How To Buy, Roast, Grind & Brew The Healthiest Cup Of Coffee You'll Ever Drink.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. If you listen to the last podcast episode, the one right before this one, you no doubt know that I am on a coffee quest trying to find the healthiest coffee bean on the face of the planet. If you listen to the entire previous podcast episode, and if you didn't, what the heck's wrong with you? Go to itunes or your podcast listener device or your car Spotify Pandora thing. I don't even know if podcasts are on Pandora. I don't think they are. That'd be a good idea, Pandora. You should put podcasts on there. Go listen to my podcast with Andrew Salisbury. We talked about how I'm now drinking the organist most pure, fresh, clean, antioxidant, rich coffee in existence. It's called Kion coffee. But why would I put a coffee out there and not also tell you all of the mistakes that I've made brewing coffee and grinding coffee and how you can actually get the most out of the coffee that you're drinking by preparing it the right way. It was a while ago that I read this fantastic article by this guy named Adele Moussa on how to buy and roast and grind and brew the healthiest cup of coffee you'll ever drink. So I figured, heck, let's get this dude on a podcast. Talk more about coffee. Why not? So today we're going to talk about like optimizing caffeine content and healthy levels of chlorogenic acid in your brew. Antioxidants, the effects of coffee on your blood, lipids, whole bunch of other cool stuff. So you're going to want to check this one out for sure. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

The cancer protective effects that scientists have observed in some, at least of the epidemiological studies that they are related to these two components. The main advantage of green coffee is that you get the maximum amount of chlorogenic acid because you have all the chlorogenic acid, basically that's in the beans still available for extraction. You also see greater increases in blood pressure with great caffeine or other caffeinated products compared to coffee. Is that organic acid is our hair's blood pressure lowering effect.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement.

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When you look at all the studies done studies that have shown the greatest efficacy. All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and I hope that you are ready to take the deepest dive that you may have ever taken into the art of preparing the perfect cup of coffee, including optimizing things like the caffeine content, the amount of healthy levels of what's called chlorogenic acid in your brew, antioxidants effect on blood lipids, a whole lot more. My guest on today's show is Adel Moussa and he recently investigated the impressive host of coffee data that he came up with after dozens of hours he spent on Google scholar and on PubMed for this very cool website that he has called Supversity. And he discovered some really, really interesting coffee tips that you're gonna discover today. And Adele himself, he is a physicist, I believe, a trained physicist, and his blog is actually really good. He has thousands of fully referenced articles and it's one of my go to sources for really good, well referenced, unbiased information about the latest, most relevant studies in the realms of diet and health and fitness and a whole lot more. He also works as a reviewer for one of my other favorite sources, the Examine Research Digest, which is, is a really great resource for also discovering new studies in a very unbiased, well researched format. So the dude knows his stuff. And of course you're a physicist, so you have to be smart, right?

Adele, people always say so that physicists are really smart. I think that it may be true that you have to be good in math, but some people are only good in math and that's actually one of my weaknesses or was one of the things I have been struggling during my struggling with during my studies. So I'm not sure if I'm really smart or just effective.

Yeah, but you know, like how fast something is going to hit the ground after you drop it off of a building or that equation.

That's easy.

Yeah, when the two cars are coming at each other, you know, one's coming from Florida and the other one's coming from California where they're going to meet. I'm sure you would be pretty good at that one too, I guess. But of course the million dollar question is the coffee question. And before we jump into some of the things you found about preparing the perfect cup of coffee and also making sure that it is either as healthy or as wakefulness promoting for you as possible, I'm curious, do you drink coffee? And if so, what does your morning coffee routine actually look like.

Well, obviously I drink coffee not necessarily for the health benefits, but that's just more or less a side effect I really appreciate, but I simply like the taste of it. And I usually start my day with coffee for breakfast and another one later somewhere in the a.m. while I'm at work. And usually two coffees before workout unless I'm going to work out late in the pm. So then I will skip the caffeine because it really makes it difficult for me to fall asleep then.

So how do you actually prepare your coffee? Like walk me through the art, take.

Your time, you will be laughing. But I'm using one of the classic coffee makers with the machines with the filters because I personally have a problem if there is too much acid in the coffee. I tend to get heartburn. And using the filter takes out some of the components that precipitate to getting heartburn and that's the main reason I'm using classic filter coffee.

So what is it that causes heartburn for people in coffee? Like what's the actual acid?

That's not 1% clear but unfortunately one of the things that is really notorious causing that is actually chlorogenic acid. So I already gave it away. Yes, I'm taking into, I'm actually accepting that I'm losing some of the beneficial antioxidants in the filter. But it's the best way for me to get along without having to take TPIs or whatever.

