How the way you prepare your coffee impacts your cholesterol

The Uppsala team studied the offerings from a number of coffee machines. They discovered that, depending on whether the coffee was brewed by the machines, or filtered by them, the levels of diterpenes were significantly raised.

“Six cups of boiled coffee a day will raise your cholesterol by around 10 per cent,” says Iggman.

At the other end of the scale, coffee made using a paper filter was the healthiest choice. “For people who drink a lot of coffee every day, making it this way manages to almost completely filter out these cholesterol-elevating substances,” advises Iggman.

Coffee from a cafetière comes somewhere between boiled and filtered coffee, as do the cups you buy from high street chains such as Pret or Starbucks. “Some espresso samples also contained high levels of diterpenes, but there was great variation,” says Iggman. “We didn’t look at instant coffee in our study, but previous studies have shown it has a similar profile to filter coffee.”

According to Iggman, you can get an idea how healthy your homemade coffee is, just by looking at it. “If your drink appears cloudy, it probably hasn’t been properly filtered,” he says.

Does coffee have any heart health benefits?

Several other studies have pointed to coffee’s heart-health-promoting characteristics. According to the 2023 Coffee and Real-time Atrial and Ventricular Ectopy trial (also known by the snappy acronym CRAVE), drinking coffee might increase the amount of exercise you do.

The study, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that on the days people drank coffee, they took an average of 1000 extra steps per day.

“Every additional coffee drink was associated with 587 more steps per day,” the researchers say. “This magnitude of step count differences has been associated with improved health outcomes, including reduced mortality. Presumably, the caffeine helped with the psychological motivation to exercise or enhanced physical performance in a way that made such activity easier or more enjoyable.”

Loading

The downside was that participants slept 36 fewer minutes per night, on average.

What’s the best time of day to drink coffee for heart health?

A study published in the European Heart Journal in February this year found that people who drank coffee in the morning had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and had a lower mortality risk than all-day coffee consumers.

“A possible explanation is that consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythms (our bodies 24-hour cycle of physical, mental and behavioural changes) and levels of hormones such as melatonin,” says Dr Lu Qi, the lead researcher and director of Tulane University Obesity Research Centre.

“This, in turn, leads to changes in cardiovascular risk factors such as inflammation and blood pressure.”

Dr Qi suggests that further research is needed to work out exactly why morning coffee is healthier.

Choose filter coffee and avoid office-machine coffees

The study from Uppsala University in Sweden and published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases found filtered coffee to be most cholesterol-friendly while suggesting Turkish-style boiled coffee and some office-machine coffees are to be avoided.

“A moderate amount of coffee or tea, say four cups a day, should be fine for most people,” says Victoria Taylor of the British Heart Foundation. “Research shows that this level of caffeine intake shouldn’t be detrimental to your heart health.” Any more than this might increase heart rate and blood pressure in some people, leading to palpitations.

The Telegraph, London

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.