In a new study, researchers found that coffee can help reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes—but only filtered coffee, rather than boiled coffee.
The finding shows that the choice of preparation method influences the health effects of coffee.
The research was conducted by a team at the Chalmers University of Technology and Umeå University, both in Sweden.
Many previous studies have shown a connection between high coffee intake and a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
This study offers new insight into this connection, using a novel method to help differentiate between the effects of filtered coffee and boiled coffee.
Filtered coffee is the most common method of preparation in many places, including the US and Scandinavia.
Boiled coffee, in this case, refers to an alternative method of coffee preparation sometimes used in Sweden and some other countries, in which coarse ground coffee is simply added directly to boiling water and left to brew for a few minutes.
All the data used in the research came from a group of Swedish subjects and was collected in the early 1990s.
The team identified specific molecules – ‘biomarkers’ – in the blood of people taking part in the study, which indicates the intake of different sorts of coffee.
These biomarkers are then used for analysis when calculating type 2 diabetes risk.
The results clearly show that filtered coffee has a positive effect in terms of reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. But boiled coffee does not have this effect.
With the use of these biomarkers, the researchers were able to show that people who drank two to three cups of filtered coffee a day had a 60% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who drank less than one cup of filtered coffee a day.
Consumption of boiled coffee had no effect on diabetes risk in the study.
Many people wrongly believe that coffee has only negative effects on health. This could be because previous studies have shown that boiled coffee increases the risk of heart and vascular diseases, due to the presence of diterpenes, a type of molecule found in boiled coffee.
The lead author of the study is Rikard Landberg, Professor in Food Science at Chalmers.
The study is published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
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