Now that's one of the reasons that I like when I use the Aeropress, which is one method of coffee preparation that I'll use and I like, I use their little stainless steel filter and I also like to use French press and my wife uses the paper filter but I don't use the paper even though we have a really nice coffee maker called a Wilfa and it just makes this super silky smooth coffee. It's a paper filter and the reason I don't use it is because it filters out a lot of this phytochemical called chlorogenic acid. And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that one of the more beneficial components of coffee in terms of the ability to reduce blood sugar levels and have almost an anti diabetic effect and even potentially a fat loss or a lipid burning type of effect?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We don't really know how the different components in coffee work together, but it appears that chlorogenic acid is one of the most important ingredients next to coffee. And so the, the good thing is that the filter doesn't take out all of this, all of the chlorogenic acid, but it does reduce the level significantly. So you have to make compromise. I would say, on the other hand, choosing a certain blend or a certain brand also of coffee will make a huge difference as well. So it is well possible that my coffee that has gone through the filter still contains more chlorogenic acid, because I simply have better, or in this term, better brand.

Okay, got it. I want to ask you a few questions just while we're on the chlorogenic acid bandwagon. And I know we'll talk about some of the other beneficial things in coffee as well. But first of all, if you did want to maximize the chlorogenic acid levels, let's say you wanted all the benefits, the blood sugar and on the fat burning, when it comes to what chlorogenic acid can do. From that standpoint, are there things that you could either combine the coffee with or ways that you could prepare the coffee, whether it's temperature or otherwise, or methods of choosing your beans that would allow you to maximize the chlorogenic acid?

Well, as I pointed out before, you probably would be best off by starting to get the right blend of coffee beans. So basically, most coffees are a mix of Robusta and Arabica beans. And if you are familiar with buying coffee, you will have noticed that the Arabica blends. The blends where you have more Arabica than Robusta are the expensive ones. That's because unlike Robusta, where the name already gives it away, Arabica is rather difficult to produce and therefore it's more expensive. It also tastes milder, usually than the Robusta, although there are differences according to region, quite obviously. But the Robusta contains more chlorogenic acid. When I've been doing the research, I found conflicting data on that. But the majority of studies that compared the two found that Robusta has the higher chlorogenic acid content.

Robusta has more chlorogenic acid in it.

Exactly. So you would have to have that bit more bitter coffee in order to get most out of it. And back in the days when the thing about the weight loss surface. You mentioned that before. I think that was probably five years ago or so, at least that there were a couple of human studies which suggested that it can really help weight loss, and that spiked the interest of many people in green coffee, because during the roasting process, a lot of chlorogenic acid is actually lost. So you are best off to buy a blend that is high in Robusta and then to buy a light Roast or to consume straight raw coffee that hasn't been roasted at all, because that's what still contains the most chlorogenic acid in its original form.

Interesting. Now, these robusta beans, from what I understand, like they're, they're cheaper to grow. And one of the reasons for that is because they're more disease and insect resistant compared to arabica. And I think that part of that is because caffeine acts as a natural insecticide and antimicrobial agent. So when you're selecting for higher chlorogenic acid, and if you decide you're going to drink one of these more bitter robusta beans, you're also going to get more caffeine, right?

Yeah, usually say about two times more. But that also depends on where and how the coffee was grown. But in general, you are selecting coffee that's higher in caffeine as well. The interesting thing, however, is that for maximizing the caffeine content, you would actually have to aim for a medium roast, not a light rose. So there you will have to decide what's more important for you. Or you can increase the caffeine and probably also the chlorogenic acid content by milling it finer. So if you have a very fine powder, you will be able to extract much more caffeine from it than from coarse one.

Okay, so just to clarify, you're saying that the lighter roast and a finer grind would result in a higher amount of caffeine?

The. The medium roast would be the best for the highest caffeine content a medium.

So more is not better. A dark roast would not have more caffeine than a medium roast?

No, interestingly not. So it is not quite clear how the chemical makeup changes. So we don't know if the is lost during the process or if there's simply less caffeine ending up in the brew. But in general, the grinding quite obviously increases the surface area of the coffee, and that always helps with the extraction.

Okay, got it. Now, just returning to chlorogenic acid before we shift to caffeine. Some of the interesting things that I learned about chlorogenic acid from your articles and other research I've done on coffee is that it can stimulate these GLUT4 transporters, which are responsible for stimulating uptake of glucose into, for example, muscles. And this got me thinking, and I know that's one of the ways it can lower blood sugar so dramatically. Would doing like a chlorogenic acid rich coffee, like either a robusta bean or a bean that had perhaps been medium roasted or something that hadn't been filtered through a paper filter, be something that if consumed post workout along with like a carbohydrate, could, for example, allow you to more, more rapidly replenish your glycogen levels.

Yeah. There's actually a study that shows just that. So the post workout coffee is something that makes a complete sense, especially if you try to maximize the chlorogenic acid content. You will see a faster replenishment of the glycogen stores because it appears to increase and also to specifically increase the uptake of glucose by the muscle tissue. So that's something that makes it quite interesting to at least dabble with a coffee after the workout as well. Maybe not the highest dosage, but there's study that actually confirms your hypothesis. Yes.

