Green Tea Is Good So Is Green Coffee!

I couldn’t resist the headline! But it’s true. Green coffee emerges as a weight loss aid.

It’s funny, I’ve known for years that coffee is great when you are trying to diet. I find that even my favorite—a small espresso with a tiny dash of cream—really seems to kill the appetite.

Of course I cannot recommend the absurd over-indulgence of a typical coffee-house 20 ounce latte! That would be around 300 calories, whereas mine is less than 50.

But it’s not about calories; it’s about dampening your appetite. Now a new study has shown that we can skip the fermenting, the roasting, the espresso machine and the snatch of cream!

Green coffee, taken in capsules, would do the job…

When taken as a supplement, unroasted — or green — coffee-bean extract can help people shed pounds.

Research presented this week at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, concerned a study in which 16 overweight and obese patients who were given daily doses of green coffee extract in capsule form (OK, small study).

All the patients were instructed to maintain their usual dietary habits, while the study team monitored them for weight loss over a period of nearly six months.

The study was broken into three six-week sections. In one section, study participants, who were all between the ages of 22 and 26, consumed a capsule filled with 700 milligrams of green coffee extract. In the second section, participants took a 1,050-milligram capsule. The third section had participants taking a placebo. Each patient ultimately cycled through each section.

On average, patients lost 10.5 percent and 16 percent of their body weight and body fat, respectively.

The result? Daily consumption of a small amount of green coffee extract translated into a nearly 11 percent drop in body weight, on average.

The study did not focus on the known weight-loss impact of caffeine but the primary ingredient unroasted coffee: chlorogenic acid. There’s far less of this active phenolic in roasted coffee beans, which are treated at a temperature between 464 and 482 degrees Fahrenheit.

The study was conducted in India and funded by Applied Food Sciences, the American manufacturer of two green-coffee-extract products. It has not been published in a journal, and therefore has yet to undergo peer review. So one should be wary of the validity of such a study.

It does fit with what I shared about coffee killing your appetite.

But then, who wants to give up that delicious aroma?

[March 25-29, 2012, National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, San Diego]