Scandinavians: 1. Italians: 0. That would be the current scoreboard for coffee’s healthfulness by roast level, according to new research in the Journal of Food Medicine. They’ve just published a study that claims lighter roasted coffee has more beneficial health properties than dark roast.
As reported by UPI, a group of scientists in Korea examined “the nutritional effects of roasting times on beans from Coffea Arabica.” To do this, the scientists used a Hottop to roast 200g of Brazil Ipanema Euro Natural coffee to four different roast levels: light, medium, city, and French. Roast times ranged from 8:00 to 11:33, with loss percentages between 11.5% and 23.2%. The roasted coffee was then pulled as espresso (through a Faema E98) and analyzed for caffeine and total phenolic compound content.
The researchers found that the levels of caffeine—whose health benefits have been extensively reported upon here on Sprudge Wire—remained mostly unchanged across roast levels, there was a drastic decrease in chlorogenic acid compounds and antioxidant activity in darker roasts. Chlorogenic acid is the cause for coffee’s anti-inflammatory properties, thus dark roasted coffee is less beneficial in this regard than light roasts.
So is light roasted coffee better? Science thinks so. Who am I to disagree with Science?
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.
*top image via coffeebytheroast.com