The other thing that I was thinking about, when it comes to stacking certain things with coffee, there's this idea behind cold thermogenesis, like cold soaks and cold baths and cold showers to enhance fat loss. That's one reason people would do that, to increase their conversion of adipose tissue into metabolically active adipose tissue, like brown adipose tissue. And from what I understand, the same chlorogenic acid, if you're choosing your coffee to maximize chlorogenic acid, can actually act as what's called a PPAR agonist, increasing the potential for proliferation of these new brown adipose tissue cells. So would that be another strategy or have you run into any research on that strategy, like having a cup of coffee before you do a cold shower or a cold bath in the morning to maximize the ability to convert white into brown adipose tissue?

I know that there are studies in rodents that show that this is quite successful. The only problem I see is rodents are not a very good model for human beings when it comes to brown adipose tissue because they have much more than we do and they are also much more prone to develop it. Humans actually are born with a significant amount, at least most of us. But many of us are going to lose most of it during our lifetime. And it really depends obviously on genetics whether or not you are somebody who is going to build more brown fat again. But I think it is at least worth the try. It's not going to hurt. And if it's not the chlorogenic acid, it's the caffeine that's going to help you liberate fatty acids from the stores. And that would also make sense before you jump into the cold shower, for.

Example, did you find anything else out about chlorogenic acid when you were researching it for these articles? You wrote on coffee.

Well, it also appears to be involved in the beneficial effects coffee has on the liver. So this could be directly or indirectly related to the beneficial effects on glucose metabolism because we know that non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is really a plague these days, is closely related to type 2 diabetes. So I think that there is a link that is quite obvious and there is a significant data that really shows that people drink coffee have a lower rate of liver problems than people who don't. So this could be one of the reasons. But again, I think that it's probably a blend of many of the different that really makes the difference here. So caffeine is also implied in that and there are also other antioxidant components and coffee that may be responsible for that.

That's fascinating. What I really like and I'll link to this by the way, for those of you listening in. I'll link to some of Adele's articles in the show notes along with some of the things we talk about. You just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CoffeePodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com CoachPodcast and I'll link to what I'm about to bring up. And that is this fascinating. It's a graph that you have in the article showing the chlorogenic acid content of of different types of coffees. And for example, like Little Italy was really high and chapter one was really high. Costa was another one that was really high. Starbucks was super low. Where'd you come across this chart? Was this something that was done in a research study?

Yeah, it was part of a study from 2012. And basically they wanted to determine the chlorogenic acid content in a commercially available coffee. Would buy if you simply go get coffee at the coffee shop and they have a couple of well known and less well known coffee shops there, Starbucks is on the list. And it's interestingly enough, not very high in chlorogenic acid, which could be a sign that they use the expensive Arabica blend.

Well, they also roast their coffees quite a bit. Right. Which would decrease chlorogenic acid content.

Yeah, true. So that could be a mix. Could also be a different processing technique. And we have to be honest, it could be. It is well possible that if you went there on another day, you would have had different results. So they did retest. But still from batch to batch you will get differences. Even though I have to admit that this is a really big difference, like tenfold. So it is probably not just coincidence.

Okay, got it. Now when it Comes to chlorogenic acid. The one last thing I wanted to ask you about was I know that caffeine. We know that we see blood pressure spikes when someone drinks caffeine. And from what I understand, chlorogenic acid actually has what's called an antihypertensive effect, and I guess a pretty potent antihypertensive effect. So if you wanted to avoid some of the blood pressure increasing properties of coffee, if you were concerned about that, you would indeed want to choose a coffee that had been less roasted, so it had less caffeine in it, and a robusta bean. So you're getting low caffeine and high chlorogenic acid content.

Well, you would compromise the low caffeine if you take a robusta blend, because unfortunately, it's also high in coffee and caffeine. So it's not just high in chlorogenic acid, but also high in coffee. If it's lightly roasted, you will at least get not as much coffee out of it. Caffeine. Sorry, out of it. As you would do with a medium rose. Okay, so that would work. And I think that you are right that part of the reason why you also see greater increases in blood pressure with straight caffeine or other caffeinated products compared to coffee is that chlorogenic acid is or has a blood pressure lowering effect.

