Unlocking Coffee’s Hidden Health Benefits

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Pay attention to your body and also know that you probably need to improve the quality of your coffee, not give up coffee.

That's such good news for everybody. And it is those highly sensitive people. I've got, I think, one of our mutual friends who is so mold sensitive that she can go into any, I'm kind of plow through everything and I'm fine. And she will walk in and go, there's mold.

Yeah. Like, wow. Yeah, exactly.

What about metabolism, metabolic health, energy? Like, do you have any intel in there?

Well, I think this is again, talking to the, the sort of the caffeine part, which is really interesting. So everyone knows the benefits of caffeine. We're not a cup of coffee, but they think that's the only benefit of coffee. Glucose metabolism, caffeine is meant to help with certain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's dementia, that sort of thing. But it also helps us perform better. And we all understand that a cup of coffee helps you perform better in, in terms of like memory retention and, and sort of doing tasks. It's just not the only thing.

Yeah, but it also boosts your metabolism. It also helps you burn more fat. So it does do those things. Now, it's not a ton, but it's— every bit helps. If there's something that's going to help me burn a little more fat and boost my metabolism, like, that I actually like, let's do it, right? You mentioned a little bit about Amber's health journey, and then you said this got you into the coffee thing. I'd love to get into that a little bit more because I actually haven't heard the story.

Oh, really?

Okay.

No. Amber was having some health issues and low energy, and we were looking at all the different things that could have caused that. And I was actually a tea drinker at the time, so I was never drinking coffee. I occasionally, maybe once a month, would have a cup of coffee or whatever, but I really wasn't a coffee drinker. I was trying to persuade her to cut out her coffee habit, a little bit like the doctor that told you to stop drinking coffee. And so, her challenge to me, which was, was great. It's like, prove it to me. I'll give up my coffee if you can prove it. So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and I started to sort of educate myself about the health benefits of coffee. And I went out to dinner with two professors from the Institute of Coffee Studies in Vanderbilt.

God, who knew there was a thing like— in Vanderbilt? Vanderbilt has an Institute of Coffee Studies.

That's right. And I asked them, I said, okay, once and for all, is coffee good for you or bad for you? And they would say, it's incredibly good for you. And these are all the health benefits. The way that we approach this, as I was saying, like, this is fantastic. They introduced me to Professor Adriana Ferrara at the University of Brazil. I started looking into this, trying to get a bit of an education on this. What they basically told me is that there was no one coffee company that was making every decision based on health. Because I really, I was saying to Amber, it's like, I would love to be, be able to provide you with a coffee. I would love to be able to buy you this brand of coffee is the one that makes every decision based on health. And like you were saying initially, it was amazing to me.

There's this superfood hiding in plain sight.

That's right. Exactly. That, that no one company was focused on the health benefits to maximize it. So my first question was, could it be maximized? Was it all coffee is good for you? You know, or is there anything that we can do? And so I realized there's actually probably 40 or 50 different things that we can do on a farm level, on a roasting level. The way you roast the coffee, the way you farm the coffee, all has a direct impact on the health benefits of the coffee.

What's wild is all I've seen out in the industry besides the taste is just focusing on getting out the bad, but none of the amplifying of the good.

While that's worthy, that's important, you want to avoid the bad stuff. It's not where the health benefits come from. The health benefits come from maximizing the good stuff, which is the chlorogenic acids.

So someone listening, what are the 3 things they should be looking for? 3 most important things they should look for in coffee?

So you want to make sure that it's organic, it's specialty grade.

Specialty grade.

Specialty grade is probably 3 to 5% of coffee reaches this standard.

It says that on the label?

You can ask for specialty grade. It, it should say it on the label. If you're buying specialty grade, they're definitely gonna be talking about that.

Mm-hmm.

So it's the highest grade of coffee because one of the things with coffee is there's primary defects. And so it has the least primary defects.

What's a primary defect?

