For years, I drank coffee. Then I stopped when I did my food detox, as coffee went out of my diet along with everything else I was questioning at the time. I wanted to get away from caffeine, and somewhere along the way I had also put coffee into the “probably not healthy” category. So I stopped drinking it and, for a decade that followed, I stayed away from it.
Turns out, I was wrong about coffee. At least partly wrong. The coffee bean itself contains some pretty remarkable compounds, and research has associated regular coffee consumption with a number of health benefits. But that does not automatically mean every bag of coffee, every brewing method, every gigantic coffee-shop concoction, or every amount of coffee is equally good for your body. Recently, that distinction is what brought coffee back into my life.
Coffee Has More to Offer
Most of us think about coffee and immediately think caffeine, but coffee contains hundreds of other naturally occurring compounds too. Among them are polyphenols and chlorogenic acids that contribute to antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity in the body. Those compounds are part of the reason researchers have become so interested in coffee beyond its ability to help people feel more awake.
In sifting through the mountains of research, I found coffee consumption to be more often associated with health benefits than harm. Researchers have linked coffee drinking with lower risks of type 2 diabetes, some liver conditions, cardiovascular disease and certain neurological conditions, and some studies have also associated it with lower rates of obesity and living longer. Coffee’s antioxidants and phytochemicals may help explain some of those patterns, including the findings around blood-sugar regulation and metabolic and cardiovascular health.
That does not mean we need to start pretending a cup of coffee is a multivitamin. It is still coffee, but it clearly has more going on nutritionally than simply being a warm vehicle for caffeine.
Then there is the part that makes blanket coffee advice nearly useless: every body handles coffee differently. Two people can drink the same amount and have completely different experiences. One may feel focused and energized and sleep perfectly well that night, while another may feel jittery, notice their heart beating faster, get an upset stomach, or still be staring at the ceiling at midnight wondering why their brain has decided it is noon. How quickly your body metabolizes coffee, the quality of the coffee you are drinking, how much you drink, when you drink it and your own sensitivity all matter.
That is why I think the research and your body both belong in this conversation. Coffee may look beneficial across large groups of people, but you are not a large group of people. A study can tell you what happened across thousands of people while your body tells you what is happening to YOU. Both are useful information.
All of this also reminded me how quickly nutrition gets reduced to simplistic categories. Healthy. Unhealthy. Good. Bad. Drink it. Never touch it. Meanwhile, the truth is usually standing somewhere in the middle waving its arms while everybody argues. The more useful questions may be: What kind of coffee are you drinking, how much are you drinking, how is it being prepared, and what is it doing in your body?
There Is Coffee, and Then There Is the Coffee We Actually Buy
Coffee is an agricultural product. It is grown, harvested, processed, dried, stored, shipped, roasted, ground, packaged, stored again and eventually brewed. There are plenty of opportunities along that journey for quality to matter. If you drink coffee regularly, it is worth asking how much you actually know about what happened to those beans before they reached your kitchen.
One issue I started paying attention to was mold and mycotoxins. Certain molds that can grow on coffee can produce ochratoxin A, or OTA, a mycotoxin that has been found in green, roasted and instant coffee. A worldwide review found OTA in a significant percentage of the coffee samples studied, although the estimated exposure from coffee overall was generally below levels considered a health concern. In other words, OTA in coffee is real, but “mycotoxins exist in coffee” and “your morning coffee is poisoning you” are most definitely not the same statement.
I remember years ago reading stories about coffee that supposedly could not be sold in other countries because of mold but could still be sold in the United States. That stuck with me because my immediate response was basically: Excuse me, what exactly are we drinking over here? When I dug into that claim again, I could not substantiate the broad statement that coffee rejected by other countries simply gets rerouted and sold to Americans. I did, however, find enough to understand why concerns around coffee quality developed in the first place.
The European Union sets a specific maximum level for ochratoxin A in roasted and ground coffee, while the United States does not have an equivalent specific limit for OTA in coffee. That does not mean American coffee is unsafe, and I am not interested in turning coffee into another thing people are supposed to fear. It does, however, make me more interested in knowing something about the company supplying mine.
