A cup of coffee is not only a pleasure to indulge in during the day, but it can also become a tool for keeping body weight under control. But what should the coffee be like to make the most of this benefit?
Let’s try to understand this by analyzing the results of a very recent scientific research published in the journal The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition thanks to the work of a team from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston (Henn et al, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Sep 2023).Coffee and body weight, what science saysThe scientists started from the results obtained a few years ago by the same research group, namely that drinking 4 cups of coffee a day determines a 4% reduction in body fat.
The results were observed in six months of testing on a group of 126 overweight adults. The coffee drunk by the volunteers was without cream, milk and sugar. The scientists thus decided to delve deeper into what they had observed, verifying the results on a much larger sample of the population and the effects of a coffee drunk with cream, milk, including vegetable milk, and sugar.
The research involved volunteers who had taken part in three large studies, the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II and Health Professional Follow-up Study, all of which began between the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s and concluded between 2010 and 2015. What emerged is that, in general, every cup of coffee, whether with or without caffeine, and without sugar contributes to a reduction, albeit modest, in body weight.
The addition of cream or vegetable milk does not modify this property, while the addition of sugar counteracts the action of coffee and induces weight gain. These results become more significant if the volunteer is young and has a high body mass index.ConclusionsCoffee, as long as it is unsweetened, can be included in moderation and without excess in a healthy lifestyle.
This drink, in fact, helps to counteract weight gain and also induces a reduction in fat after 6 months of consumption. Not only that, as proven by previous studies, coffee helps reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, inflammation and free radical damage. However, as mentioned, coffee must be sugar-free as the addition of sugar cancels out the benefits in terms of body weight and blood sugar control.