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  • March 27, 2023
You are here: Home / Archives for Buzz

5 Ways Coffee Fights Cancer

September 2, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

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SuperheroCoffeeCancer2

Will coffee help keep you cancer-free? Possibly.

Coffee reduces the risk of certain cancers, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research. Of course, there’s no guarantee that a coffee habit will ensure a cancer-free life: cancers are complex and for that matter, coffee’s got its own mysteries. But mounting evidence suggests moderate coffee drinking may help reduce the risks of these cancers:

  • Basal Cell Carcinoma (the most common form of skin cancer)
  • Colorectal Cancer
  • Prostate Cancer
  • Kidney Cancer
  • Liver Cancer
  • Oral Cancer

What’s in coffee that prevents cancer?

Coffee’s considered a good scavenger of free radicals, because it’s rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals. Antioxidants neutralize chemicals (free radicals) that may damage body tissues. Phytochemicals are non-essential nutrients that plants develop for defense, protection, and disease-prevention. Phytochemicals include flavonoids, lignans and phenolic acid. Among the caffeine-rich foods we enjoy, tea and chocolate are rich with these compounds, but based on current research, coffee is the wealthiest.

5 Compounds in Coffee That Fight Cancer

Studies show that at least five compounds in coffee help reduce cancer risk:

Chlorogenic acid – This antioxidant compound is the major phenol in coffee. It’s technically an ester formed between quinic acid and caffeic acid. Caffeic acid is its main component; lab studies show it increases self-destruction of cancer cells and reduces inflammation. Chlorogenic acid’s antioxidants may be slightly lower in decaf and in instant coffee, but they’re still abundant. Quinic acid contributes to the acidic taste of coffee and is another phytochemical with antioxidant benefits.

Cafestol and kahweol – These fat-soluble compounds are extracted from coffee’s oils during brewing and are most available in unfiltered coffee (as in French press or boiled coffee; to drink more of these compounds, don’t use paper filters). Studies suggest kahweol and cafestol stimulate enzymes that neutralize carcinogens and block the proteins that activate carcinogens.

Caffeine – Everyone knows caffeine acts as a stimulant. It’s also a powerful antioxidant. Caffeine appears to reduce the risk for basal cell carcinoma (the most common form of skin cancer), though not for other skin cancers. Studies also show that caffeinated coffee, tea and soda reduce the risk; decaffeinated versions do not. Don’t stop applying sunscreen, experts advise, but caffeine appears to act like a sunscreen by directly absorbing damaging UV rays and blocking ATR, a protein activated by ultraviolet light.

Caffeine also reduces the risk of colorectal cancer risk. Researchers believe caffeine speeds carcinogens’ passage through the digestive tract, reducing exposure to these substances. Caffeine may also influence cell signaling to decrease colorectal cancer development.

NMB – N-methylpyridinium (NMB) appears to boost the potency of antioxidants, but it doesn’t occur with raw beans. It’s created during the roasting process, from trigonellin, its chemical precursor in raw coffee beans. NMB is present in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, including instant.

Contrary to early studies, current research provides good evidence that moderate coffee drinking does not increase cancer risks in most people, and instead may reduce cancer risks.

Coffee Dosage for Cancer-Prevention

How much coffee does it take to get its cancer-fighting benefits? Each study varies in consumption. Some found benefits with as little as one to two cups a day, others averaged four cups, and none of the studies reported benefits when consumption exceeded six cups a day. (Six cups is considered a high dose, and risky for heart and other conditions.) Benefits didn’t happen overnight. Participants generally had a history of several years, if not decades, of daily coffee consumption. (Some research was replicated as lab and cell studies, others as human studies.)

Bottom line:

In the U.S., most coffee drinkers drink from one to three cups a day. If you enjoy coffee, you may be getting cancer-fighting benefits, as long as your daily habit stays within reason, and remains below six cups a day.

* * *

Further reading:

Foods That Fight Cancer: Coffee

Study: Coffee May Reduce Risk of Oral Cancer

Study: Coffee Consumption Reduces Risk of Oral Cancer

Highly Active Compound Found In Coffee May Prevent Colon Cancer

Coffee Consumption and the Risk of Cancers: An Overview

Coffee May Protect Against Skin Cancer

Coffee: Chemistry in Every Cup

Cancer Fighters: A Guide to Phytochemicals (American Institute for Cancer Research)

Filed Under: Buzz, Coffee, Health Effects Tagged With: caffeine, cancer, carcinoma, coffee, health, phytochemical

5 Ways to Up Coffee’s Caffeine

July 6, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

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Bean and brewing affect coffee's caffeine

Wanna Up Your Cup? Tweaking Coffee’s Caffeine

The amount of caffeine in your coffee depends on many factors. You can’t control growing conditions, but you can raise – or lower – the caffeine in your cup with these tips. (They also affect flavor, so choose wisely.)

