Coffee Has Way More Antioxidants than Any Other Food or Drink We Consume

Forget Blueberries and Red Wine: Coffee Has Way More Antioxidants than Any Other Food or Drink We Consume

By Karen Merzenich |

We hear a lot about antioxidants these days – and indeed, we know they are important for our brain and body health. Antioxidants have been linked to many potential benefits including protection against dementia and cancer.

While things like blueberries, pomegranates, green tea, and red wine are most often touted for their antioxidant content, a comprehensive study has found that Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than from any other dietary source.

There is an important nuance to this study, which is that the researchers looked both at overall antioxidant content of over 100 foods, beverages, and spices AND how much of each thing we typically consume. So while other foods may have higher concentrations of antioxidants than coffee, we simply don’t consume a large enough quantity of them. In fact, if you’re looking for the most antioxidant content per volume, you might be surprised to learn that the study found that dates are the winner.

Check out this graph from the study that shows where Americans get most of their antioxidants, and you can see that coffee is far above any other source:

Don’t like coffee? You can try tea instead. The study found that black tea is the second-best source of antioxidants for Americans. And if you’re wondering whether your cup of decaf is just as good for you, don’t worry: the antioxidant levels are similar whether the coffee is caffeinated or not.

One caveat: the antioxidants in coffee are only a few types of the many thousands of types out there. So it is still recommended that you seek a variety of dietary sources of antioxidants to consume different types.

Want even more reasons to love your morning cup of joe? We recently wrote about someother surprising brain benefits of drinking coffee!

5 Surprising Brain Benefits of Drinking Coffee

By Karen Merzenich |  Alzheimer's disease, Memory, Neuroscience |  19 July 2013

Coffee: wonder drug or guilty pleasure? Scientists have been puzzling this out for some time now. In fact, coffee has been one of the world’s most popular beverages for hundreds of years. And although health professionals used to warn us about the ills of coffee and caffeine, it seems that current research has mostly turned the tide to coffee’s positive benefits. Here are 5 ways coffee might be good for your brain.

1. Coffee may slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease. AFlorida study found that when older people with mild cognitiveimpairment were tested initially and then again two to four years later, the ones with high blood caffeine–equivalent to about 3 cups of coffee–were far less likely to have developed full-blown Alzheimer’s disease.

2. Coffee may help you live longer. A large-scale study involving over 400,000 older adults found that men who drank 2 cups of coffee a day lived 10% longer than their coffee-free cohorts. Among women, the figure was even higher; the coffee drinkers lived an average of 13% longer than their uncaffeinated peers.

3. Coffee may help prevent Parkinson’s disease – and can reduce the visible symptoms if you already have it. Studies have shown that coffee drinkers are less likely to develop Parkinson’s, and for those that have the disease, coffee intake has been found to help with movement symptoms like tremors.

4. Coffee may stave off dementia. Animal experiments have found that caffeine can disrupt adenosine, a cell chemical that can start a chain reaction that leads to a disruption of neuron function, neurdegeneration, and eventual dementia.

5. Coffee is one of the best sources of neuroprotective antioxidants available. While things like blueberries and pomegranates are most often touted for their antioxidant content, it turns out our cup of morning Joe is brimming with antioxidants. Research has found that it is the number one source of antioxidants in most people’s diets, by a large margin.

I quit drinking coffee a few years ago, but all of this makes me want to start again! Do you drink coffee?