Coffee is certainly the most popular drink in the world. But, gradually, more and more people are turning to decaffeinated out of concern for their health. It has been shown that around 8% of coffee consumed in France is decaffeinated. People who consume decaffeinated coffee are often concerned about their blood pressure, want to limit their daily caffeine levels or avoid sleep problems, or are overly sensitive to caffeine.
Whatever the reasons for moving from one camp to the other, “decaffeinated coffee is becoming more and more popular,” says Lauren Ball, professor of community health and wellbeing at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. in Australia.
But coffee has health benefits, including reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, reducing the risk of developing neurological disorders, such as dementia, and reducing the risk of death. Separately, a particular method of removing caffeine from coffee beans is raising growing health concerns because it uses a harmful chemical called methylene chloride.
So what are the health benefits of decaffeinated coffee? And how do these health benefits compare to regular caffeinated coffee?
The good news is that many of the benefits of coffee are also found in decaffeinated coffee, says Luis Rustveld, registered dietitian and assistant professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, Texas. As Rustveld notes, coffee contains a number of beneficial components, the majority of which remain after removing the caffeine.
This is thought to be due to the antioxidant content of coffee beans, many of which remain even after caffeine is eliminated.
“There are different ways to cut out caffeine, but overall, if you look at the chemical compounds in the coffee beans themselves, it appears that they still have protective effects,” says Dolores Wood, a registered dietitian at the Health Science Center School of Public Health at the University of Texas.
This can translate into real benefits for decaffeinated coffee drinkers. In a 2014 meta-analysis of twenty-eight different studies, researchers found that decaffeinated coffee drinkers like regular coffee drinkers had a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The more coffees a person reported drinking per day, the lower his risk of developing the disease.
However, there is a subtle difference between the benefits of regular coffee and decaf. But it’s unclear whether the effects found in these studies are due to a lack of caffeine in decaffeinated coffee, changes made to the coffee during the decaffeination process, or a lower number of decaffeinated fans.
In a 2022 study published in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers tracked the health outcomes of 449,563 participants over a period of twelve years and six months, examining the rate of cardiovascular disease among coffee drinkers compared to non-coffee drinkers. They found a reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease and a lower risk of mortality among all coffee drinkers, including people drinking decaf.
The only major difference the researchers found was that decaffeinated coffee was not associated with a reduction in arrhythmias. This could be due to caffeine’s stabilizing effect on heart rate, by blocking adenosine receptors, says Peter Kistler, a cardiologist at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute at the Alfred, a hospital in Melbourne, Australia.
But that doesn’t mean caffeine is the answer to everything, says Ina Bergheim, a nutrition researcher at the University of Vienna. “If caffeine was the only reason coffee was beneficial, we probably would have noticed the same effects with sugary drinks,” she explains.
The current recommendation from the European Food Safety Authority is not to exceed 400 milligrams per day. The effects of caffeine can vary, with some people being much more sensitive. In the short term, excessive caffeine consumption can lead to nervousness, trouble sleeping, gastrointestinal discomfort, headaches or increased heart rate. Over the long term, excessive caffeine consumption can lead to withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches, if the person tries to quit.
One of the reasons why the health benefits of coffee have been debated for so long is that its consumption can often go hand in hand with other habits, some of which can make it very difficult to identify the true cause and cause. the effect. “There’s no perfect study on this,” Bergheim says. Instead, researchers have had to analyze the cause and effects of coffee consumption by spotting the habits and health consequences of many people, which introduces the risk of conflation of correlated, but not causal, factors. .
For example, in a large study tracking health consumption habits among approximately 200,000 healthcare workers, researchers found that coffee consumption was associated with higher rates of smoking. So they also discovered that the health risks they faced, such as lung cancer, were due to smoking rather than coffee.
The same goes for other habits that go hand-in-hand with coffee drinking, like adding lots of sugar. As another study shows, regular coffee consumption is associated with reduced weight gain over time, but only if you drink your coffee black or with milk, but without sugar. And this is the case whether you drink regular or decaffeinated coffee. “Drinking coffee without sugar seems to be the best solution, whether the coffee is decaffeinated or not,” says Ball.
