Altering cholesterol is just one of the ways your daily cup of coffee affects your body. If you have elevated LDL cholesterol, should you cut down on your coffee?
1 Answer
Coffee does not include any form of cholesterol, as it is produced in the liver of animals.
However, some alcohols in coffee affect how cholesterol metabolizes in human body. Thus, indirectly affects cholesterol levels.
Extraction of these alcohols are mostly related with grounds contact period with water. So, we can say you should take care about the brewing method.
For example, cold-brew increases the cholesterol levels the most. Drip-brew and instant coffee the least. Turkish coffee increases a lot. French-press increases quite much. Espresso is somewhere in the middle. Pour-over filters are increasing just a little.
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2I had not heard of these before: coffee diterpene alcohols - cafestol and kahweol. Here is an abstract of a very technical reference article: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9351383– Rick GNov 2, 2017 at 1:57
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@MTSan's helpful "more information" page looks through to a Science Daily article with the summary, "Cafestol, a compound found in coffee, elevates cholesterol by hijacking a receptor in an intestinal pathway critical to its regulation, according to a recent article."– Jerry101Nov 12, 2017 at 7:27
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1The AeroPress FAQ says
Cafestol and kahweol are ... powerful agents that cause our bodies to increase the low density lipoproteins (LDL or “bad” cholesterol) in our blood. ... Any coffee maker using a paper filter (...) removes virtually all of the cafestol and kahweol from the brew. We had this verified by an independent test lab for AeroPress brewed coffee.Does anyone know if bamboo filters also remove these chemicals? I can attest that bamboo filters let more "sharp" flavors through than paper filters do.– Jerry101Nov 12, 2017 at 7:34 -
1@Jerry101 Just speculating: We know that paper grabs most of the oils (aromatics) of coffee while filtering. That's why some people prefer metals. Those ones, however let grounds mix with the cup. Bamboo is for that. It doesn't grab aromatics, so you have more body with less grounds in your cup. I never heard that paper eliminates alcohols. (In general, I mean. As I never encountered isolated coffee alcohols.) I cannot reason on bamboo and alcohols, but maybe it is similar to oils if bamboo doesn't like being in a reaction in general.– MTSanNov 12, 2017 at 8:46