The many benefits of specialty coffee

Specialty coffee infuses our body with many of its positive ingredients

Our founder Jordan Dabov likes to say that coffee is food. We could safely add that quality coffee is superfood. If a smile comes unintentionally on our faces as we sip on our favorite beverage, brewed with our favorite method, it’s not just because we’ve gotten the right dose of caffeine. Yes, coffee is addictive. In this case, however, this is not bad at all. On the contrary! Coffee infuses our body with its positive ingredients, which are not few and many studies confirm it. 

Coffee is beneficial if it is of high quality

Now we are going to talk about the benefits of coffee, so we need to make a very important point in the beginning. When we speak about the benefits of coffee, we refer to high quality, masterly roasted coffee beans from which a beverage is made. And the preparation method is of no importance.

For active people who have made healthy life choices, our specialty coffees can be the perfect companion. There are many reasons for this.

Which are coffee’s beneficial ingredients

Coffee is an extremely healthy drink because it is a champion in the number of antioxidants it contains and has many other ingredients that have a beneficial effect on our body.

Coffee is richer in antioxidants even than green tea and cocoa – unprocessed coffee beans contain about 1000 antioxidants. And during roasting, more are produced, such as the antioxidant methylpyridine, which protects us against certain tumor formations. As we know, antioxidants fight inflammation that causes many chronic conditions, including arthritis, arteriosclerosis, and many types of cancers. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals that occur as a result of daily metabolism and can cause oxidative stress leading to chronic illness. Folic acid, which is one of the most important antioxidants, for example, can be found mainly in coffee. And it prevents cardiovascular disease. The most important antioxidants that we get from food are vitamins and two groups of herbal compounds – carotenoids and phenolic compounds (tannins). Phenolic compounds, or in particular phenolic acids, are equal to 6 – 10% of the pure weight of ground coffee. Their contents range from 200 mg. up to 500 mg. in a cup of coffee.

What nutrients does a 240 ml cup of coffee contain?

• Vitamin B2: 11% of the recommended daily intake
• Vitamin B5: 6% of the recommended daily intake
• Vitamin B1: 2% of the recommended daily intake
• Vitamin B3: 2% of the recommended daily intake
• Manganese: 3% of the recommended daily intake
• Potassium: 3% of the recommended daily intake
• Magnesium: 2% of the recommended daily intake
• Folic acid: 1% of the recommended daily intake
• Phosphorus: 1% of the recommended daily intake

These quantities may not seem very significant but if you increase them by the number of cups you drink daily / weekly / monthly, you will find out how many beneficial nutriens you receive from coffee.

Scientists present more proofs that coffee is beneficial

Scientists believe that a moderate intake of 3-4 cups of coffee a day may not be related to causing disease, but on the contrary, it has obvious benefits for humans because it reduces the risk of various diseases. It regulates cardiac activity, raises blood pressure, excites the central nervous system and increases mental and physical activity. Although caffeine is the first thing we think of when it comes to coffee, its content is negligible. There are many more antioxidants and other active substances that can reduce internal body inflammations and protect us against disease.

We will cite only one of the studies that confirmed the positive effects of coffee on the human body, because otherwise our article will become a long bibliographic list. The 2018 Jama International Magazine Survey concludes that people who drink up to 8 cups of coffee a day are less at risk of premature death than those who avoid drinking coffee. The large-scale survey was conducted over 10 years and included a survey of 500,000 Britons, 387,494 of whom consumed coffee. The likelihood of premature death in those who consumed 2 to 5 cups of coffee a day during the study was 12% less than those who did not drink coffee in general. Even those whose body processes caffeine more slowly benefit the same way. The results apply to both caffeine and decaffeinated coffee. Instant coffee alone does not show a positive trend. The study draws on results from another UK study, the one by UK Biobank, conducted over a spam of 30 years.

Numerous other studies conclude that coffee drinkers are less likely to contract various types of cancer, second-type diabetes, depression, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cirrhosis and heart disease.

Which coffee will bring us the most benefits

It is best to choose high quality coffee. In the language of coffee, this means specialty coffee. Specialty coffee is made from selected beans and is skillfully roasted. The more special the coffee bean, the healthier the coffee beverage from it is. Farmers have a special attitude to specialty coffees, and this is reflected in each of the farm processes: picking – manually and only on ripe cherries, processing according to the coffee variety and climate, packaging in special bags and transportation so that no molds are obtained, storage of the beans under optimal conditions that guarantee their freshness. We look for those factors when we select our specialty coffees and then when we roast them with the most suitable profile that guarantees the best taste. This is how you get delicious specialty coffee.

Many baristas will agree that if you want to get the most out of the taste of a coffee, you should opt for a lighter roast, because it preserves the natural substances of coffee cherries. And if you filter it into a paper filter, you’ll be able to get rid of most of the oils in it, including cafestol and kahweol, which are to blame for the raise of cholesterol levels in the body. Our coffees are ideal for filtration. You can always ask our baristas about their roast level. But you should know that we generally prefer a lighter roast and when coffee allows it, we always opt for it.