There's 12 of them, but primary defects are like chipped or broken beans, insect damage, hollow beans, that sort of thing. So it's all showing that it's a natural food product and the problem is it's got defects. Specialty grade is the least defects of any coffee. So in other words, it goes through a sorting process that is just, makes sure the coffee is very, very clean. If you're buying specialty grade coffee, you're probably very safe with mold and mycotoxins. So if Amber's out and about and she's sort of like looking for a cup of coffee, the first thing I'd do is say organic specialty grade coffee. It should be ideally tested for mold and heavy metals. It needs to be roasted in a medium roast. The reason for that is the more you roast the coffee, the more you roast away the antioxidants.

Oh.

In the early stage of roasting, you have acrylamide. So you have to pay attention to that.

Oh, that's bad too. Tell people what acrylamide is.

Acrylamide is, is caused by the Maillard reaction. So the idea is any burnt food or any sort of like browning, or like toast has acrylamide, French fries has acrylamide. You can minimize and actually do away with the amount of acrylamide in a cup as long as you roast the coffee beyond a certain point.

That's interesting. You'd think the more you roast it, the more acrylamide, but no, it's the opposite. So that light blend and the dark blend are the no-nos.

So the problem with the light— well, so the light blend will have, um, more antioxidants, but it'll also have acrylamide. The darker roast coffee will have a thing called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is from burnt food and that sort of thing. And so you wanna avoid that as well. So you really wanna work on the sweet spot, which is in the middle that has the most amount of antioxidants, no acrylamide and no pH.

Wow. And this is gonna sound silly. What is the difference? Espresso beans, they're not just darker beans, right? They're a different type of bean. They're not, my husband's not drinking a bunch of polycyclic.

Well, it depends. Well, not from us. You can use our coffee to make espresso.

Okay. I hope he's doing that. I'm gonna go check and make sure. Yeah. 'Cause he has to have his espresso. Espresso every single day.

Really dark roasted coffee, you're not going to have the same health benefits because you won't have the antioxidants, and you don't want it to be so darkly roasted. See, there's a trick of large coffee companies, and large coffee companies want the coffee in Singapore to taste the same way as it tastes in Seattle, so they over-roast the coffee. And over-roasting the coffee creates this burnt taste, and a lot of people think that's coffee.

I hate the burnt coffee taste.

So the trick is, in terms of sort of l'espresso, sometimes it's mixed with Robusta, which is the different sort of varietal of coffee. Espresso is one of the best ways to consume coffee if the coffee is good.

Well, I love Americanos. That's my most favorite thing to do. But now we know medium beans. So much here. This reminds me of when I did a podcast with Todd White from Dry Farm Wines years ago. And I'm like, okay, now this just changed everything. That's right. That's right. This is like you're taking a supplement. And that's what I think we have to think of it. This is like it's a therapeutic coffee.

Yeah.

Just happens to taste amazing. That's right. But look at all the things it can do for your health if you're doing the right one. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And really, from what you've said, you wouldn't know with any of the other ones if they have these levels of antioxidants because no one else is really checking.

There's a lot of room for people to focus on the health benefits of coffee as long as they're legitimately doing it. So not just avoiding the bad stuff and maximizing the good stuff. A lot of room, a lot of room in this area. I mean, coffee for the liver, coffee for type 2 diabetes, coffee for heart disease. There's over 1,000 compounds that are created and destroyed in the roasting of coffee. We actually have to pay attention to those compounds, which are good for certain things and bad for certain other things, to say, design the roast curve for a particular—

Oh, so different roasting is going to amplify certain things or get rid of certain things.

I'll give you an example. Flow Coffee is our main sort of flagship coffee. That's the highest amount of antioxidants in the coffee, the chlorogenic acids. But as you roast coffee, before you get to PAH, with the Ease Coffee, a darker roast coffee, The chlorogenic acids convert to chlorogenic lactones. You need high levels of chlorogenic acids in order to convert to chlorogenic lactones. Why does it matter? Because it helps with gut health, dementia, Alzheimer's, those sort of things.

Wow.

So in other words, for certain conditions, that's why there's no such thing as one healthy coffee. It's the healthiest coffee for you.

So it sounds like the only issue would be whether you're a fast or slow caffeine metabolizer and just knowing what time of day you need to stop the caffeine. Mm-hmm. But you could still do the decaf. Absolutely. And get the benefits.

