What is the Healthiest Way to Drink Coffee?

How You Can Tap Into Coffee’s Full Potential

It’s fairly common knowledge that drinking coffee can be very good for our health. Yet often, we drink coffee in ways that aren’t all that healthy. Besides the coffee itself, how we make and drink our coffee determines how healthy our coffee will turn out to be.

How much can we expect that knowing the healthiest ways to drink coffee will actually motivate us to follow the suggestions? Sometimes we’ll be facing difficult trade offs, like choosing between something that’s good for us and something that tastes good.

That’s what I mean when I share my view that coffee merely has the potential to be healthy, rather than taking for granted that it always is. The coffee range doesn’t only cover healthy, healthier, and healthiest. The flip side of the potential that coffee has is that it can potentially be unhealthy too.

Below I explain the things in coffee that are good for our health, what to do to benefit fully from drinking coffee, and how to avoid harmful substances (chemicals, mold, and a few others).

Counting Caffeine Consumption the Proper Way

Caffeine Content Can Vary Drastically
Caffeine content can vary drastically among coffee types and brands. It is never a good idea to track caffeine “by the cup” unless you know exactly what’s in each cup. That means knowing the coffee type / brand, how many ounces are in the cup, and what the caffeine content is.

I always seek to get my information from sources that I consider to be knowledgeable and objective, especially in matters related to nutrition or medicine. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a great source for this sort of information. Click here to see their full caffeine chart or to visit their website: CSPI website.

As we can see in their caffeine chart, one regular Nespresso capsule can contain as little as 55 milligrams of caffeine. At the other extreme, an 8 ounce packet of instant Death Wish coffee contains 300 milligrams of caffeine.

Using the numbers above, the total caffeine consumed by someone who drinks three cups of Nespresso is 165 milligrams. In contrast, someone who drinks 3 cups of Death Wish coffee will consume 900 milligrams of coffee.

Since the recommended daily maximum caffeine consumption is 400 milligrams, the Nespresso drinker could drink 3 more cups of coffee and still not exceed that maximum. The Death Wish coffee drinker, on the other hand, might be in need of medical attention after having consumed more than double the recommended maximum.

USDA Guidelines

FOR HEALTHY ADULTS, 400 milligrams is the maximum recommended daily consumption. This is only a general guideline. Metabolism rates and reaction to caffeine vary in individuals, so be aware that the actual maximum could be higher for some and lower for others.

There are a number of symptoms of caffeine over-consumption, and you may experience them even if your consumption throughout the day is below 400 milligrams. This could be due to a variety of factors beyond the two mentioned above (for example, a person’s weight).

A person with lower than average metabolism and / or higher than average sensitivity to caffeine could experience symptoms of caffeine over-consumption from just one cup of the Death Wish instant coffee mentioned above.

What Contributes Most to Making Coffee Healthy

For coffee to provide the maximum health benefits, it needs to be cultivated and processed according to acceptable quality standards, high in antioxidant content, and prepared properly.

What Can Be Done To Start Out With Healthier Coffee

It’s very difficult to get coffee that’s completely free of chemicals and other contaminants, but much can be done to ensure that coffee is pretty close to free from contamination.

Where and how coffee is cultivated and processed can have a big impact on coffee quality. There isn’t a perfect correlation between the quality of a coffee and how healthy that coffee is. Though at the very least, high quality coffee should put us closer to where we want to be.

Even though relying blindly on classifications is never a good idea (you can see here what a former vice-chair of the U.S. National Organic Standards Board had to say: statement about organic coffee), I would still put my money on organic over regular coffee any day of the week.

Antioxidants: The Super Substance in Coffee

While caffeine can be very good for most of us when used as recommended, it is “merely” a stimulant. Antioxidants, on the other hand, help keep our cells healthy. You can read more about antioxidants here: antioxidants and nutrition.

The antioxidants in coffee bean types (mainly Arabica and Robusta) vary according to the level of roasting. For light roasts, Robusta tends to have a slight advantage over Arabica. For medium and dark roasts, it’s the opposite. You can read more about antioxidants in coffee here: antioxidant content in coffee
The article in the paragraph above is a great reference in general to learn more about coffee and how to get the maximum health benefits from coffee.

The Method Used in Preparing Coffee Matters

Studies have shown that using an Aeropress coffee maker preserves the
highest amounts of antioxidants and minerals in coffee, followed by
drip and single cup coffee makers. As you will learn below, these methods are also preferred for another important reason.

Filters Aren’t just for Coffee Grounds

Coffee filters can remove anywhere from most to nearly all of the impurities that a coffee may have. This is particularly important for those who buy coffee brands not known for proactively minimizing contaminants in their coffee.

If you make coffee using an espresso machine or a French press, it would be a good idea to stick to coffee brands that use cultivation and processing methods geared toward minimizing contamination from chemicals and mold.

Keep the Coffee As Plain As Possible

You may be surprised to hear that things such as milk, creamer, and sweeteners do more than add calories. They can interfere with the absorption of antioxidants, and they can also cancel out part of the good that antioxidants do.

Many people won’t even consider drinking black coffee, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be that extreme. Simply going light on the things that are normally added to coffee can go a long way too.

One final piece of advice: whenever possible, make the coffee yourself. If that’s not possible, get the coffee black and add the other ingredients yourself. Others are usually more interested in making the coffee taste good, and not so much in making it so that it’s good for you.