use 17 grams. So in an espresso, I use 20 grams, which is like, you know, nearly 20% more coffee. 17 versus 20 to get the same amount of um the same amount of chlorogenic acid.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Okay. Great.
Alex: They're so similar, you know, they're so similar these things.
Dr Rupy: They are, yeah, yeah. It's just like the nuance of it. But it's an interesting question to to ask.
Alex: Per gram of coffee, the steel dripper was the best. But then because you use more coffee in an espresso, a double espresso was the same as a steel dripper.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. Okay.
Dr Rupy: So we talk about polyphenols quite a bit on the podcast in fruits and vegetables. How does coffee compare to others like, you know, chocolate and berries and and the like?
Alex: So, I'd say there are there are over 8,000 different types of polyphenols, okay? And these are these are broadly categorized into seven different sub-classes of polyphenols. But just because something's a polyphenol, they aren't all created equal. So polyphenols have very different levels of bioavailability, for example. So some types of polyphenols really aren't very bioavailable at all. There was a study which was published in Nutrients in 2021 which looked at the bioavailability of the different sub-classes of polyphenol. Um and the the most bioavailable type of polyphenol was phenolic acids. And chlorogenic acid is one of those. So chlorogenic acid is one of the most bioavailable types of polyphenol. And actually, they looked at chlorogenic acid as it passes through the body and around a third of it is immediately absorbed in the small intestines and then two-thirds of it is broken down in the the large intestine by your gut microbiome uh into caffeic acid and quinic acid, which is then absorbed. So it's a very bioavailable form. So different polyphenols have different levels of bioavailability. The other ones that are very bioavailable are the classics, like cacao, olives, red wine, leafy green vegetables, and all those are very bioavailable as well. That's also probably why in some studies, when they look at total polyphenols linked to health benefits, they don't always see a health benefit. But when they break it down to certain types of polyphenol, certain polyphenols are quite clearly linked to health benefits, but some aren't. So there was another study which was published which looked at, they followed 12,000 Spanish people over 12 and a half years. And that was just a couple of years ago as well. And they looked at 23 different types of polyphenol. And only seven of the 23 were linked with health benefits. The rest showed no impact at all. But the seven of the 23 that were linked to benefits, one of them was chlorogenic acid. And on average, they were linked to a 20% reduced risk of all-cause mortality and a 40% reduced reduced risk of cardiovascular mortality.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Alex: So if they have a benefit, they have a significant benefit, but not all are. And that's probably because of their bioavailability.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And when you think about like, you know, the products that you just mentioned, red wine, chocolate, green leafy vegetables, we up there, berries, etc. Like, you know, these are things that I try and get to my diet every every single day, apart from red wine, obviously, because of the alcohol content. But, you know, you just want to be thinking from that Mediterranean perspective of like diversity, colour, variety, all that kind of stuff.
Alex: Yeah, it's an interesting one on the red wine because a glass of red wine does have a decent amount. So let's let's bring it down down some numbers. Let's throw some numbers into this.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Because you've done a lot of work on this with your fancy machine, right?
Alex: I have done lots of work on this. So looking at, so the research on on polyphenols in general, when they look at the average intake of polyphenols across the populations, um on average, people tend to consume around 6 to 900 milligrams of polyphenols a day seems to be coming out as the average in most studies. Most studies which look at um polyphenol intake related to health benefits, which say that people with higher intakes of polyphenols have more benefits, that higher intake of polyphenols is something between one and two grams a day.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So really to get the health benefits of coffee, we should be or of of all foods, of polyphenols, we should be aiming for around two grams or 2,000 milligrams of polyphenols a day.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Okay. So from coffee, um fortunately, coffee is a massive producer of of polyphenols. And studies show that coffee contributes around a third to two-thirds of your total intake of polyphenols in your diet.
Dr Rupy: A third?
Alex: A third to two-thirds. Most studies say two-thirds.
Dr Rupy: Bloody hell.
