The 11 Biggest Benefits with Cold Brew Coffee
If you read the DripBeans blog, you probably love coffee, don’t you? And you probably like cold brew especially, right?
Then you should now that there are 11 amazing cold brew coffee benefits!
You can probably guess some of them. We have all heard that there are health benefits to coffee. Some studies have even shown a decrease in overall mortality for coffee drinkers. But is it more to it? Yes, it is.
1 – High Caffeine Content
Coffee, in general, contains a lot of caffeine. Anywhere between 50mg -150mg/cup is normal. However, as cold brew coffee is brewed with a higher coffee-to-water ratio, the caffeine content is often higher. The cold brew caffeine content is often around 270mg/glass, and some brew is so strong that a single glass can contain up to 1000mg(!?).
Even though drinking too much caffeine often isn’t something healthy, the high caffeine content is appreciated by many cold brew drinkers. And if you don’t drink waaay too much, it won’t be harmful.
2 – Cold Brew Contain Less Acid
Cold brew is brewed at room temperature or lower, and this results in a 67% lower acid extraction. The low acid content results in a smoother and naturally sweeter taste. Not only that, the human digestive system can be very sensitive, and too much acid will cause problems. There is a high risk that if you ever had too much coffee during the day, you are familiar with the effects…
3 – Lower Risk for Type-2 Diabetes
Researchers at Harvard followed over 120,000 persons to observe if there was any correlation between coffee consumption and type-2 diabetes, and the result was positive.
If you increased your coffee intake by more than 1 cup/day over a 4year period, you decreased the risk for type-2 diabetes with 11%. If you instead reduced the number of cups of coffee with more than 1 cup/day, you increased the risk for type-2 diabetes with 17%.
That is a 28% difference in risk between those who increased their coffee intake and between those who decreased it.
4 – Coffee Lowers Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia
Dementia, something many of us fear, and often caused by Alzheimer’s Disease, is something that coffee can prevent. Or at least lower the risk.
Eating healthy and exercising are examples of how you can lower the risk, but you could also do something as easy and enjoyable as drinking coffee.
Studies showed that the risk for Alzheimer’s might drop down with as much as 67% for those with daily caffeine intake, and meta-analysis has confirmed the decreased risk. As we now know (after seeing benefit nr.1), there is a lot of caffeine in cold brew, so keep drinking!
5 – Cold Brew Coffee Can Fight Depression
All the cold brew coffee benefits are great, but this one is really surprising. Depression is one of our age’s biggest problems. This is not in any way a one-stop solution, but it looks like a daily coffee intake can decrease the risk of depression.
It is once again the caffeine that is correlated with the decreasing risk. Decaffeinated coffee does not have the same effect.
A Harvard study showed that women drinking 4 cups a day (at least 550mg caffeine) had a 20% lower risk for depression. Even 2-3 cups decreased the risk with 15%.
Another study following almost 850,000 thousand women showed a significant inverse association between coffee intake and suicide.
6 – Cold Brew is Naturally Sweet and Smooth
One of the cold brew coffee benefits is that it’s naturally sweet and smooth. This is not only a benefit for those who prefer smooth and sweet coffee, but it is also a health benefit.
Why? Because, if you like a sweeter coffee, you probably have to add sugar or other sorts of sweeteners. With cold brew, you can skip those extra calories and the sugar.
Of course, if you like it sweet, feel free to add any sweetener. But you will have to add less than if you drank hot brewed coffee to reach the same result.
7 – The Biggest Source of Antioxidants
Coffee is a big source of antioxidants. For many in the western world, it is actually a bigger source of antioxidants than fruit and vegetables are combined.
A study in Spain showed that 66% of the antioxidant in a Spanish diet came from coffee. In the second place was wine with 22%.
8 – Coffee Make You Burn More Calories
Coffee, and especially the caffeine, help to burn a lot of extra calories. Mostly because it gives you that extra energy boost that makes you go to the gym or take the stairs.
However, it has also been linked to a higher metabolism in general. This study showed that daily caffeine intake could increase the calories burned by up to 11%.
Another study showed that 200mg caffeine intake increased the metabolic rate with 4-7% for 3 hours. So, if you want to lose some weight coffee and cold brew coffee is great (lookup for the sweeteners and the cream though)!
9 – Coffee Lowers the Risk of Cancer
One of the biggest death causes in our time is cancer. Nearly 1 out of 3 Americans will have cancer some time during their lifetime. So, how can coffee help? Colorectal cancer is the fourth biggest death cause in the world. This makes it the third most deadly cancer.
A study following nearly 500,000 people showed that 4-5 cups of coffee a day could decrease the risk for colorectal cancer with 15%.
Coffee has also been linked with decreasing risk for liver cancer. This is not only a cold brew coffee benefit but a benefit of any coffee drinker. But it’s a fantastic benefit, right?
10 – Coffee Reduce the Risk for Heart Diseases
It is often said that coffee increases your blood pressure and, therefore, also could be dangerous for us. However, the increase is not as significant as people think.
Studies have shown that the increase in blood pressure is low and only lasts for about 3hrs after intake. That said, if you already have elevated blood pressure, you probably should be a bit more cautious.
So, coffee and cold brew don’t increase the blood pressure as much as we thought, but that is not a benefit. Does it decrease the risk of heart diseases as well?
Yes, it does.
A moderate coffee intake decreases the risk for coronary heart diseases and also lowers the risk for stroke with as much as 14%.
11 – It’s Social, and a Community Foundation Stone
Why is this the last benefit? Because this might be the most important one of all the cold brew coffee benefits. We know that it is good to stay healthy, exercise, eat healthy food, etc. But we also know that one of the most important things we can do is to be social.
Being a part of a community and having peers to talk with daily. The oldest people in the world are not people who have the best health care. It is rather people who are living in strong communities and people who don’t feel alone.
The biggest cold brew coffee benefit, and coffee benefit in general, is that it is social. We drink coffee with friends, family, business partners, etc. It is a drink that gives us a reason to hang out and talk. It is a foundation stone for our communities and social life.
Coffee is fantastic for so many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that it’s so often a part of real-life conversations and meetings.
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