Why Coffee is a Health Superfood with Andrew Salisbury

Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic? A deep-end DJ? A road dog? Or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com/brightsummerahead to learn more. See ya this summer. Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com/studentoffer. While supplies last. Ends June 30th.

Terms at aka.ms/collegepc.

You have one new message. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Translating. Disney and Pixar's Hoppers is now available on Disney+.

You could say that again.

Critics are calling it Pixar's funniest movie ever and a wildly entertaining ride. Blizzard potato.

It's certified fresh and verified hot. Woo!

Now we party.

This is incredible! Wow, I am clearing the rest of the day.

Disney and Pixar's Hoppers Now available on Disney Plus.

Rated PG. Coffee is incredibly good for you. If you drink coffee, your number one source of antioxidants is coffee. Even the cheap coffee is generally good for you. I mean, you're probably going to get 3 to 4 times the antioxidant level from your coffee drinking than you would from anything else you do. Wow. Yeah. If you have like liver problems, fatty liver, liver cirrhosis, that sort of thing, you should be drinking a lot of coffee. And if you're not, you're missing a huge remedy that's available at home. Any burnt food or any sort of like browning, or like toast 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. Yeah. What are the 3 most important things they should look for in coffee? Even when you're doing all the right things, your strength training, staying active, prioritizing protein, Keeping the muscle you built over a lifetime gets harder with age. Now, our parents were told to accept that it's just getting older. I don't buy that. And that's why I use Timeline powered by MagnaPure. Here's the real story. Muscle isn't just about strength or looking good. Muscle runs your metabolism, protects your balance, preserves your independence, and determines how powerfully you age. And what most people don't realize is that muscle loss isn't only about hormones or workouts. It's about cellular energy. As we age, our mitochondria, those energy engines inside our muscle cells, become less efficient. Now, when your muscles can't produce energy well, it's harder to maintain strength, function, and resilience. That's where Mitopure comes in. It's the only clinically studied form of urolithin A, a postbiotic shown in human clinical trials to support muscle strength and function by helping renew mitochondrial health at the cellular level. I love this because it works with your training, not instead of it. Now, strength training is the signal, protein is the building block, and Mitopure supports the cellular energy that allows your muscles to actually respond and adapt. Mitopure gummies make it simple. 2 a day, sugar-free, vegan, non-GMO, and independently certified for quality. And let's not forget, absolutely delicious. So if staying strong is part of your longevity strategy, and I sure hope it is, visit timeline.com/jjvirgin and get 20% off your order. Hey, JJ here. If you're like most people I know, you've spent a lot of time, money, and energy trying to look and feel younger and healthier. Supplements, beauty products, biohacks, all the things. But what if you could support healthier aging at the cellular level, not just manage symptoms on the surface. That's why I'm so excited to share something new with you. C15 from Fatty15. C15 is the first emerging essential fatty acid discovered in more than 90 years. And when I say essential, I mean your body actually needs it to maintain long-term health, but it doesn't make enough of it on its own. C15 helps repair age-related damage to cells, protects them from future breakdown, and Fatty15 provides 3 times more cellular benefits than omega-3s or fish oil. Unlike fragile fatty acids, C15 is extremely stable, resisting oxidation both in the bottle and in your body. It even comes in a gorgeous reusable glass and bamboo jar with refills shipped right to your door. For me, this isn't about chasing youth. It's about supporting yourself so you can age with strength, clarity, and resilience. Fatty15 is on a mission to optimize your C15 levels to help support your long-term health and wellness, especially as you age. And you can get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com/virginwellness and using code VIRGINWELLNESS at checkout. Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout— sorry, mom— turned 4-time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I'm driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health. Into actionable strategies that help you thrive. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here's the fun part. When you send me your review, I'll reply to you using my on-demand virtual me. That's right. My team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches, and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here's how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screen screenshot of your review. Text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly, and trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now at SubscribeToJJ.com and text me your review. Let's keep thriving Together. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thank you. We're talking about literally my favorite food group. We are talking here about coffee. And what I'd love to start with, because you are the coffee guy, is what have we gotten wrong about coffee?