Longer Brewing Delivers More Caffeine: The longer hot water is in contact with coffee, the more caffeine it extracts. A French press steeps grounds for 4-6 minutes; with drip coffee, water drips through in about 3 minutes.

Robustas Are Twice as Caffeinated as Arabicas: Coffee experts prefer Arabica beans because of their smooth taste. The Robusta variety is harsher, stronger in flavor, and usually less pricey; it’s often mixed into blends to boost impact or lower the price, but good quality espresso blends include robusta for its lovely crema (foam).

Lighter Roasts Retain More Caffeine: Roasting destroys some caffeine content. Longer, darker roasts actually contain less caffeine than light or “blonde” roasts. Espresso is made with dark roasted beans, giving it less caffeine than one would expect.

Hotter Water Extracts More Caffeine: Experts recommend 195-205 degrees, and the higher temperatures extract more caffeine than lower ones. Water boils at 212 degrees F, but that temperature can produce a harsh tasting brew.

Finer Grinds Yield More Caffeine: Finer grinds expose more of the coffee bean to water than course grinds, so more caffeine is extracted more quickly. Despite a longer brewing time, a French press using the customary coarse grounds yields less caffeine than drip brewing with fine grounds. Burr grinders create rougher surfaces, and yield more caffeine, than blade grinders.

More Coffee Grounds Produce More Caffeine: This is logical. The greater volume of coffee grounds, the more caffeine is extracted, with a stronger flavor.

So obviously, the amount of caffeine in coffee (and tea as well) can vary considerably. But as a rule of thumb, I use 100 mg per 8-ounce cup of home-brewed coffee. (Starbucks lists a 16-ounce grande coffee at 330 mg caffeine.) Tea typically ranges from 30-80 mg per cup, so my rule of thumb is 50 mg caffeine per cup of black tea, and 25 mg for green tea.

More to explore:

Calculate Your Caffeine – Infographic compares caffeine per ounce, in coffee, tea, energy drinks and more.

Coffee Profile – in Caffeine Basics, free online book

Filed Under: Buzz, Coffee Tagged With: bean, brew, caffeine amount, coffee

Why Bees Buzz to Caffeine

July 2, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

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BeeRedFlower2As it turns out, bees like caffeine. Maybe that’s why they buzz…

Bees, as we know, are important for pollination and help ensure plant species survival. Apparently, as with humans, caffeine is attractive to bees in moderate levels, but it’s toxic in high levels. Is this nature’s way of getting bees addicted to certain plants?

Bees Self-Regulate Their Caffeine

Given a choice, bees will select mildly caffeinated nectar over non-caffeinated nectar. Bees also prefer nectar with some nicotine, another stimulant that can be toxic to other insects and animals. But when levels of caffeine and nicotine are higher than found in nature, these substances become toxic to bees.

In 2010, the University of Haifa released a study indicating bees prefer nectar with small amounts of caffeine. Floral nectars vary in their concentration of sugars and other substances. Caffeine amounts vary, too, and are most highly concentrated in citrus flowers; grapefruit flowers have about six times the caffeine as other citrus – and bees find citrus, especially grapefruit, to be quite fetching.

Researchers offered bees artificial nectars with varying levels of natural sugars, caffeine and nicotine, alongside “clean” nectar that comprised sugar alone. The caffeine and nicotine ranged from typical concentrations found naturally, to high concentrations not found in nature.

Bees clearly preferred nectar containing nicotine and caffeine to the “clean” nectar, but only when concentrations were similar to those found in nature. Given the choice of higher levels of caffeine and nicotine versus clean nectar, the bees preferred the clean nectar.

Do Bees Get Hooked on Caffeine?

“This could be an evolutionary development intended, as in humans, to make the bee addicted,” states Prof. Ido Izhaki, one of the researchers who conducted the study.

So did addictive (or addictive-like) substances in nectar evolve to make pollination more likely and efficient? Based on the results of the study, researchers surmise the plants that raced to the top of the natural-selection class are ones who developed “correct” levels of these addictive substances. They hit the sweet spot, enabling them to attract bees but not repel them, thereby giving them a significant advantage over other plants. The researchers emphasized that this study has proved a preference, not addiction, and they are examining whether bees do indeed become addicted to nicotine and caffeine.

    • Nicotine is found naturally in floral nectar at a concentration of up to 2.5 milligrams per liter, primarily in various types of tobacco tree (Nicotiana glauca).
    • Caffeine is found at concentration levels of 11-17.5 milligrams per liter, mostly in citrus flowers, (and of course in coffee, tea and cacao plants).
    • In the nectar of grapefruit flowers, however, caffeine is present in much higher concentrations, reaching 94.2 milligrams per liter.
    • For comparison, an 8-ounce cup of coffee contains about 100 milligrams of caffeine.