Alex: And when you look at antioxidants, studies say that coffee gives you two-thirds of your total dietary intake of antioxidants.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Alex: So
Dr Rupy: And is that three to five mugs again? Is that
Alex: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's just on average for average coffee drinkers. Um so one cup of our coffee in the testing that we did. So brewed by cafetière, Aeropress, um what else did we have? So a mug of coffee, as discussed, was around 350 milligrams of polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: A dripper was a bit more at around 410 milligrams. A double espresso was around 410 milligrams. So, but a cup of coffee is around 350 to 400 milligrams of polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So if you drink our recommended daily amount of two to three mugs of coffee, perhaps two mugs of caffeinated coffee and one mug of decaf, then you're getting around a gram of polyphenols, 1,000 milligrams. So if you're aiming for two grams, you're getting a gram of it from coffee. So you're getting 50% of your polyphenol needs from coffee. And you tick that box, just do that every day. Do that every day. And it's very bioavailable form, which is awesome. So then you want to be finding a gram of polyphenols ideally from other sources in your diet on a daily basis. So there's six other things that I try and do every day. Five other things, sorry, six including coffee. Five other things that I do as kind of non-negotiables every day to push up that gram, to get to that gram. So one is eating a bit of dark chocolate.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Dark chocolate is a great form of bioavailable polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: Um in around 20 to 30 grams of dark chocolate, again, it's very variable between different chocolates. 20 to 30 grams of dark chocolate, you're going to be getting maybe 250 milligrams of polyphenols.
Dr Rupy: It's a good dose.
Alex: It's good. I was really impressed with that.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: It's really good. Um so dark chocolate every day.
Dr Rupy: What dark are we talking?
Alex: Well, it's not always clear in the studies, you know. I have 85%, but it's really not always.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, we did a deep dive and I I'm like 75% as a minimum, but I my sweet spot is 80, 85 for me personally.
Alex: Okay, no, I'd agree with that. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Rupy: Definitely.
Alex: Um cool. Um then the other one is obviously berries, fresh berries. So if you're eating maybe say 100 grams of berries a day, you might be getting 350 milligrams of polyphenols. Yeah. Again, it's highly variable, different types, different types of berries are different. But so you've got 250 from your chocolate, 350 from your your berries. And every week we go to our farmers' market and we buy a big punnet of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. And it costs us 20 quid for all of those, which feels like loads. But we're as a family of four, that's our berry needs for a whole week for 20 quid. And you know, we'll freeze some of them to eat towards the end of the week. We buy them from our local farmers' market. And it feels like a lot of money, 20 quid on berries. But then for a family of four for a week to keep your polyphenol levels that high.
Dr Rupy: Definitely.
Alex: It's a no-brainer.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And you've got some of the best sources here as well of uh particular types of berries with the highest polyphenols, right? So blueberries is up there.
Alex: Blueberries is up there. Yeah, there's always some obscure types of berries up there as well. But yeah, blueberries is obviously the kind of
Dr Rupy: Well, you can get blackcurrant quite easily in the UK, particularly if they're frozen, which I'm a big fan of as well, because if people can't, let's say, afford to go to, you know, the farmers' market and get the fresh stuff, frozen is actually quite a good way of locking in those nutrients, you know, for for folks who don't have, you know, that much money to spend on on berries. I'm always a big fan of frozen. And if you can get blackcurrant frozen or blackberries or even things like cranberries, really high in those anthocyanins and those other polyphenols. So, yeah, definitely definitely go for those.
Alex: Cool. Um then olives, you know, extra an interesting little side note here, extra virgin olive oil is having its moment of glory at the minute. And uh Brian Johnson has his blueprint protocol and he he sells extra virgin olive oil for like 40 pound a bottle, 50 pound a bottle. And it's because it's high in polyphenols, he claims. But one litre of that has 400 milligrams of polyphenols in it, which is the same as one cup of coffee in a litre of olive oil. So extra virgin olive oil has loads of health benefits. I drink it by the gallon as well. But but you know, let's keep it in perspective. Polyphenols wise, it's good to add a little bit to your diet, but it's not going to compete with berries and coffee and things like that. But olives are amazing. So olives are way more, a way better source of polyphenols than olive oil. And this is the same for red wine. So you don't have to drink red wine to get the the the benefits of resveratrol. Eat red grapes. You get way more of the the same polyphenols in red grapes than you do from red wine, but without the alcohol.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: So a few olives. So I have a jar of olives and every day, you know, olives will go on the side of pretty much any meal or as a snack. Chuck a few olives into your day, five or six olives a day. You'll get like 100, 150 milligrams of polyphenols from it.
Dr Rupy: There's a common theme with all the things that we've discussed thus far, you know, the the bitterness, you know, the dark chocolate is bitter, the uh the berries have a bitterness to it, olives, salty, bitter, sort of, you know, it's it's it's less on the sweet side. You know, less of the plant is being focused on creating those those sugars and actually it's to the polyphenols, which are the natural pesticides and response to stresses. So it's it's quite an interesting observation.