I think the biggest thing is that most people feel like coffee is a guilty pleasure. In other words, they enjoy it, but they say, okay, I've got to minimize the amount of coffee that I drink. And the reality is coffee is incredibly good for you, and most people are not treating it as the sort of health food that it could be. So most people are just sort of underestimating the value of the coffee they drink because they enjoy it.

That's good news. Mm-hmm. So tell me more about that, that we are not treating it like a health food. What sort of health food is it? Because when you look at coffee, especially if you go out on the internet, yeah, it gets blamed for everything. Anxiety, adrenal fatigue, poor sleep.

Absolutely. And the, the first sort of starting point is that coffee is one of the most well-studied foods on the planet. I mean, there's 19,000 studies of coffee and health that talk about all the health benefits of coffee. So if you drink coffee, you have a 45% chance, a lower chance of getting type 2 diabetes between 3 to 5 cups of coffee a day, about a 60% lower chance of liver cancer, liver cirrhosis, or fatty liver disease, 6 forms of cancer. I mean, it's insane in terms of the health benefits of coffee, but most people are not sourcing coffee that's really good for health. In other words, the, the health benefits don't come from avoiding the bad stuff. They come from maximizing the good stuff.

So couple questions in that. Number one, so some of these problems people perceive to have with coffee, is it actually some of the bean issues, say pesticides, molds, that kind of thing?

I don't think we'll ever gonna know exactly what the reason why people react negatively to coffee, but some of the, the reasons is that people have negative reactions obviously to pesticides, herbicides, mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, that sort of thing. And so the quality of their coffee and the fact they're not buying specialty coffee, they're buying lower grades of coffee. That can react very negatively to you, you know.

I think people don't know. And the other question is on the dose, because you said 3 to 5 cups. Full disclosure, when my son was in the hospital, I just said to myself, you can have as much coffee as you want to get through this time. And I never changed after that. I just was like, it's a free-for-all. I have noticed nothing bad because of it, no issues. In fact, you know, from the exercise standpoint, I know that is, the most studied ergogenic aid, performance aid for sports that there is out there. But I'm assuming there must be a dose issue in there. Is there?

It's sort of funny. We have a sort of like a— Sanjeev Chopra is on our advisory board. He's the last dean of admissions at Harvard Med School. It's sort of like dose-dependent. The more you drink, the better it is for you. So, I mean, so his argument is—

I'm so happy.

Exactly. And the idea is pay attention to your caffeine intake. So obviously there's two very different things going on. Coffee is not caffeine. It as caffeine. And if your body reacts negatively to caffeine, then you can minimize the caffeine. But in reality, the chlorogenic acids and the antioxidants, you want as many of those you possibly can in your body.

The caffeine, I know, is a big part of why it's such a good ergogenic aid. Mm-hmm. But how much is the caffeine the good part of it, or is it not? Is it all the chlorogenic acid and the polyphenols?

It's nuanced. It's not all, um, the caffeine. It's very small percentages of the caffeine. So Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, dementia, that sort of thing. Caffeine is shown to help, but in reality, the health benefits come from the chlorogenic acids, the antioxidants, the polyphenols in coffee. And coffee's incredibly rich in polyphenols. So that's really where the health benefits come from.

Now, do coffee varieties vary in how much of those they have? How do I know if I'm getting one that's really amazing with it?

Yeah.

Or something lame. Like I'm gonna assume that some of these ones that I was raised with. You know, my mom literally made Folgers from that can every day growing up. So I did not start drinking coffee till I discovered the other world of coffee, right? Do these vary?

They vary hugely from crop to crop, harvest to harvest, cultivar to cultivar, even region to region. So the only way for you to figure out the antioxidant level in your coffee is to lab test it. So one of the things we do first is we lab test green coffee before we select, and then from there We design a roast curve to keep the antioxidants in the coffee. But it is a very important point because if companies are not focused on the health benefits of coffee, they're not sourcing based on the antioxidants. They're just sourcing based on flavor or taste or whatever. And that's really not, you know, the way that we are focused.

Well, don't you think that's most coffee out there? Like, I think this seems to be a new thing, even though you say there's 19,000 studies. I know how long it takes to get out into the public with anything.