Yeah, I mean, well, there's. There's a lot of health effects of coffee that, you know, we probably don't even have time to get into today. But I did interview. It was a very interesting interview. It's called 63 Cups of Coffee a Day, based off this philosopher named Voltaire, who purportedly drank 63 cups of coffee a day. It was with Deepak Chopra's brother, who was a physician, I believe, at Harvard. And we really delved into drinking a lot of coffee. So for those of you who want to delve even more deeply into the health benefits of coffee that go beyond just say, chlorogenic acid. Definitely go listen to that one on 63 cups of coffee. And I'll link to that. The next question that I wanted to ask you, Adele, before we turn to some other components that people might not know about in coffee, like diterpenes and melanoidins. Is this idea behind caffeine? We talked about how a robusta bean is gonna have higher amounts of caffeine, and we talked about how the darker the roast is, the less caffeine content you're gonna get. But is there anything else that one could do to either decrease or to increase the Amount of caffeine in the coffee that they drink.

Well, if you want to get the most out of it, you choose the right beans, the robusta, you grind it finely in order make the extraction process more efficient. And then you don't use a filter, but rather a semi automatic machine you would use to produce an espresso. So one of those classic devices that you will see around and they are also very cheap compared to the high tech equipment that people buy today. Those usually tend to have a much higher caffeine content and the difference is actually quite significant. So if you compare that to one of the filter machines, even those which don't have a paper filter, but rather a metal filter, you will find that there's almost a factor for difference even if you use the same beans. So the machine, there's an effect of four different.

So four times greater caffeine if you don't use a paper filter.

Yes, exactly. If you don't use any kind of filter and simply produce a regular essential espresso with one of the manual or semi automatic as they are often called machines.

Okay, cool. What about one thing, I guess I will back up here just slightly decaffeinated coffee when we're drinking that, does that have any chlorogenic acid in it at all?

Yeah, it does actually. It is not really removed. There is some chlorogenic acid lost during the processing. And you also often have different beans though maybe the beans contain as much chlorogenic acid to begin with. But you're not going to lose on that if you have issues with caffeine or want to drink another coffee late in the day and can't fall asleep if you, if you do it with caffeine.

Okay, so, so grind very fine, don't use a paper filter and choose more of a robusta bean. If you just want coffee to like make smoke come out your ears and you want as much caffeine as possible, but you might also get a little bit of like a heartburn effect because you're going to get really high amounts of chlorogenic acid as well. Compared to if you had used a paper filter and if you had chosen more of like a, like a medium roast.

Correct. And the caffeine is going to contribute to the issue, to the gut issues as well.

Okay, gotcha. I guess I said medium roast, but even, even a darker roast would have even less of the. The chlorogenic acid or a darker roast have less of the caffeine. It.

Both of both of it actually. But the reduction in chlorogenic acid is most significant in the dark rose.

Okay, that's right, that's right. Okay, got it. Now, there are also fatty acids in coffee. You know, you'll hear, you know, folks like Dave Asprey will talk about this. I've mentioned it before on the show about how when you blend butter with coffee, you're taking a lot of these psychoactive compounds that, that aren't the same as caffeine, like Kahwai Al and cafe Stol and some of these other things, and you're making those a little bit more soluble, able to cross the blood brain barrier, able to spark a little bit more of a cognitive boosting effect. And from what I understand, those are specifically they'd be categorized as fatty acids in the coffee, Is that correct?

Well, they are not fatty acids themselves, but they are associated with the oil that or the old fraction that is in the coffee. I think that's also behind the theory that if you add extra fat, they are going to mingle with that and be better absorbed. I haven't seen any research that confirms that, but I haven't been looking for it very closely. So it's possible that there are studies that support this notion and it's quite clear that they are associated with the oil part. So you can produce an oil from coffee and that has very high concentrations of these D terpenes.

Okay, so let's say that we weren't concerned about increased cholesterol levels and you know, we didn't believe in the whole like heart health cholesterol hypothesis. Unless you have something like, you know, familial hypercholesteremia or unless you have rampant levels of inflammation or high blood glucose or something else that might cause that cholesterol to become oxidized. Let's say we actually wanted to maximize the fatty acid content of the coffee that we're drinking, or we wanted to maximize the presence of those, those coleals, those cafestals. And we didn't necessarily want to add a whole bunch of things like, you know, butter or coconut oil, for example. Not that I have anything against that, but let's say wewe didn't want to do that. Are there, are there ways that you can enhance the lipid fraction of coffee without necessarily adding extra fats to the coffee.

Yeah, that's mostly a function of how you prepare it. So again, you would have to go for an espresso classic one. And you can actually also taste and see that that there is, there is more. The fatty acids, they are not just giving you the D terpenes. But they are also at the same time adding to the, to the taste and the mouthfeel of coffee. So basically, the more filtering there is involved, the less of the fatty acids and thus the less of the related terpenes are you going to get. So if you compare that, that's about 100 milligram per cup of espresso and only 7 milligrams of total fatty acids for a cup of filter caffeine.

But at the same time, the espresso has less caffeine in it, right?

Interestingly enough, it does, yes. So the espresso has a high content of caffeine, but usually you don't have the same size. So if you have the regular cup sizes for coffee and espresso, the espresso doesn't give you as much caffeine as the regular cup will do.