Yeah, exactly. Or the Balance, which is the third caffeinated coffee. Yes. I mean, minimize the amount of caffeine, but that's something that no one can tell you. Just pay attention to your body. And if the caffeine is giving you a sort of negative result, then minimize the caffeine. But the health benefits won't come from the caffeine. They'll minimally come from the caffeine, but they'll come from the chlorogenic acid.

So we're gonna do a quick little speed round. Ready? So first thing that comes to mind. Most underrated benefit of coffee?

Most underrated benefit is people don't understand this health food.

Biggest myth about coffee?

Um, the coffee is caffeine. I think that the people often confuse coffee and caffeine. They're two very separate things.

The best time of day to drink coffee?

You know, we've looked at this. I think early in the morning, um, maybe not the first thing that you drink, but the reality is early in the morning until about 12 o'clock. And so Amber and I stopped drinking coffee by about 12 4 o'clock, whatever. And we start in the morning with a huddle and our coffee huddle.

Yeah, what is that? I know that, I think it was on Huberman Lab that you should wait an hour before having coffee. I'm not going to get up if I have to wait an hour to get, like, that's, I don't wanna do that. And you know what? I want what I want. Like, but do you know the reason for that?

I think it's something to do with the caffeine. I think the idea is the first thing that you eat shouldn't be caffeine.

Why? You want your cortisol up in the morning.

Yeah, I would agree with you. I mean, so it's like, I mean—

Let's rewrite that.

Yeah, there we go.

We're changing that. Okay. The best time of the day to drink coffee is when you wake up. Okay, next one. Coffee mistake people make every day.

They don't intentionally think about the health benefits of coffee, so they pick any coffee. They think if it tastes good, great.

Oof. I'm going to throw one in there too. They make a good thing bad by throwing in some garbage into their coffee, like those nasty creamers.

That's a very good point. I think the problem is People drink poor quality coffee and then they add milk and sugars and all this sort of syrups and things like that, which make it a really bad quality coffee for health because the coffee is just such a poor quality in the first place. You don't need to disguise it.

Yeah. God, good coffee. Why would you want to put any of that in there? Yeah. And finally, one habit that makes coffee healthier instantly.

I think selection, honestly. I mean, pay attention to what you select. Right now, today, you can't get everything to be measured, but pay attention to the quality of coffee and look at the advice that, you know, we talked about before about You get organic, you need to get sort of meat.

But you're measuring these. Oh yeah. Yeah. So yes, right now today you can get everything measured. Yeah. You're just the only company doing it.

Right now.

Yeah. What I love the most here is you're really leading the charge in the industry too. And trying to make a change, a grassroots change overall. So for someone who would love to try this, and I will just give you a warning that once you try it, you will not. And I remember Amber, I was leaving We were in Mexico and I was leaving to go on a plane and she was stocking me up with the instant. And I mean, first of all, who would've thought instant coffee could taste this amazing? It's incredible. And I said, oh, but I'm gonna be on American, they have coffee. She goes like, don't ever drink that airplane coffee. And now I get it.

It's like awful.

Where can someone find your coffee?

Online. So Amazon or go directly to our site, puritycoffee.com. And I think we have a code like JJ25 is 25% off.

Oh, we love discounts. Okay, we will make sure we put that in the show notes. We will do the show notes will be jjvirgin.com/purity. And for Sacred Cups, is it under the Purity umbrella on the website?

Yes, that's right. So you can go straight to Sacred Cups as well.

Okay, and for the different types you have, I know you have whole beans, you have ground beans, and then you also have with the Purity, you have those coffee tea bags. Those things are so amazing.

Yeah, we sort of, a lot of things we did in terms of development is based on the fact that we had a problem problems. So Amber and I travel a lot, and so it was one of these things of like not bringing a coffee setup with us, which is, you know, difficult to do. And, you know, obviously we cared about the quality of our coffee. So the tea bags were the first step, and then afterwards the instant coffee, the soluble coffee. Took us about 2 years in research and development to get it just right.

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