Blackmores Institute

The review found that pathways for promoting health usually assumed for fruit and vegetables are similar for coffee and, like fruit and vegetables, coffee beans contain polyphenols and phenolic acids. With habitual coffee consumption a feature of the general population, the review claims coffee provides around 40 percent of polyphenols and around 70 percent of phenolic acids consumed, followed by tea as the second major source.“We argue that coffee as a plant food has similar beneficial properties to many vegetables and fruits. Recent studies have identified a health promoting mechanism common to coffee, vegetables and fruits, that is, the activation of an adaptive cellular response characterised by the upregulation of proteins involved in cell protection, notably antioxidant, detoxifying and repair enzymes,” the authors explained. “At present, there is no reason to assume that phenolic compounds of coffee are less “healthy” than comparable phytochemicals of tea, vegetables or fruits. We therefore propose that coffee employs similar molecular pathways for improving health as described for other plant foods such as broccoli, beetroot, berries, pomegranate, curcuma, cocoa and many others.” According to the review, numerous meta-analyses have come up with positive health outcomes associated with habitual coffee consumption in the general population, changing the perception of coffee from that of a luxury stimulant drink to that of a health promoting beverage, if consumed within usual levels of intake.
 
 “Positive health outcomes include lower incidences of type 2 diabetes mellitus, kidney stones, Parkinson’s disease, gout, liver fibrosis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, liver cirrhosis, liver cancer and of chronic liver disease. This is the conclusion of an umbrella review of meta-analyses of multiple health outcomes, even after extensive correction for a large number of possible confounding factors, and also the result of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Study) trial analysing coffee consumption versus mortality,” the authors said. Interestingly, the findings of the large number of trials shows that coffee or several of its isolated constituents are potent activators of antioxidant or cell-protective enzyme expression and that dark roast coffee appears to be more potent in that regard than light roast coffee.
 
 “We conclude that the possible mechanism of coffee-mediated health effects does not include a major role of caffeine actions, rather, beneficial effects of coffee probably employ the same pathway as recently suggested for “healthy” vegetables or fruits. Additionally, non-digestible components of coffee may modulate the composition and function of the microbiota, as is known for other plant foods, but this requires further investigation,” the authors said. Source:
 Kolb H, et.al.: Health Effects of Coffee: Mechanism Unraveled? Nutrients 2020, 12, 1842; <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12061842" target="_blank">doi:10.3390/nu12061842</a>. PMID: 32575704; PMCID: PMC7353358.

Claiming coffee as one of your serves of fruit and vegetables per day may not be so far-fetched with authors of a recent review suggesting that coffee beans may be viewed as healthy plant food.

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