Okay, got it. So if you wanted to maximize the amount of these diterpenes like Cofestol and Kawaol for getting a lot of fatty acids out of the coffee, and you didn't want a lot of the caffeine, you could go with espresso. But if you wanted both the caffeine and then also all of these potentially beneficial fatty acids, you would simply want to, very similar to the strategy for chlorogenic acid, just basically not use a paper filter and choose some other filtration method like, say, a French press.

Yeah, exactly. That's. That would be the ideal strategy. And that's not just because you may be concerned about your brain. It's also that these capstol and Kagiol, they have also been linked to some of the antioxidant effects and if they are applied in the petri dish. So I know that's not exactly telling you what's going to happen in your body, but at least these studies that did that, they show that it can actually help make cancer cells more vulnerable to your body's own defenses and also chemotherapy. So it is possible that the cancer protective effects that scientists have observed in some, at least of the epidemiological studies that they are related to these two components. So I really have to support what you said before. Unless you have a genetic issue with cholesterol, this wouldn't be a reason to use a filter.

Okay, now what about the grind? Like, is there any difference when we look at fatty acid content with like a fine grind versus a rough grind?

I have to admit that I didn't find studies that specifically looked at that. But in general, this is a physics effect. So if you increase the surface Area, you will always get more out of an extraction. So I would expect that we will also get more of the, of the fatty acids and thus the other beneficial associated molecules. If you have a finer grind, boom.

You'Ve officially used your physics degree. Good job. That finally came in handy for you. Okay, so these things, they're also called diterpenes, correct? These fatty acids?

Yeah, correct.

Okay. And are there any other, in addition to coffee stol and kawai al, any other beneficial diterpenes you think we should know about?

Well, in the context of coffee, those are the only two we know for sure. And they are the ones that have been well researched because they have been linked to cholesterol. And you know that this is a research area that has been dealt with for 25 years, 50 years, I don't know how long, but it is possible that there are other molecules, but we don't know them very well.

Yeah. And related to this cholesterol and fatty acid issue, it's very interesting because I'm asked often, I know many people are, who do intermittent fasting, you know, whether or not coffee technically breaks your fast. And from what I understand, while the caloric contribution of these fatty acids is very low and they're not going to spike insulin, of course, so you don't need to worry about that. It's very interesting. There's a guy named Dr. Sachin Panda and I don't know if you're familiar with him or his research. I was just speaking with him in Iceland and I asked him about this because he was literally giving a presentation on the circadian clock and he said that he felt that having a cup of coffee in the morning because anything that you consume, from supplements to coffee, could potentially cause an increase in incretant hormones in the gut or could potentially, from a very simple standpoint, send a message to your brain that the clock has started on your window for eating or what he calls your non time restricted or your time restricted feeding window. He says that a cup of coffee is technically breaking a fast. What do you think about that?

Well, I'm, I'm not quite sure about that. Also because a cup of coffee has also been shown to actually increase AMP kinase. So that would be the molecule that is increased when you are fasting. And it's also partly responsible for the beneficial effects. So I wouldn't be too concerned about that. I wouldn't sugar my coffee heavily. So that would be a problem. But also if you want to, if you discuss fasting, you often also get the issue of Is it going to get to kick me out of ketosis? And that's also something that's not going to happen. Actually. There's an interesting study that has been published about a year ago, I guess, which showed that if you consume a coffee with your breakfast, you're going to get into ketosis faster. So I would doubt that it is really a problem. On the other hand, it is possible that there are other mechanisms other than the nutrient content that will reset the biological clock and thus actually mess up with some of the effects you want to create by fasting.

Yeah, I agree. And just from a total N equals one standpoint and also a strategy that I'll use quite often with my clients who are trying to lose weight quickly, that combination of a cup of morning coffee or a cup of green tea combined with a little bit of cold thermogenesis and even some facet aerobic activity, like an easy walk in the sunshine, that seems to work like gangbusters for fat loss. And so, yeah, I've never really worried about coffee unless you put a lot of especially insulin spiking compounds in it, like sugar, et cetera, or even a lot of calories that are going to be calories you have to burn before you tap into your own body fat. Which is why again, like I'm, I'm not opposed to this concept of bulletproof coffee, for example. However, it is, you know, it's, it's calories. And so what I found is a basic black cup of coffee in the morning, you know, maybe save your bulletproof coffee for, for later on in the morning, combined with some, some cold and some fasting seems to, seems to really move the dial for fat loss.

Yeah. It also helps with the, the appetite. So it helps you to control the appetite rather.

Absolutely. A little bit of an appetite suppressing effect. Yeah. What about. There's a compound that I noticed that you talked about in some of your research called melanoidins. What are those and what do those have to do with coffee?