Alex: In very interesting. I've never thought of that before. Yeah, and I guess, you know, spices. So the next one is herbs and spices. Pretty bitter, astringent. Um but herbs and spices, so I have every so many dozens of different types of herbs and spices and I'll just throw them in with everything. So if I'm frying some eggs in the morning, I'll fry the eggs in maybe some fresh chopped turmeric root, ginger, garlic, but also I'll put in some curry leaves, some mustard seeds, some cumin seeds, whatever spices I've got to hand, some dried oregano, which is also high in polyphenols. So cook with herbs and spices as often as you can and it's so much more delicious, but also you're getting and spices are very, very high in polyphenols. Cloves are one of the, I think possibly the richest source of polyphenols in the human diet. Is it I think it's 15,000 milligrams per 100 gram or something. But you're only using a tiny amount. But still, if you're cooking with herbs and spices every day, you might get an extra 100 to 200 milligrams of polyphenols from those herbs and spices.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: So another no-brainer to do every day.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: Nuts and seeds are another easy one. You know, small handful of nuts and seeds, 200 milligrams of polyphenols, easy, job done.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah.
Alex: And then aside from that, just eat a diet generally rich in dark leafy greens and other fruits and vegetables and you're going to hit that two gram without any issue.
Dr Rupy: Very easily. I you know, just thinking about my own diet, I mean, I have this saying like BBGs, like everyone get their BBGs every day. Beans, berries, greens, and seeds, coffee now as well. Um but, you know, if you're if you're centering your diet around getting these in every single day, you're going to be pushing that upper limit of polyphenols that we know definitely confer those health benefits. But um could even, you know, go beyond that like for longevity benefits and anti-diabetic benefits, anti-cancer benefits. And all these different ingredients coming together to improving your microbiota is just going to unlock even more of those benefits. It was quite interesting the way you were talking about chlorogenic acid and how some of it is yes digested directly via the small intestine, but a lot of it is going to be at the helm of the microbes in your large intestine that are going to be changing those into metabolites. So it stands to reason that the healthier your gut, I.e. with a diverse arrangement of um fibers that feed a diverse population, the more benefit you can actually extract from these these delicious and helpful products.
Alex: Definitely. And you know, what the what the polyphenol is digested into and converted into has a a big impact on how much you can get from the polyphenol. So most of the others that aren't as bioavailable are probably still broken down into something, but they might not be broken down into something that's as useful to the body.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: Um another thing, another point to make on uh comparing these different types of these polyphenol sources is that people could say, you know, oh, you're including to get your gram of polyphenols from coffee, you're drinking three cups of coffee. You could just eat a kilo of blueberries a day or, you know, a whole bar of lint chocolate a day. But the difference in coffee and these other sources is that coffee has no calories. Coffee has no fat, it has no sugar. So if you wanted to get a gram of polyphenols from any of these other sources, well, you know, if you're doing it from red wine, you'd probably be on the floor, drunk, you know. But if you're doing it from chocolate, you're going to have loads of fat in there. If you're doing it from berries, you're going to have loads of sugar in there. And you know, and olives and olive oil and they're all the same. So um in terms of a way of quickly ratcheting up your polyphenol intake without very much else other than the caffeine, of course. But then you've got decaf. You've got the decaf. So you know, it's just it's a very good, easy, quick win.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, uh I've got a few like quick fire questions maybe to to finish up on. Um what what are the worst types of coffee that we should avoid consuming? So in my mind, I'm thinking instant coffee and pod coffee. Uh what what are your thoughts on that?
Alex: The worst type of coffee that we everybody should avoid and that should never have been invented is the coffee that's been pooed out by the civet. Coffee luwak. I've heard of it. Yeah.
Dr Rupy: It's really expensive though, right?
Alex: It is. It was always really expensive. So for people who don't know, this is coffee where they feed a coffee bean to a civet, which is a small furry animal. It then passes through it and then it poos it poos it out and then people take the beans out of its poo and then they use it to brew coffee. It's become this crazy delicacy where it's really expensive. But of course, you know, over the years, things anything that's expensive gets abused. And apparently now there's these huge like farms in in China apparently where they have civets in tiny cages, force feeding them their whole life with coffee beans and then they're they're taking them. And now it's really cheap. So you go to Bali and you can buy this coffee luwak from the supermarket for dirt cheap. But it's from these massive battery cage civets. So that's the one that everyone should avoid.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, definitely avoid that. Yeah.