“Mold-Free” Means More to Me Than Fancy Packaging
This is why I now buy Purity Coffee. I am not suggesting that everyone has to buy the same brand I do, but I do think coffee is one of those foods where asking more questions makes sense (and no, I’m not an affiliate for Purity Coffee—yet). If something is going into your body regularly, knowing more about where it came from and how it was handled seems reasonable.
According to Purity, its coffee is USDA Certified Organic, specialty-grade, regeneratively farmed and third-party tested for mold, mycotoxins, pesticide residues and other contaminants. The company also says it tests levels of compounds such as chlorogenic acids and trigonelline and adjusts its roasting protocols with the goal of retaining more of them. Those are the kinds of things I pay attention to when I buy coffee because quality means more to me than a pretty package and a good story on the label.
Organic matters to me, but I also look for transparency about sourcing, storage, testing and processing. Third-party testing is particularly meaningful because a company saying its coffee is clean and an independent laboratory actually looking for contaminants are two different things. Coffee quality should not be judged entirely by whether the bag has a mountain, a rainforest and the word artisan printed on it. Marketing departments are very creative people.
Obviously you do not have to buy the brand I buy. But if coffee is something you drink regularly, you can find out whether your brand tells you anything about sourcing, testing, mold, pesticides or processing. At minimum, that gives you more useful information than simply choosing whichever bag happens to be on sale or has fancy packaging.
Roasting Changes Coffee Too
There is another wrinkle. Roasting creates that smell that can make an entire grocery-store aisle suddenly seem worth wandering down, but high-temperature roasting also produces compounds including acrylamide and furan. Researchers continue to study these and other compounds created during roasting and how different roasting methods may affect both the unwanted compounds and the beneficial ones.
This is not an argument to stop drinking coffee. Roasting also creates many of the flavors and aromatic compounds that make coffee coffee, while changing some of its naturally occurring beneficial compounds along the way. It is another reason I have stopped thinking about foods as merely an ingredient name. “Coffee” does not tell you everything you might want to know any more than “chicken,” “olive oil,” or “chocolate” does, because how something was grown, processed, stored and prepared can change what eventually enters your body.
And Then There Are the K-Cups
This one bothered me even before I researched it. We spend a lot of time talking about avoiding heating food in plastic, and then millions of people intentionally run very hot water under pressure through coffee contained in a plastic pod every morning. I think it is a perfectly reasonable thing to question, especially when there are easy ways to make coffee without doing it.
Researchers have detected chemicals including BPA, BPF, phthalates and benzophenone in some coffee brewed with plastic pods. One laboratory study also found weak hormone-like activity in the coffee it tested, although the amounts detected in studies have generally been low. A small human study also did not find greater exposure from pod-brewed coffee than from French press coffee. That is another reason I do not think this needs to turn into panic over a single K-Cup.
The way I think about it, it is more about how much plastic you are exposed to overall in your daily life. Food containers, bottles, packaging, storage containers and countless other things can all become part of the picture, and those small exposures add up over time. Would I personally choose to repeatedly run near-boiling water through plastic when I can easily make coffee without doing it? No. For me, this falls into the category of reducing an unnecessary exposure when doing so is easy.
If you use K-Cups every morning, that does not mean you need to panic about tomorrow’s coffee or throw your machine into the driveway. It may simply be one of those exposures worth reconsidering, especially the next time you replace your coffee maker or change the way you brew. Not every health decision needs to involve sirens and a hazmat suit.
How You Brew It Can Matter in Another Way
Brewing method can even affect cholesterol. Coffee contains oily compounds called cafestol and kahweol, and unfiltered brewing methods such as French press, boiled coffee and some espresso preparations can leave considerably more of these compounds in the cup. Cafestol in particular can raise LDL cholesterol, while paper filtering removes much of it, although the amount varies depending on the coffee and filtering method.
That does not suddenly make French press coffee “bad,” and it does not mean everyone needs to change how they make coffee. If you drink several cups of unfiltered coffee every day and your LDL is something you are watching, however, your brewing method may be another piece of useful information. Once again, knowing more simply gives you another choice about what works best for your body.
When Coffee Stops Being Just Coffee
There is another problem with talking about the health benefits of coffee: sometimes what we call “coffee” is mostly everything we added to it. A plain cup of coffee and a giant drink loaded with flavored syrup, added sugar, sweetened creamer, whipped cream and drizzle are not nutritionally the same thing simply because they both started with a coffee bean. Somewhere between the bean and the whipped topping, we may have changed the conversation considerably.
