Your Office Coffee Might Be Slowly Clotting Your Arteries, Says New Research

If you’ve ever wondered why your workplace coffee tastes like a mix of burnt rubber and regret, science now has an answer: it's not just bad, it might actually be bad for you.

A new study from Uppsala University and Chalmers University of Technology has confirmed what coffee drinkers have long suspected: the machines in your office break room are conspiring against your health. Unlike the harmless drip-filter coffee makers at home that use paper filters like responsible adults, workplace coffee machines often use fancy, unfiltered brewing methods. What you get is a generous helping of cholesterol-raising substances sneaking into your bloodstream.

Office coffee may be bad for you, says new research (Getty Images)

The study tested 14 different office coffee machines and analyzed coffee from five popular brands. Researchers found that machines without proper filters produced coffee with dangerously high levels of cafestol and kahweol (the coffee world’s equivalent of tiny saboteurs messing with your cholesterol).

The Science Behind This

David Iggman, the lead researcher from Uppsala University, explained the phenomenon in words that can be summarized as: filters matter.

“From this we infer that the filtering process is crucial for the presence of these cholesterol-elevating substances in coffee. Obviously, not all coffee machines manage to filter them out. But the problem varies between different types of coffee machines, and the concentrations also showed large variations over time,” says Iggman.

The worst offenders are brewing machines (yes, the kind your office likely uses), percolators, French presses, and even some espresso machines. Meanwhile, old-fashioned boiled coffee (the kind your grandma used to make) remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of cholesterol bombs.

The bars indicate milligrams of cafestol per cup for the volumes 60 ml (espresso), 137.5 ml (coffee machines) and 150 ml (all others). (Illustration: David Iggman/Uppsala University)

But before you throw out your office coffee in favour of tea drinking, know this: a standard paper-filter coffee maker (like the one collecting dust in your home kitchen) is a much safer option. It does a great job at keeping these substances out of your cup and, consequently, out of your arteries.

How Bad Is It?

“Few previous studies have examined this many coffee machines, and what is interesting about the results is the high levels of these substances found in coffee from these machines. If you drink coffee regularly at work from a machine that produces high levels of these substances, it could impact your cholesterol levels. Consequently, it could also affect the risk of future heart disease,” says Rikard Landberg, Professor at the Division of Food and Nutrition Science, the Department of Life Sciences at Chalmers, where the analyses were conducted.

According to Landberg, the levels of cholesterol-raising compounds varied across machines and even changed over time. This means that one day your office coffee is just bad, and the next day it’s actively shortening your lifespan.

If you’re drinking this kind of coffee regularly (say, every day while trying to survive back-to-back meetings), you could be nudging your cholesterol levels in the wrong direction. And as we all know, higher cholesterol means a higher risk of heart disease, which is arguably even worse than the Monday morning status update meeting.

What Should You Do?

First, demand that your office replace the breakroom coffee machine with a nice, responsible, filter-using one. If that fails, consider bringing your own coffee or, in a worst-case scenario, pretending to enjoy herbal tea. Professor Landberg adds: “Coffee machine manufacturers should do more to reduce the levels of these substances in their products. Drip-filter coffee, or other well-filtered coffee, is preferable.”

“To determine the precise effects on LDL cholesterol levels, we would need to conduct a controlled study of subjects who would drink the coffee,” says Iggman.

Source:

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0939475325000870

(This article is part of the ETV Bharat Health Team's new series health@work. Watch this section for more such health updates and tips)

Read more:

1. Morning vs. All-Day Coffee: Which Is Better For Your Heart?
2. 6 Foods You Should Not Consume With Coffee
3. 5 Benefits Of Drinking Cocoa After A Meal