BeePurpleFlowerKHTurning to Bee Brains for Answers

Interestingly, the report above led to a more recent study, announced in 2013, which shows that naturally caffeinated nectar enhances the bees’ learning process. In other words, caffeine trains bee brains to come back for more.

Bee Brains Remember the Buzz

In this study, caffeine improved the bees’ ability to remember and locate a caffeinated scent; it triggered brain activities involved with memory and olfactory learning. (Other studies on humans show caffeine improves some forms of memory, can be habit-forming, and activates the reward centers of our brains. I’ve also observed that just the smell of coffee puts people in a better mood.)

Essentially, the plant uses caffeine as a drug to change a pollinator’s behavior – for the plant’s own benefit. Geraldine Wright is a honeybee brain specialist – yes, there is such a thing – at Newcastle University in England. She and her colleagues reported their findings in Science (March 2013).

No Tiny Swizzle Sticks?

In the experiments, the plants stir up a sort of nectar-cocktail of chemicals, ones that the bees like and remember; in this case it’s a cocktail splashed with caffeine.

“The trick here is actually to influence the memorability of the signal using a psychoactive drug. And that’s a new trick in the book for plants,” said Dr. Lars Chittka, a bee researcher (not involved in Wright’s study), as reported in the New York Times.

It’s a win-win situation: plants serve their customers tasty nectar, and their customers pollinate the species. The tastier the nectar, the more the bees return to that species of plant.

In Dr. Wright’s lab, caffeine appeared to have a notable effect on memory, and this affected the bees’ behavior. The researchers tested the bees using sugar water – plain and caffeinated – as the rewards. As the New York Times reports:

“If you put a low dose of caffeine in the reward when you teach them this task, and the amount is similar to what we drink when we have weak coffee, they just don’t forget that the odor is associated with the reward,” she said. After 24 hours, three times as many bees remembered the connection between odor and reward if the reward contained caffeine. After 72 hours, twice as many remembered. They then tested the effect of caffeine on neurons in the bee brain and found that its action could lead to more sensitivity in neurons called Kenyon cells, which are involved in learning and memory. Dr. Wright said that this was one plausible route for enhancing memory, but was not definitive.”

The results go beyond whether bees prefer caffeine to decaf. The bees learned to like and want caffeine, and even just the odor triggered a response. According to researchers, this appears to confirm the notion that brain chemistry has intrinsic similarities across the animal kingdom. It is, as one scientist said, “like learning the language of the brain.”

It doesn’t mean caffeine sparks the same memory and learning reactions in humans, but it might.

For more on this topic, check out:

  • Caffeine in Floral Nectar Enhances a Pollinator’s Memory of Reward
  • Nectar That Gives Bees a Buzz Lures Them Back for More (New York Times)

The study’s summary:

Caffeine improves memory in humans, millions of whom find that their daily dose enhances clarity, focus, and alertness. The human relationship with caffeine is relatively recent, however, and thus its impact on our brains is likely a by-product of its true ecological role. Caffeine occurs naturally in the floral nectar of Coffea and Citrus plants. Wright et al. (p. 1202; see the Perspective by Chittka and Peng) found that caffeine presented at naturalistic levels significantly improved the ability of bees to remember and locate a learned floral scent and potentiated the responses of neurons involved in olfactory learning and memory.

(I’m not sure I agree that the human-caffeine relationship is relatively recent; other scientists suggest caffeine may have been part of our evolution since early man. But daily, widespread caffeine use in our species is certainly more recent.)

Filed Under: Buzz Tagged With: addiction, bee, caffeine, habit, plant, research

Chocolate’s Next Conquest: India

June 21, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

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choco-tajIn Western tradition, a dinner guest brings a bottle of wine as a host or hostess gift.

In India, Cadbury wants to make Toblerone the gift to give – it’s a strategy for growing the chocolate market in India. And it’s working. Hershey’s and other chocolate makers have also zeroed in on India, a subcontinent ready to be conquered.

TobleroneLongCadbury’s Toblerone, with its distinctive triangular box, is the leading brand in airport duty free stores around the world. It’s considered a premium brand and Cadbury India (a division of Kraft Foods) is actively promoting it and its other premium brands, including Cadbury Silk, in India.

In a nation where gifting is a solid tradition, chocolate gifting accounts for 6 percent of India’s gifting sales. The biggest brands: Hershey’s, Ferrero Rocher, Lindt, and Cadbury, which at 70 percent dominates India’s nascent chocolate market.

