11/15/2019 The Health Benefits of Coffee - Scientific American

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The Health Benefits of Coffee

How does drinking coffee help your body and your brain?

By Everyday Einstein Sabrina Stierwalt on August 29, 2019

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Credit: Mara Ohlsson Getty Images

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Fifty-four percent of American adults are coffee drinkers with

the average intake being at least three cups of coffee per day. As you
can guess, this adds up: the U.S. spends roughly $40 billion on coffee
each year. But the U.S. doesn’t even break the top 20 in a ranking of
countries by coffee consumption per capita, coming in only at number
22. Coffee consumption proves highest in the land of the midnight sun:
Finland and Norway rank #1 among the top coffee drinking countries
in the world, although the Netherlands and Slovenia are not far behind.

There are over 21,000 Starbucks locations alone in the world (with about 12,000 of
those being in the U.S.) and our consumption continues to rise. Global demand
is expected to increase by an extra 40-50 million bags of coffee over the next decade
which is more than Brazil’s entire yearly production. With the current threats to coffee
crops that come with climate change, the world could possibly face a severe coffee
shortage.

So what has us all so hooked? Let’s discuss the science behind the making of a good cup
of coffee as well as its potential health benefits.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND A GOOD CUP OF JOE

Coffee beans themselves have little to no taste at all. The flavor, the aroma of coffee: it all
comes from the roasting process which releases a large number of chemicals from the
tiny bean. In fact, the average cup of coffee contains more than 1,000 chemicals. To
transfer those delicious chemicals to the hot water in our cup, we run water over those
roasted beans. To increase our success, we both grind the beans to increase their surface
area (and thus more exposure of those chemicals to the water) and heat the water since
higher temperatures (and thus energies) speed up the removal of molecules from a solid.

Lucky for us coffee drinkers, smaller and more water soluble molecules like acids will get
extracted first and those tend to be the tastier, less bitter flavors. Coffee drinkers are well
aware that not every cup is created equal. I have rarely met a cup of coffee that I won’t
drink (a little soy milk goes a long way) but I know others who won’t touch, say a gas
station brew and insist upon espresso.

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The difference lies not in the beans themselves but in the preparation. For espresso, the
beans are very finely ground (almost to the texture of powdered sugar) and the brewing
time is much shorter than for regular drip coffee. The way to decrease brewing time is to
push the water through the ground coffee faster so espresso machines can reach up to 15
atmospheres of pressure to move a cup’s worth of water in less than 30 seconds.

»Continue reading “The Health Benefits of Coffee” on

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Everyday Einstein Sabrina Stierwalt

Sabrina Stierwalt, PhD, is an astrophysicist at Occidental College and the host of the Everyday
Einstein podcast on Quick and Dirty Tips.

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