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Coffee and Cholesterol. To Filter or Not to Filter, that is the question.
First of All, The Good News
Coffee Drinkers are less likely to be diagnosed with heart failure and less likely to develop Type 2 Diabetes. Furthermore, coffee and tea drinkers were less likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, in a dose dependent fashion. The relationship does not exist with decaffeinated tea/ coffee¹, and the mechanism of protection against Parkinson’s is unclear.
Liver Disease is also less prevalent in coffee drinkers, and coffee is thought to have small protective effect against Alzheimers ².
More Good News, But With Some Caveats!
In people who are new to drinking coffee, it can raise blood pressure in the short term but this settles, and overall, coffee has not been shown to affect blood pressure. So its more a temporary effect.
CHOLESTEROL!
Unfiltered coffee can raise your total cholesterol and LDL & triglycerides(bad cholesterol)³.
Ok hit me with the bad news
Coffee doesn’t contain fats or cholesterol. However, it does contain substances called cafestol and kahweol (diterpenes)
Cafestol is higher in unfiltered coffee and have been shown to to increase total cholesterol and LDL, (bad cholesterol) ³,⁴.
(HOW?These oils increase the synthesis of cholesterol by affecting the excretion of bile acids in the liver.)
Boiled coffee such as that made by French Press(my favourite), Turkish coffee and Swedish coffees have higher concentration of these coffee oils. This is because of the higher temperatures used during their preparation and the longer contact time between the coffee grounds and water ⁴.
Its all about filtration.Filtration through a paper filter removes the cafestol from the coffee extract.
So If you use a french press, you can add a filter- this guy shows you how to do it. Click here to see how its done!