So how much chocolate are we talking about? Between 2005 and 2012, India’s chocolate consumption tripled – meaning it jogged from 40 grams to about 160 grams person, or less than two 3.5-ounce chocolate bars. Undeniably, this is a meager amount. But international cocoa producers are on a mission to expand their product everywhere. And wherever sales are low, there’s room to grow.

As incomes rise in India (and elsewhere), consumers tend to trade up, especially in food and grocery items. They start buying more expensive brands, and products with higher quality, better packaging, and distinctive branding.

India has long had a love affair with sweets and gift-giving, and Indian-made chocolates do exist (Amul is the largest). But international mega-brands have aggressively pitched their chocolates as status-symbol gifts during Diwali, the Indian festival of light and the most important holiday of the year. People increasingly prefer pristinely packaged chocolates over the mithrai, traditional Indian sweets sold at shops and stands. And perhaps chocolate’s caffeine and theobromine content creates a chemically induced, feel-good habit that non-chocolate mithrai can’t provide.

Chocolate Crimes and Frivolity 

Diwali chocolate-gifting is now popular enough to spawn both counterfeit chocolate sales and luxury chocolate jewelry.

Some of the Diwali woes: Fake chocolate sold under big name brands; chocolate adulterated with minerals to increase the weight and deepen color; and gravelly texture from inferior sugar. India’s newfound passion for chocolate has inspired spurious products.

Luxury products also get a boost. One designer is selling chocolate jewelry, gilded with edible gold. Gold is the ultimate Indian status symbol, and with gold prices so high, gilded chocolate seems like a novel alternative.

But whether gilded or not, chocolate is invading India, and no one seems to mind.

Filed Under: Buzz, Chocolate Tagged With: chocolate, India, trend

10 Best Coffee Quotes From *Living* People

June 12, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

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sew-there

10 Best Coffee Quotes from Living People –

Tired of quotes as stale as yesterday’s coffee, from dead people like Einstein and Lincoln? CaffeineAndYou.com delivers coffee quotes from living people – folks still kicking and ticking (at least for now). Don’t forget to share the fun and leave Comments about your favorites…

“Do you love a decaffeinated hazelnut-flavored coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts with plenty of sugar and skim milk? If so, please skip ahead to the next section. We’re here to talk about tasting actual coffee, not sweetened brown milk.”

– Ruth Bourdain, Comfort Me with Offal *

“In Seattle you haven’t had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it’s running.”

– Jeff Bezos

“Starbucks says they are going to start putting religious quotes on cups. The very first one will say, ‘Jesus! This cup is expensive!'”

– Conan O’Brien

“It just seems so watery…Really? That’s what people drink everyday? I don’t see the point in that.”

– Anderson Cooper in 2011, on trying coffee for the first time

“I’ll quit coffee. It won’t be easy drinking my Bailey’s straight, but I’ll get used to it. It’ll still be the best part of waking up.”

– Megan Mullally

“This is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard flight…one, from…here to there. We’ll be cruising at a height of ten feet, going up to twelve and a half feet if we see anything big. And our copilot today is a flask of coffee.”

– Eddie Izzard

“Too much coffee. Too much coffee and Gatorade. It’s a hell of a mix. If you’re ever tired in the morning, just try that mix, and tell me what you think.”

– Kevin Garnett

“I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.”

– Steven Wright

“At some point, all of us start wondering how much coffee we can drink before our hearts explode.”

– Phil Broughton, Funranium Labs’ Black Blood of the Earth

“What’s silly is paying five bucks for hot milk and flavored syrup! But now I see what’s really been going on all this time! They charge you all that money because they need it for the R & D! Somewhere on the outskirts of Seattle, there’s a secret facility with higher security than Area 51, and inside there are men with poor eyesight and bad haircuts wearing white coats, and they’re trying to make the Holy Grail of all coffee drinks… the Triple Nonfat Double Bacon Five-Cheese Mocha!”

– Kevin Hearne, from Hammered

And a bonus quote to put the crema in your coffee:

“I like light green, sometimes red is fun to look at, not a fan of yellow, unless it’s in a rainbow or on a coffee mug or on a happy face.”

– Chris Kattan  🙂 

* Technically Ruth Bourdain is a parody mash-up of Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain. Ruth may not be real, but the mystery writer behind her voice is, so she’s very much alive and kicking. And for more good quotes from authors and famous people (alive and dead), check out Goodreads.com.

 

Filed Under: Buzz, Fun Tagged With: coffee, Fun, quote

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About Kate Heyhoe

I'm an author and journalist specializing in food and cooking. Caffeine Basics is my ninth book. I've written about the U.S. wine industry, international foods, shrinking your "cookprint," and cooking with kids. Great Bar Food at Home was a James Beard Award finalist, and Cooking Green: Reducing … More

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