Yeah.

It seems to be a new thing to think of coffee as a health food.

Yeah.

And therefore looking at coffee in Looking at all these polyphenols would be a different thing. Again, most of us have really looked at coffee for the taste.

And that was the big aha moment for me when my wife Amber sort of challenged me on this, which is she was drinking a lot of coffee. She had adrenal fatigue. It was very difficult for her to get out of bed in the morning and she was drinking a lot of coffee and she was saying, okay, I'm not going to give up my coffee. And as I started to research it, I realized there was a huge gap in knowledge between what the general consumer knows about coffee and the health benefits and what the scientists know. So there's a huge gap.

Why do you think that is?

Perhaps there's not enough focus on the people who buy any food product based on health. I think the focus is— people often look at coffee for taste and they look at it for cost and they know that people are consuming it anyway. So 184 million Americans will get up this morning and drink a cup of coffee. So I would imagine that it's because that you don't need a larger market size. So that was one of the big challenges when we first started looking at the business. Is would people buy coffee based on health?

But you know, when you think about it, because I know for years, there was a year there I quit all caffeinated coffee because I'd been convinced, I was working with an endocrinologist who was convinced that you shouldn't drink coffee, it caused adrenal gland burnout. And it was the saddest, saddest year of my life. I love everything about coffee. I used to always go to this one coffee place in Northern California that had been around since I was born. And you know, I just, that had good beans, you know, and I just love coffee. But I think that it's always been this thing where you kind of felt like it was a guilty pleasure. You didn't think about it as a health food. And then I started to see the difference. But now out there, how would someone know if they're buying quality beans? And is there any type of, I know in the nutrition world, we have the ORAC score, which is kind of lame, but at least it's something for antioxidant scores. Is there any kind of a scoring system or something that you could, you have with coffee?

There should be. I mean, the reality is, as consumers, we have to demand a higher standard, a higher quality. And so we want to make sure that our coffee is free of the contaminants and we maximize the good stuff. And the reality is there's not many companies— in fact, truthfully, I think we're the only company right now that's focusing on the antioxidants in coffee. And so what we want to do is be able to create a standard that coffee that is farmed in a way that's both good for the environment and good for health is worthwhile. In other words, it's meaningful enough that people should be paying attention to that because, you know, it's the one thing that people do every single day for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, there's two parts to that too, and I'd love to get into what the farming looks like because there's the negative side, the pesticides, and from what I've heard, coffee tends to be one of those crops that's really heavily sprayed, very heavily treated. And then there's also the mold, I'm assuming, because the beans are not handled correctly.

It's also because it's humid. Like, in other words, it's all sort of grown on the equator, and so you've naturally got a humid climate, and so mold develops, and then mycotoxins from the mold.

Oh, okay. So there's that side of it, and then there's the polyphenol antioxidant side of it. What has to happen with farming if most of the farming, they're heavily spraying the crops? And I'm assuming if they're heavily spraying the crops, not only are you getting pesticides, but that's impacting the polyphenol content too.

The coffee industry tries to game the system by putting herbicides and pesticides to sort of like increase the yields.

Mm-hmm.

But the product that you are consuming is a lot worse for you. So in other words, because they're not focused on the polyphenols that come in the end cup, they're not focused on the process that's gonna maximize those polyphenols. And so that's a real problem in the industry. And what we're doing with Circular Health Coffee, which I think is sort of important with the farmers, is we're showing them that the yields can be bigger and you can charge more for your coffee as a result of farming in a way that's good for polyphenols.

Oh, that's great, because I would think that'd be the real sticking point, is, you know, the farmers still have to make a living.