Well, they are one of the other not so well known components of coffee, and they are produced or they are Maillard products, meaning they are the result of the reaction between sugars and amino acids that takes place if you heat food significantly. And this already tells you that they arise during the roasting process. And they have also been found individually to have antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti, carcinogenic, anti, inflammatory and antihypertensive effects. So they're very interesting from the perspective of trying to figure out how the different molecules and coffee actually act together and how they produce the health effects you've been discussing in the previous context in the previous podcast. Sorry, so you. We shouldn't really disregard them. On the other hand, it's difficult to say how much of the overall effect of coffee is actually due to them. They also probably figure in the taste because the whole roasting process is generating many of these by products. And it's not just for coffee, but also for the other foods we roast or we heat that they derive a lot of their taste from the chemical reactions that occur. Once you're actually producing the food with decent amount of heat.

Is there a way to actually increase the amount of melanoidins in a cup of coffee? Yeah.

Again, the medium rose, the happy medium, as so often that appears to be the best. So I would expect that after, after some heavy rose stain, you will see a destruction of the. Of the melanoidins so that the best one is the medium rose. The second best one is still the dark rose. And the less roasting you have, the fewer of the melanin you're going to have.

Yeah. So far the message I'm getting over and over again is that that a medium roast would be best. And if you could handle the taste, even going with. With a little bit more of a. A robusta type of bean versus an Arabica blend could be better if. If the taste is less of an issue to you than. Than the actual health effect.

Yeah, exactly. Or you will have to try and find a robusto that is not that bitter, although you run the risk that it doesn't contain as much caffeine because caffeine is also bitter. So it will probably contribute to the taste.

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, if you're listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CoffeePodcast if you have found a really good tasting robusta bean. Now, when we talk about this concept of roasting. You know, my dad was a gourmet coffee roaster when I was growing up, which is probably why I know more than I know about some other things when it comes to coffee. I used to wake up as a little boy and the very first smell that I would smell would be green coffee beans roasting outside. As dad would receive all these burlap sacks full of bags from Costa Rica and Guatemala and Tanzania, and it was kind of cool to be able to wander out there. It's probably why I likely gave myself what would be close to adrenal fatigue at 13 years old by sucking down 20 shots of espresso a day, because I just thought espresso was kind of like water at that point, because everybody would come over to our house and drink amazing coffees from these amazing Italian espresso machines that were just scattered all over the place because my dad repaired espresso machines too. But one thing that I heard about was this concept of acrylamide and that roasting affects acrylamide. What is acrylamide? Why should people care about it? And what does roasting do to it?

Well, basically, it's a product of roasting. So there is very little acrylamide in non roasted coffee beans. So but during the roasting process, the acrylamide is going to form from the combination of the little fructose and glucose, the reducing sugars that are in there, and an amino acid that's called asparagine. And we don't really know how much heat it takes, but it's probably around 120 degrees Celsius that are needed in order to get a significant to get the energy that is necessary for this reaction to occur. And therefore, you will have more acrylamide in darker roasts than you will have in lighter. And very little if you use green coffee beans. So if you want to minimize that, you would have to choose one of the lighter roads. But actually, the amount that you are facing from a real cup of coffee is very small. So for the article, I've made a calculation and you would probably have to consume 20 liters of coffee to get to what's still a safe human amount of consumption. So this is the least of your problems, I would say.

Okay, so acrylamide could potentially be a carcinogenic compound that we would find in coffee, but you would have to be drinking more than 20 liters of coffee a day, like a lot from what I got out of your research study.

Yeah. And I would assume that the caffeine is going to kill you before the acrylamide can actually cause cancer.

And once again, the medium roast appears to give the lowest amounts of acrylamide. So we see, again, that medium is kind of the way to go.

No, in this case, it would be best to go actually with unroasted green beans because they.

Oh, just totally.

Well, yeah, yeah, Almost no acrylamide.

That's actually something I wanted to ask you about, you know, because a lot of people don't do the completely unroasted. But when it comes to green coffee, what are the benefits that we get from that? In addition to Very, very low acrylamide levels that we don't get from a roasted coffee.

Well, as I pointed out before, the whole idea of using green coffee became popular when the research on chlorogenic acid appeared on the scene and people thought that they can consume green coffee and lose weight. So the main advantage, at least that's what we believe these days, the main advantage of green coffee is that you get the maximum amount of chlorogenic acid because you have all the chlorogenic acid, basically that's in the beans still available for extraction. You don't necessarily get all of it out of the coffee, but you at least haven't lost some during the processing. And while some people also like it for the taste, I personally don't think that, that it's better than regular coffee as far as the taste goes. But you know that this differs and therefore I've also not discussed the taste in my review because I think that everybody has to decide for him or herself what he likes best. There are two problems though. One is related to the digestive tract, as already hinted at before. So if you are somebody who is battling with heartburn, then using green coffee is probably not the best idea because it actually increasing the stomach acid production could be used for your gut if you have low stomach acid. But for many of us it's probably a bit problematic. And another thing is that the roasting also kills most of the mold that you find on coffee beans from time to time. And the mold will produce toxins and the toxins will put your kidneys at risk of being harmed. And so you will have to at least take a closer look at your coffee beans before you prepare your coffee in order to, if you, if you actually can see that there is mold, you better throw them away or you will have to buy coffee where you have a certificate that it has been tested for mold.

