New Coffee Flour May be Healthier for You Than Actual Coffee

Want to be healthier when you drink your coffee? Then you may want to try coffee flour. Scientists are working on developing flour milled from the parbaked coffee bean both as a food ingredient and as a nutritional supplement.

The parbaked coffee bean is created with a method of roasting green coffee beans that enhances the health benefits of coffee.

Research has already shown that drinking coffee can be good for you; a recent Harvard study found that people who drank three to five cups a day had a 15 percent lower chance of prematurely dying than non-drinkers. However, no one knows for certain why coffee tends to be healthy.

There are, however, theories about coffee. It could be that its healthy effects are down to a natural chemical compound called chlorogenic acid (CGA). An antioxidant, CGA is thought to be beneficial in modulating sugar metabolism, controlling blood pressure and possibly treating heart disease and cancer.

But when coffee is roasted in the traditional way-above 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 15 minutes-the CGA content drops dramatically. That's why researchers developed a way to bake coffee beans for less time at a lower temperature. The concentration of CGA in the bean was about 10 percent of the bean's weight, barely dropped. In contrast, beans roasted in the traditional way can lose up to 50 to 100 percent of their CGA.

Because it's roasted for so little time, the coffee bean can't be used to make coffee, however, it can be made into flour and put in other food sources.

The researchers hope that this flour can be blended with other flours for baking, and believe that it may just be a good health food to introduce.

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