Yeah, we often pay, you know, double the price that most— like New York Tea Spot pays for coffee because we have such a good relationship with the farmers, because we can encourage the farmers to farm in a way that's good for the environment and also good for the polyphenols in the coffee that they wouldn't normally do. Because the problem is they wouldn't normally spend that extra money to do things like biochar. There's lots of— What is it?— Biochar is my sort of like, I love this subject, but more or less it's like an 8,000-year-old technology. So in archaeological digs, they would find red clay next to fertile black sort of dirt. And they were thinking like, why is that? I mean, how could they possibly have black dirt next to this red clay? What they found out in these digs is basically they would put organic waste into a pit and they would set fire to the organic waste and they would and put a light layer of dirt on it, and it basically created pyrolysis, which is almost like a sponge, like an activated charcoal. Then they would activate the charcoal with manure and that sort of thing, and it increases yields and it also increases the polyphenols in coffee. So we're getting a huge amount, uh, in terms of polyphenols in our coffee as a result of using a technology that increases yields. It also, uh, helps with water retention, but it also helps with polyphenols, and it's got that side benefit But it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere down into the soil.

The big question though is these polyphenols and the chlorogenic acid. So do your coffee batches vary? Like, how would someone know what they're getting, how much they're getting? And if a company wasn't testing, you know, most of the companies out there, like I see 3 different types of coffee. Yep. Then there's the next level up. It's like the fancy coffee.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the beans that taste good. Then the next level up seems to be testing for mold and mycotoxins, which I want to get into a little bit more. And it's organic, but this is the next level from this. Yeah. So seems like there needs to be some kind of standardized scoring or something to know what you're actually getting.

I think there should be. So we publish all our independent lab results on our site so everyone can understand it. Um, you know, the, the polyphenols in the coffee. So we measure the polyphenols. We don't just measure the absence of bad stuff, we measure the What kind of polyphenols are in there? Chlorogenic acid is the main one. And so there's like 9 different sorts of chlorogenic acids, 9 different sorts of stuff that we focus on. And that, as I mentioned before, varies completely based on the harvest and the crop and that sort of thing, and the amount of rain or the sunlight that it's got. So, so basically you have to lab test it, you have to measure it.

And what are the benefits of getting these different types of chlorogenic acid?

The big thing is it reduces inflammation in the body. I mean, that's by far the biggest.

That's a huge thing. That's a huge thing. And I don't think most people would think, I'm going to drink this coffee as an anti-inflammatory, ever.

That's right, exactly. And, and, and they should be. They should actually— I mean, if you drink coffee, your number one source of antioxidants is coffee. I mean, it's the one thing you—

if you're drinking a quality coffee.

Well, this is sort of interesting. There are 20,000 studies that have been on coffee and health for all sorts of coffee. So we know that coffee—

even probably the cheap coffee too, right?

Even the cheap coffee is generally good for you. I mean, no one's ever done the sort of like the test, which is here's cheaper coffee, here's really good quality coffee, and what is the impact on the body. So we've made a sort of like an assumption, which is remove all the bad stuff, make sure the bad stuff doesn't occur in the coffee, and maximize the good stuff. We all know what the bad stuff is. It's not like a mystery in terms of like we don't want more pesticides, we certainly don't want any pesticides, we don't want mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, that sort of thing. But we wanna maximize the antioxidants and the chlorogenic acids. But we will probably not know for a couple of years exactly what the impact is on the body of all the things that we do.

This is almost like you're taking an antioxidant formula. Mm-hmm. How much of an antioxidant hit are you getting if you're, say, drinking 8 cups of coffee a day, which is a low amount for me on a good day.

I mean, truthfully, a lot. I mean, that's the interesting thing. People think like kale or or blueberries could be high in antioxidants.

Yeah, well, I love blueberries, but yuck on the kale.

But they certainly don't do it every single day, and they certainly don't do it without sort of forgetting one day after another or whatever. The reality is with coffee they drink every single day, you're probably gonna get 3 to 4 times the antioxidant level from your coffee drinking than you would from anything else you do. Wow.

Yeah. Amazing. And so let's talk a little on the negative side though, because Again, I, when I think of, there's two places I see that I believe they're getting it wrong. Yeah. One of 'em that's always struck me as the strangest thing is I will see a cleanse, a detox, and they'll do a detox and they'll pull out caffeine.

Yeah.

They'll pull out coffee. And as far as I've seen in the literature, coffee drinking lowers your liver enzymes. So I can't for the life of me figure out why you would pull coffee. It seems to me you should drink coffee on a detox, you know, not take it out.