So if you're going to drink green coffee, you'd want to really double check the whole mold fungus issue to make sure that there's not any of that in there because it's going to have the greatest potential due to the fact that it hasn't been roasted.

Yeah, exactly. Although it is probably not that much of a risk. I personally would still try to avoid the microtoxins you would get so the toxins from the mold and really make sure that you get a good unroasted coffee, but one that was actually stored dry enough in order to avoid mold.

Okay, got it. Now what about, I mean, one thing, obviously we sound like a bunch of Scientists talking about coffee, but some people just want their cup of joe to taste good, you know. And so when it comes to a tasty cup of coffee, what would you do if you just wanted to maximize overall flavor?

Well, as I said, it depends. Some people will say that they like the intense taste of the robusta, but in general, people tend to to like the arabica better because it has an almost sweet flavor to it and it's milder. So you would probably have to go for a pure or a high arabica blend. And then you will have to decide if you want that the maximum amount of or the maximum concentration of its ingredients. You will probably also choose a fine grind. Again, if, on the other hand, you like lighter coffee, you will probably use a more coarse grind in order to reduce the amount of the ingredients you extract while preparing the coffee. And quite obviously, you can change all that by dosing differently. So the ratio of coffee to water is quite obviously important.

Okay, got it. Now, there are also things you can combine with coffee. For me, I'll sometimes put a really nice organic, a butterscotch toffee stevia. I use this one made by a company called Omica. It's a super flavorful stevia that I'll put into a cup of coffee, or sometimes I'll even put it into sparkling water to make a butterscotchy tasting soda. And there's lots of other things that people will sometimes not put into coffee but use as a coffee alternative, like green tea or black tea or, you know, everybody's talking about, like, mushroom tea these days. And there are even people who don't drink coffee who will do blends of like, you know, different fibers and roots. Like, I know there's one called tea chino. There's another one called dandy tea. You know, these things that supposedly don't stimulate the adrenals in the same way. Do you, or have you ever looked into many of the, like, the alternatives to coffee out there? And do you have any recommendations for people on any of the alternatives that you like?

Well, I personally like black tea best of the alternatives. Not necessarily because it's the most healthy one, but rather because it tastes good, at least for my palate. If you look at the research, there is more than enough evidence that it's also healthy. Not just the green tea is healthy, but also the black tea. Even though I have to admit that the research on green tea is more conclusive as far as the health effects are concerned, I must admit that I personally don't really. It's not just that I don't really like the taste of green tea, also that I don't really feel well after consuming it. Interestingly enough, I'm drinking relatively a high amount of coffee and I've been using pre workout products before that contained a lot of caffeine. So I'm, I'm pretty stimulate tolerant. But with green tea I'm getting an effect that really it feels as if my blood pressure was increasing. And I've tested that and interestingly enough it does that even though coffee doesn't. So I'm not quite sure what's going on here. But I also have to avoid products that contain green tea extract. So maybe that is a genetic component to it, I'm not quite sure. But what I have also found, from.

What I understand, it's the extremely high amount of polyphenols in the green tea can actually cause a little bit of a stomach upset. I don't know if it's like a little bit of a hermetic response to the very, very large amount of polyphenols and flavanols too that you'll find in the green tea. The other thing that I've wondered is it, you know, green tea has this umami, like a really good green tea has this like amino acid umami type of flavor. And a lot of people don't do well with just the taste of umami, right. Who aren't used to Asian foods, things like that. So there might be a few different things going on. It's kind of interesting.

You also have to note though that there are a couple of relatively new studies that seem to suggest that not necessarily drinking green tea, which rather appears to be beneficial for the liver, but rather using high amounts of the extracts, especially those that are high in ecgc, the main antioxidant you are usually looking for in green tea, that they pose a risk for the liver. So there are both studies in humans and rodents that suggest that at a very high dose that you would only be getting from supplements, that can be a problem. And if you want to avoid that, a very good alternative is actually cacao. So you would have not to buy the one from the supermarket that is mostly sugar, but rather real organic cow powder that you can use to create cacao. And I personally like that you can sweeten it with stevia and it has a great taste to it. It tastes different quite obviously from the sugary brew that you can buy at the supermarket. The powder that is colored brown but otherwise has little resemblance to actual cacao beans or little to do with it. But the interesting thing is that it will also contain caffeine and theobromine, which is. Has a nice stimulant effect, at least if you are not a regular consumer of coffee and has a lot of beneficial health effects that are similar to those that are associated with the consumption of coffee.

