Coffee is a perpetual topic of interest, and for good reason: Almost everyone drinks it, almost everyone is passionate about it, and it’s packed with compounds that are pretty darn good for you. One aspect of coffee I’ve never explored, however, is how coffee brewing methods affect its health effects.
What’s healthier—filtered or unfiltered? Dark roast or light roast? Pre-ground or whole bean? French press or drip? Let’s get to it.
Filtered ( Drip Bag Coffee ) vs Unfiltered Coffee
Filtered coffee is coffee that runs through a paper filter ( Drip Bag Coffee ) , which catches most of the oils. Unfiltered coffee is coffee that doesn’t go through a paper filter(Drip Bag Coffee_ Ground coffee ); either it’s completely unfiltered (grounds directly in water) or it runs through a metal filter, which allows the oils to pass through. Unfiltered coffee is often referred to in the scientific literature as “boiled coffee.”
Filtered coffee includes drip, pour-over (unless you use a permanent filter that allows passage of the oils), and any method in which the Ground coffee passes through a paper filter (Drip Bag Coffee).
Unfiltered/boiled coffee brewing methods include French press, Moka pot/percolator, Aeropress, espresso.
Cold brew coffee can be either filtered or unfiltered, depending on what kind of filter you use to strain the final product.
Conventional wisdom is scared of those oils because they contain two lipid compounds called cafestol (great name for a coffee shop) and kahweol, high doses of which elevate cholesterol and suppress LDL clearance from animal models. That does sound bad; suppressed LDL clearance means LDL particles hang around longer in the blood to be oxidized and form atherosclerotic lesions. Do the animal mdoels transfer over to humans?
Maybe not. While 73 mg of purified cafestol a day for six weeks can increase cholesterol by a worrisome 66 mg/dL, the average cup of French press coffee contains between 3-6 mg; 73 mg isn’t a normal physiological dose. In one study, boiled coffee consumption was associated with a more modest 8% cholesterol increase in men and a 10% increase in women. That’s cholesterol, not LDL. Total. Besides, high fitness levels abolished the link in men, and boiled coffee was also linked to lower triglycerides in both sexes.
Or maybe. Another study found a modest association between high intakes of boiled coffee and non-fatal heart attacks. Then again, a similar (but smaller) association also existed with filtered coffee. Tough to say.
Cafestol and kahweol have beneficial effects, too. For instance, cafestol kills leukemia cells and kidney cancer cells. In mice, cafestol exerts anti-diabetic effects. Kahweol inhibits fat accumulation by activating AMPK (the same pathway triggered by fasting, exercise, and ketosis). Both compounds have anti-angiogenic effects.