Well, Sanjeev is a liver surgeon, so, you know, he said in 35 years— now I'm not a surgeon, but in 35 years he said he's never seen on his rounds anyone with fatty liver, end-stage liver disease, or liver cancer on his rounds who drinks coffee. Wow. So it's like, I mean, he's written multiple books on coffee and the health benefits of coffee, in particular the health benefits of coffee on the liver. So it's incredibly well supported. In fact, that's probably the one area that if you have like liver problems, fatty liver, liver cirrhosis, that sort of thing, you should be drinking a lot of coffee. And if you are not, you are missing a huge remedy that's, that's available at home.

This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you.

Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless effortless tracking, sleep insights, and holistic coaching tailored to you.

Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health.

Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health Premium subscription.

Features subject to change.

Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps.

Check responses for accuracy. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready because Quaker's coming in hot with more morning nutrition, 100% whole grain oats and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26. Expedia and VisitScotland invite you to come experience the beauty that awaits in Scotland, the of wild coastlines, quiet lochs, and untamed landscapes. Fresh cuisine that feels rooted in the land.

Come experience the kind of stillness that stays with you long after you leave.

Plan your Scottish escape today at expedia.com/visitscotland. And what about the decaf? I remember back in the day when I was being told this was not good for you and— Then I was gonna switch to decaf, but there was all of this, who knows what it was, whether it was true or not about the way they decaffeinate coffee and it could be problematic. So what about that?

Same thing, it's nuanced. And so there's ethyl acetate or there's certain ways of decaffeinating coffee, which are not healthy and they strip away the antioxidants. We use Swiss Water Process, which is the natural process and it sort of like takes the caffeine out of the coffee but leaves the antioxidants. So how you decaffeinate the coffee is very important. You want the antioxidants, you wanna use like a natural process, either Swiss water or mountain processed coffee for decaffeination.

So it seems to me then this kind of leads into the next thing about, say, adrenal health.

Mm-hmm.

And again, I'm thinking back, I used to teach this workshop with an endocrinologist who always talked about adrenal gland burnout. She thought that coffee was just pushing on the adrenal glands. Mm-hmm. And burning them out. That was her whole idea on it. Mm-hmm. That was the year I quit coffee. And I was very unhappy. But from what I see, it doesn't really make sense. Mm-hmm. That it does this. Do you know the kind of the biochemistry or the endocrinology of cortisol and coffee?

I think what's interesting is there's, there's negative compounds and there's positive compounds. We know what the negative compounds are, and the more your body has to struggle to deal with pesticide residue, mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, that sort of thing, the more strain you're gonna put on your body. But the, The positive things are the antioxidants in the coffee. So if you can avoid the bad stuff and maximize the good stuff, then it's gonna be a lot less strain on your body. And so that would be a very interesting study to do.

It reminds me of exercise. Mm-hmm. And there's a lot out right now about things you should avoid because it raises cortisol. I'm like, it should raise cortisol. Just like you get up in the morning, you should have high cortisol. Otherwise you got a problem.

Yeah.

You know, a big one. Yeah. You know, go out and look at the sun, have higher cortisol. This is good for you. So I think We've gotten scared of something, just like we're scared of insulin. I'm like, you don't have insulin, you die. You've got to, these things need to be working in the right way in your body. So I just wonder if there's some of that going on too. Now, as far as the whole mold mycotoxin thing, if you are not drinking, if you're drinking a coffee, let's say you're at a restaurant, how prevalent is the mold mycotoxin? Like, should you not touch coffee? Like, I'm thinking today, we just drove in from Palm Beach. We had breakfast before we left. We always travel with a coffee maker and your coffee. We, you have totally turned us into absolute coffee snobs. So we've got Purity and Sacred Cups. I have my little Sacred Cups. We have our Purity little tea bags. We have our Sacred Cups others, but we have a coffee maker. Great. We literally travel with one all over the world. We travel with this coffee maker. However, we had some coffee in the room, then we went downstairs and had another cup of coffee. Now I have no idea what their beans are. Nice hotel, but still, I would assume in most of those cases, you're probably, getting not good stuff.