Research has even found that adding sugar can work against some of coffee’s apparent advantage when it comes to long-term weight management. So if you are drinking coffee because you have heard it may support blood sugar and metabolic health while simultaneously turning it into liquid dessert, we may need to give the coffee less credit for what happens next. Coffee may bring antioxidants and phytochemicals to the party, but it cannot control who else you invited.
And then there is the cream itself. If you use dairy, I think quality belongs in this conversation too. Where did it come from? How were the animals raised? Is it plain cream, or is your “creamer” actually a highly processed combination of sweeteners, oils, gums and flavors? The same questions I ask about the quality of my coffee do not suddenly stop once I reach for whatever I am putting into it.
Iced coffee deserves its own mention because cold coffee is not inherently the problem. Plain coffee poured over ice does not suddenly lose its potential health benefits because someone added ice cubes. But many of the enormous iced coffee drinks being sold today come loaded with syrups, sweetened milks, flavored creamers, foams, whipped toppings and sauces. At some point we have wandered pretty far away from coffee and into dessert-with-a-straw territory.
That does not mean you can never enjoy one. It just helps to remember what we mean when we talk about the potential benefits of coffee. Researchers are not studying your 24-ounce caramel-whatever with three pumps of syrup, sweet cream foam and a drizzle around the cup. That drink may be delicious, but coffee should not be expected to perform nutritional crowd control for everything else in it.
There Is Another Question: Do You Enjoy Coffee, or Do You Require It?
This may be the part of the coffee conversation I find most interesting. For years I lived with someone who could barely function before having coffee in the morning. He drank two cups at home and then took a full thermos with him every single day. Coffee was apparently part of the ignition and fuel system, and personally, I never wanted that kind of relationship with it.
For me, there is a big difference between enjoying a cup and feeling like you cannot get through the day without one. I am less interested in deciding how many cups everyone should drink than I am in noticing the role coffee plays in my own life. Enjoying something and depending on it are not necessarily the same relationship.
Do you actually enjoy the coffee you are drinking? Are you choosing it because you want it, or reaching for another cup because you feel like you need it to keep going? Maybe those questions tell you more about your relationship with coffee than somebody else’s recommended number ever could. That relationship is worth paying attention to too.
My Coffee Looks Very Different Now
I recently bought a small coffee maker that brews about five cups at a time. I rarely drink all of it, and some days I don’t drink coffee at all. I like it that way because coffee is something I enjoy now, not something I feel like I have to build my morning around.
There is no urgency around it. Sometimes coffee sounds delicious, sometimes tea does, and sometimes neither one does. I still love tea, and my body seems to do best when I give it variety rather than deciding one supposedly healthy thing needs to become an everyday requirement. Coffee simply has a place in that variety again.
That may be the biggest thing coffee has taught me the second time around. Something can have benefits without needing to become a daily ritual, and something can fit into a healthy lifestyle without needing to become part of your identity. I can enjoy coffee again, appreciate what it may have to offer, and still let my body decide whether today happens to be a coffee day.
Maybe Coffee Isn’t the Question
If you drink coffee, I am not particularly interested in convincing you to drink more of it or less of it. I am more interested in whether you know what you are drinking. Where did the beans come from? How were they grown and handled? Does the company test for mold, mycotoxins and pesticide residues? Are you brewing your coffee through plastic? Are you drinking filtered or unfiltered coffee? What are you adding to it? And how does the coffee you drink actually work for your body?
Those questions are far more useful than asking whether coffee is simply “healthy.” One of the biggest lessons I wrote about in The Awakened Body is learning to stop outsourcing every decision about your body and start paying attention to available information. Research gives us information. Labels give us information. Testing gives us information. And your own body gives you information too.
Coffee has some impressive things going for it, and it also gives us plenty of reasons to care about quality, preparation and what ends up in the finished cup. Knowing both sides of that story is what changed my relationship with coffee. These days, I am perfectly happy pouring myself a good cup, sitting down and enjoying it, and if tomorrow I want tea instead, the coffee maker will somehow survive.