What can we add to coffee and still be healthy

You should that you don’t need to add anything to specialty coffee to make it delicious. In fact, by drinking specialty coffee, you can give up sugar and cream, because specialty coffees are sweet and not bitter, their taste is pleasant and you do not need to add cream to swallow them.

Forget that original coffee taste is bitter! Specialty coffee lacks bitterness for several reasons: coffee bean comes from a fruit and, as a fruit, it is sweet and sour. Coffee is tasty enough, so it does not have to be overroasted and thus to acquire a bitter taste.

Bitter taste is not natural for our body – on the contrary: it causes increased release of adrenaline in the blood, because our body thinks that it is under threat of poisoning (poison in nature in most cases is bitter) and begins to fight for his life. All this is happening in our stomach and many people say that after morning coffee they become more alert, but their stomach aches. This is caused only from low-quality overroastedcoffee. Adrenaline is also to blame for raising the diastolic blood pressure. Many doctors already know that there is no connection between coffee and hypertension.

Overroasting of the beans is only done with low quality coffees. Keep in mind that roasting is most responsible for making coffee a carcinogen. Several studies have stated just that, and even in California, authorities were in the throes of enacting coffee packaging to carry a warning that the product was carcinogenic. They were influenced by a study that found that the acrylamide chemical formed during coffee bean roasting was associated with an increased risk of cancer in rodents who consumed huge amounts of it in the laboratory. The relationship between coffee and cancer in humans cannot be confirmed because the amount of acrylamide in coffee is negligible and so far there is no scientific study that has proved such a cause-and-effect relationship. Exactly the opposite. There are studies that prove that people who drink 2 cups of coffee a day are 40% less likely to have liver cancer. This is probably why the World Health Organization ruled in June this year that there was insufficient evidence in favor of coffee as a cancer cause, and California authorities ultimately did not pass the law.

More benefits from coffee

Caffeine boosts memory

Austrian scientists examined a group of volunteers who took 100 milligrams of caffeine. Magnetic resonance results showed that brain activity increased as they performed a memory task. Their responses also improved compared to those of the second group of volunteers who were given placebo.

Of course, we need to be careful in order to define the exact dose our body needs. According to the World Health Organization, the healthy dose of caffeine is up to 400 mg. per day. One cup of filter coffee (240 ml.) contains 140 mg of caffeine. For pregnant women, the dose is 200 mg. daily.

Coffee contributes to better athletic performance

Until recently, coffee was believed to dehydrate the body, so fitness experts recommended reducing its intake before and after exercise. However, a new study proves that consuming up to 500 mg a day not only does not dehydrate to an extent to disrupt exercise but helps the body cope with fatigue instead. So, sports fans can extend their workouts. Caffeine enhances muscle contraction, reduces pain, increases the level of fatty acids in the blood and they are believed to increase endurance.

In beverages containing caffeine, we can usually find from 30 to 120 mg. depending on the type of drink. Caffeine is rapidly absorbed by the circulatory system and is most potent between the 30th and 75th minutes after the intake. If you want to get the most out of your workout, concentrare it right at that interval. Even if you are a bit late to start, the level of caffeine in your body will start to decrease probably after 3 to 4 hours, so you have plenty of time. Caffeine can influence the movement of more muscle fibers used in muscle contractions in more intense exercises, so athletes can perform and increased number of more forceful movements. At the same time, caffeine also contributes to endurance, making it ideal for sports in which this quality is essential.

One American study on coffee evaluated the performance of two groups of sprinters – those who regularly consume caffeine and those who drink decaffeinated coffee. The caffeinated coffee drinkers ran the 1,500-meter stretch with 4.2 seconds faster than their opponents. Another study on coffee proves that the beverage helps athletes feel less effort while training and thus extend their workout time.

And there is more!

Coffee burns fats

It is quite logical that we can find caffeine in almost every dietary supplement that burns fat – it is one of the natural substances that have been proven to deal successfully with fats. Several studies have shown that caffeine boosts metabolism by between 3 and 11%.

Decaffeinated coffee is also healthy

Decaffeinated coffee is preferred by those who, for one reason or another, should avoid caffeine intake. Pregnant or breastfeeding women, hypertonic, or those who believe that caffein has a negative effect on their sleep, can enjoy as much decaf coffee as they want because even a decaf coffee is healthy.

Decaffeinated coffee contains only one to forty (1/40) of caffeine from an unprocessed coffee bean. However, keep in mind that 5-6 cups of decaffeinated coffee approximates the percentage of caffeine in one cup of caffeinated coffee. Even in decaffeinated coffee, though, there are many antioxidants. When extracting caffeine, only 15% of them could be lost. Decaf coffee also contains nutrients – with one cup you can get 2.4% of the recommended daily dose of magnesium, 4.8% of potassium, 2.5% of niacin or vitamin B3. Our House Blend Decaf is treated with water to extract caffeine from it. This is proven to be the most favorable method for extracting caffeine because it excludes any chemicals.