Alex: So that's a pretty obvious no-brainer.
Dr Rupy: Aside from that. From in terms of like supermarkets and and that kind of stuff, like is instant coffee going to have any of those benefits? Like do we know?
Alex: Yeah, so instant coffee, so it does, we actually tested, so here's a nice test that we did do. We we tested the top 10 coffees in the UK by market share.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: Okay. Um for chlorogenic acid in uh in the beans. So this was in roasted beans. So this was in chlorogenic acid in the beans, the top 10 coffees. Three of those were instant coffees.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: And instant coffees, they were the same as any other, you know, they were kind of right bang in the middle. So they didn't have any less. And when you look at the science, instant coffee doesn't have any less chlorogenic acid and polyphenols in it in general.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Alex: In general. However, um there is a lot of research, uh there's a study I shared in our email newsletter recently, recently, which said that the antioxidant capacity of instant coffee was a lot less.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Alex: So there's there's a lot more at play in coffee than just the quantity of polyphenols in it, you know. So the the antioxidant potential of it was less. Um also, there's been a lot of studies published quite recently. So traditionally, studies on coffee never separated out what different types of coffee people drank.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: Recently, there's been a handful of studies which have done that. And they've looked at instant coffee drinkers versus fresh roasted coffee drinkers. And there's a few cases. So one of them was for type two diabetes, one was for dementia. Um and the study showed that fresh roasted coffee drinkers had a significantly reduced risk and instant coffee drinkers had a significantly increased risk of type two diabetes and dementia. They were two separate studies.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Alex: Yeah, which was really, you know, surprising. Obviously, you know, let's not just write it all off because of two studies, but the research wasn't great. And potentially a few of the reasons may be because uh instant coffee on average has twice the amount of acrylamide of roasted coffee. And on average has over four times the amount of mycotoxins of regular coffee.
Dr Rupy: Ah, right.
Alex: So there's it's not just the amount of chlorogenic acid in instant coffee that you should be focused on. There's a whole lot of other things going on as well.
Dr Rupy: And do you also think like instant coffee drinkers are also more likely to add uh like, you know, poor quality creamers or like milk and sugar to their coffee as well that could be confounding those results too.
Alex: Yeah, yeah, to mask the awful taste of it. The other one is pods. So, you know, I I'm quite vocal about how I really I'm not a fan at all of pods. Um first of all, so our big three things in the business is is that we want to produce the healthiest possible coffee that's the most sustainable possible and the tastiest it can possibly be. And on all three of those levels, pods lose out because you have to grind the coffee months before you come to drink it. So you put ground coffee in pods, you don't put beans in pods, it's ground coffee. So it's ground way before. So that means that the coffee loses a lot of its taste, it doesn't taste as good. Also, some of its health benefits will have degraded because it's been ground months before. So on a health level and on on a taste level, it's not as good. But then sustainability wise, it's like even if you buy compostable pods or recyclable plastic pods, the amount of energy it takes to produce those 15 pods is insane. And also to produce them and then also to compost them or recycle them. It's a total waste of energy versus just getting a bag of coffee and a spoon and a cafetière and doing it yourself. Like it really is just such a massive waste of energy.
Dr Rupy: Massive difference, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Alex: So I'm against pods. We will never do pods. We will never do pods.
Dr Rupy: Okay, fine. You heard it here. Um in terms of instant coffee, is there a way in which to make instant coffee better? Like I I free of mycotoxins, free of like the poor quality taste and stuff. Is there is there any way in which an instant coffee that is convenient and easy to use could be healthier or
Alex: Um yeah, and with instant coffee, I'm sure there are a massive range of instant coffees out there. I'm I'm pretty sure there are now some mycotoxin-free instant coffees out there. I feel like there might be. Um so yeah, there is very different ways and I'm sure people are coming up with new imaginative ways of making instant coffee as well. So so yeah, I'm sure it'll exist at some point. But but yeah, I just can't imagine wanting instant coffee. I feel like instant coffee and pods also have another issue in that they encourage the wrong relationship with coffee. I feel like coffee has got a bad rep over the years because people talk about having negative impacts from coffee, feeling anxious or jittery or or energy crashes and spikes from coffee. But I think that's not necessarily the coffee's fault. I think that's because of our relationship with coffee and how we have developed an unhealthy relationship with coffee. So things like instant coffee and pods encourage people to brew a cup of coffee really quickly, knock it back, and then race out the door in a stressful environment, in a in a in a highly stressed uh way. And then they wonder why their energy crashes and they wonder why they feel anxious, you know, whereas if you take the time to grind your own coffee, maybe even hand grind your coffee, brew the put the kettle, boil the kettle yourself, brew the coffee, wait five minutes for it to steep in a cafetière or even an espresso machine, the whole ritual of it, that whole ritual, that whole process will just slow down your your nervous system, put you in a more parasympathetic state, and when you drink the coffee, you'll have a much more positive reaction to the caffeine in the coffee.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Alex: So I think instant coffee and pods encourage the wrong type. People think of it as a quick hit. We shouldn't think of coffee as a quick hit.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. We should think of it more of as a ritual as something that sets your day. And like we were talking about before like, you know, set and setting, which is a book that was written by what was his name? Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary, yeah, the psychedelic uh sort of pioneer, I guess.