Very interesting. Yeah, I. I personally am on a green tea kick right now. Ironically, I haven't had coffee in 10 days at the time that you and I are chatting. And my overall impression is that while I don't get nauseous from the green tea and I drink really good stuff, I have a. One of my clients is a chef. He's like a Japanese French cuisine chef in New York City. So he goes to Japan every year and he harvests these bags in Japan that are like 200 bucks a bag. These amazing. I mean, you could freaking eat the leaves and be happy without even brewing it. It's amazing, amazing green tea. But you know what, dude? I still freaking crave my cup of coffee because there's just something like, it's almost like comfort food for me, right? Like peanut butter and jelly and turkey with cranberry and like the old Kraft macaroni and cheese I used to make, you know, well, well, well, at home as a kid. Like, there's some of those tastes that I think just take a long time to. To get rid of when it comes to craving the comfort aspects. By the way, I should note that I looked up the dandy tea that I talked about in the Tea Chino and both of those are primarily. Well, the dandy one is just roasted barley and rye and chicory root with dandelion root and beetroot. And then the other one, the Teeccino, also, it's carob. It's kind of similar to the cacao you talked about. And then barley, chicory and some kind of a natural coffee flavor, whatever that is that they add to it. So those are more herbal blends. So yeah, you know, there's a lot of alternatives out there, but I don't know what you think about this, Adele, but my experience is nothing replaces a good old cup of joe when it comes to that nice coffee flavor some of us crave in the mornings.

I totally agree. Yes. For me, black tea is also not real alternative. It is a replacement if I can't find a coffee, but otherwise I would always go for coffee.

Yeah, 100% agree. Well, this was an amazing article that you wrote and I'm going to link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Coffee Podcast I'll also link to some of these coffee alternatives that I talked about in the show, along with linking to my own favorite brand of coffee that I personally drink. I'll toss it in there as a little mystery for if you want to check it out. It is an Arabica, but it's amazing, amazing pure coffee. I'll put that one in there along with Dr. Sachin Panda's research on time restricted feeding, my interview with Sanjeev Chopra of Harvard about Voltaire who drank 63 cups of coffee a day, and all the other cool things that coffee can do for you. And also a link to Adele's website and also to the Examine Research Digest that he writes for, which is another fantastic resource for all things health and science related when it comes to fitness and wellness and nutrition. So that's all over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com CoffeePodcast and in the meantime, Adele, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. It's nice to know that there are other people out there just as obsessed as I am with drinking a great cup of coffee.

Yeah, it was a great chance for me too. Maybe some of the listeners have learned something new and that's actually the reason why I started to write the blog. So I would be happy if that's the case and people can take away something from the podcast.

Yeah, if anything, people learned that there's a lot more to coffee than first meets the eye. So you've got all sorts of things to experiment with right now. Robusta, arabico, light, medium, dark alternatives, you name it. So Adele, thanks for coming on the show and for those of you listening in, I'm Ben Greenfield and Adele Moussa of Supversity, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Hey, don't go away. Don't go away yet because you can get coffee, the same pure coffee that I drink every day. We start with the healthiest possible green beans. We test organic coffees from all over the world to find the green beans with the highest antioxidant levels. We actually look at each bean to select beans that are not even chipped. So we get an extremely even roast. There's near zero defects in any of our beans. Less than 3% of the coffee on the face of the planet is organic. But this kion coffee is organic, which means it's more liver protective, it's more health promoting than non organic coffee. We roast it to perfection. So you're getting rid of the acrylamide, you're decreasing the level of carcinogens. And also at the same time, we give you the highest levels of healthy phytochemicals while limiting excessive caffeine. Because it's this nice medium blonde roast, all of it's grown sustainably, it's hand picked, it's hand selected. We have direct relationships with the farmers. This is the best coffee that exists, period. Oh, and by the way, it never contains mold. We tested every single other coffee out there for over 60 different types of mold. Some of the results are pretty shocking. I'll link to them in the show notes. Just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com CoffeePodcast but anyways, you can grab your first bag of Kion coffee very easily. You just go to getkion.com coffee that's getkion.com coffee. When you go there, you can get 10% off your coffee order or 25% off a coffee subscription. If you just want to get bags each month like I do. The code is Ben Coffee. Very simple. Ben Coffee. This stuff's so pure and tasty that I even let my twin boys take a sip before they head off for school. If you want to give it to children, that's up to you. It's not Dunkin Donuts, it's not Folgers. It's actually pretty surprising. Again, like what I found out about a lot of these, even these healthy, you know, health coffee brands and what's in them. Anyways, though, this coffee's good stuff. I love it. It tastes freaking amazing. Tastes better than any coffee I've ever had in my life. Get getkion.com coffee getk I-O-N.com coffee and the code that you can use is BEN Coffee. Enjoy. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.