Fwd: Health Benefits of Coffee

Biggest source of anti-oxidants, reduces liver cancer & diabetes

Java Joy: Study Touts Coffee's Benefits

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press
Sunday, August 28, 2005; 7:08 PM

WASHINGTON -- When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it
loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were.
Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also
provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage
in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.

Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise
cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.

The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University
of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming
beverage.

"The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from
beverages, as opposed to what you might think," Vinson said in a
telephone interview.

Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide
other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other
fruits and vegetables.

Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and
decided to study coffee, too.

His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different
food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and
common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on
typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant
each food contributes to a person's diet.

They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of
antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294
milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76
milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams.
According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American
drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.

That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.

"Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and
vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point
of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber,"
Vinson said.

Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources
of antioxidants, he said.

The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they
are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group,
Vinson said.

The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He
noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the
polyphenols.

"We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways,"
including affecting enzymes and genes, though more research is needed,
Vinson said.

"If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to
spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up," Vinson said. "We
always talk about moderation in anything."

His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention
of the American Chemical Society in Washington.

In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of
the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or
nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never
drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to
two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found
that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form
of diabetes.

Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day
lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced
their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not
drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the
Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson's finding,
because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.

But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson's research team, cautioned
that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the
risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always
panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the
combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods,
she said.