The problem is just what you said, consistency. It's like they don't have any idea either because they're not lab testing their coffee. So they don't know. They know that the coffee tastes good or doesn't taste good or whatever the flavor profile they're looking for, but they've never lab tested the coffee to see whether it's got mold or mycotoxins. The good news is that it's actually relatively easy to deal with. I mean, like for a whole container of coffee, for us to test it and make sure that we're only taking coffee that's mycotoxin-free or mold-free, whatever, it's like $300. Like we as consumers should demand demand that every single coffee that we consume is tested for mold and mycotoxins.

How many are actually tested for mold and mycotoxins now?

I would hazard maybe like 5 companies, 6 companies, that sort of thing.

Out of how many coffee companies are there?

There's really no excuse. I mean, like, why wouldn't we test for that? Because what that's going to do is that that's going to improve food standards and food safety. So in other words, if we're only accepting coffee that's mold and mycotoxin-free, toxin-free, then we're going to ask the farmer to not cut corners to make sure that the coffee is mold and mycotoxin-free. And the stuff that they can do on a farm level is very easy to do, but we as consumers have to demand that that is the quality that we need.

Amazing. Really, from the health standpoint, if someone maybe has anxiety, they feel like it's getting triggered, although I would just wonder if some of the things that someone's getting triggered with coffee is not the coffee and not even the caffeine, if it's really more the other things going on, like the mold, mycotoxins, pesticides, all of that.

And I think, you know, the most important thing is listen to your body, see how you react. But one of the things that I'm most proud about, and we've just literally hit 60,000 testimonials on our site. 60,000.

What are some of the big things people are saying?

Big thing is sort of like, you know, this is the only coffee they can drink. So people who've got mast cell activation syndrome, people who've got mold allergies, people who are sort of like very sensitive. Very sensitive to these sort of like problems in coffee, they can only drink our coffee because, so, you know, I think 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 memory retention 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 gonna 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 dig into that. 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. Making coffee. And so her challenge to me, which was, was great, is 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 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 Ferrar 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 as 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 or 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 monogenic 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 an 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— make 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. Um, 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. Points.

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 want to avoid that as well. So you really want to work on the sweet spot, which is in the middle, that has the most amount of antioxidants 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, 'cause he has to have his espresso every single day.

Really dark roasted coffee, you're not gonna 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, uh, 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 it. 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 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 outcome.

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 But as you roast coffee before you get to PAH, you, 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. 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 They'll 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, that coffee is caffeine, I think. That 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 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 stop drinking coffee by about 12 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—

Let's rewrite that.

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 gonna 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 wanna 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, and look at the advice that, you know, we talked about before about you get organic, you need to get sort of, um, 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. Yeah. 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, we were in Mexico and I was leaving to go on a plane and she was stocking me up with the instant. Mm-hmm.

That's great.

And I mean, first of all, who would've thought instant coffee could taste this amazing? Absolutely. It's incredible. And I said, oh, but I'm going to be on American. They have coffee. She was 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%.

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 your 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. 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, we cared about the quality of our coffee. So the tea bags were the first step. Yeah. And then afterwards, the instant coffee, the soluble coffee, took us about 2 years in research and development to get it just right.

And it's perfect. It's amazing. I can't believe it because honestly, instant coffee. Yeah. I mean, come on.

Because it's typically the worst quality coffee and the worst process, and it's designed just for cost and convenience and that sort of thing. This is the best quality coffee and the best process. And so it's a very different beast.

All right. Well, I will make sure I put all of this information on the show notes at jjvirgin.com/purity, plus the special deal for everybody. I would recommend getting everything. And I know you have like— I get monthly shipments. So you have subscribe and save. This is one that once you taste this, you will never go back and your health will help you. Well, thank you for it. So Thank you.

Thank you.

Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I'd love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here's how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review. And third, text it to 813-565-2627. That's 813-565-2627. When you do, I'll reply using my brand new Virtual JJ Virgin. It's my on-demand virtual self built from my books, talks, and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. Directly. You'll make my day, and I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll catch you on the next episode. The right window treatments change everything— your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50,000 5-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want to a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure. Right now, get up to 50% off with minimum purchase, plus get a free professional measure at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply.

You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's OmniShade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer at Columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion.

You're welcome.

Columbia, engineered for whatever.

Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health-related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.