If you’ve been listening to the radio recently, you must have heard the advertisements proclaiming that coffee can be really healthy for you as it has a lot of antioxidants. While it’s true that antioxidants can be good for you, by binding with a lot of the oxidising materials that can cause cancer in humans, the truth about the adage that coffee is good to you is far harder to establish. In this article, we’ll look at some of the science done around the world to try and determine just whether or not coffee is good for you and, if it is, how you can try to avoid some of the less benevolent effects of coffee.

We’d like to point out however, that not all coffee is created equal and some types of coffee might have more antioxidants than others, which may have practically no antioxidants. Unfortunately, there are just too many variables that determine the antioxidant content in the coffee – for instance, do green coffee beans have the most antioxidants or are there more (or less) antioxidants once the coffee beans have been roasted? What about instant coffee or coffee powders? Does the process of making instant coffee mean that most of the antioxidants have been destroyed?

There are certain things we do know about coffee, however, and that overindulgence in coffee can be very bad for you. The caffeine in coffee acts as a diuretic, which means it induces urination, which can be a problem if you haven’t drunk enough water to compensate for the diuretic effect. Caffeine also increases alertness, as we all know, although the degree to which people are affected seems to vary from individual to individual – some are so hyperactive after drinking even a small amount of coffee that they are unable to sleep for hours after drinking coffee. Then, there’s the addictive component of caffeine; those who have tried stopping caffeine intake will probably know about the headaches that develop after being deprived of caffeine.

We think the jury really is out on this one. Nevertheless, we think that any coffee drinkers should probably listen to their bodies – if you don’t feel comfortable with the amount of coffee you are taking, you probably should cut down! The antioxidants in coffee are very likely to be beneficial, but there are other sources found in nature that don’t share the same sort of side effects as coffee.