Alex: Psychedelic pioneer from the 1960s.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: So he talks a lot about set and setting and he talks about it in the context of having the perfect psychedelic trip from acid or magic mushrooms or whatever it is. You know, you've got to focus on the set, which is your mindset going into it, and the setting, which is your environment. And he applied it to psychedelics, but I think the same is very much true of any drug and caffeine is a psychoactive drug, but also alcohol. Um and also most things in life, but set and setting. So if you focus on your mindset when drinking the cup of coffee and the setting in which you're drinking it, uh it'll have a huge impact.
Dr Rupy: 100%. Totally. For anyone who's uh uh not keen on the caffeine, there's quality decaf out there as well. So, you know, there's another way to experience the wonderful flavours that we've been talking about today. Um dude, this has been awesome. This has been great. I could speak to you about coffee so much. There's, you know, you sent over this research, there's massive table with all these different studies and uh the different tests that you've been doing and uh I just can't wait to see what you come up with next with Excel.
Alex: Mm, thank you. I feel like, you know, from all of the, it's been really exciting researching for this podcast and there's I think there's one future avenue which is going to be really interesting, the future of kind of healthy coffee, a really novel way of um direction to take this, which is we talked about the bioavailability of polyphenols. There is some research out there which shows that consuming different polyphenols together can improve the bioavailability of the whole of both of them, of each other. So we know that chlorogenic acid is a really bioavailable polyphenol. There are other polyphenols which are less bioavailable, but could consuming coffee at the same time as foods with these other types of polyphenols in enhance the bioavailability of them as well. So could there come a a polyphenol pairing moment where we're like, right, instead of thinking what should we not drink coffee with, which a lot of people talk about, we instead start thinking what should we drink coffee with.
Dr Rupy: Drink it with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: To help
Dr Rupy: Yeah, these pairings I think is really interesting. It's something that we've explored a little bit in the food world with like extra virgin olive oil, garlic, and onion, you know, that classic pairing. Well, there's studies that show that that classic pairing actually has um a scientific backing behind it. It's it's greater than the sum of its parts. So the synergism that exists within the food and drink world is is very real. And so figuring out what a great, I mean, we've just talked about like cloves and cinnamon and cardamom, you know, these are all rich polyphenol products. Like could a combination of that with coffee, like we currently do with like dirty chai and that kind of stuff. Does that accentuate some of those benefits? Maybe. Maybe some other novel ingredients, like, you know, different polyphenols that you find from fruit, for example. There might be like a pairing that we haven't come across yet that, you know, I'm sure that you'll you'll tell us about at some point in the future.
Alex: That's that's going to be the fun, fun thing to study. And the last point on this as well is uh, yeah, I've been working, you know, we had our antioxidant lab test done by Dr. Jan, who's a who has a a lab called Night Scientific, one of the world's leading experts on antioxidants. And she is big on this herself and she has a product which is a blend of four different polyphenols from natural food sources. I think one of them is green tea extract. So there's four different natural sources of polyphenols. And she's not interested too much in the polyphenol content of them. She's focused on the antioxidant capacity. And she's found that these four different polyphenols combined in a certain quantity as well, certain ratios, have massively enhanced the overall antioxidant effect of her product. So so um you know, combining them, it's very real. You know, she's a big advocate of it and boosting the antioxidant capacity like orders of magnitude.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's an interesting field and I'm definitely I'm really excited to see where it goes.
Alex: Cool. Thank you for having me. What a fun podcast.
Dr Rupy: Of course, man. Of course.
